Tennessee Daytripping

These early spring days provided weather usually reserved for April or May. More importantly, the common denominator of Tennessee springs - brutal storms - have stuck to weekdays. When Saturday rolled around in early March, we hit the road for parts unknown.

Nancy and I decided on a brief game plan – head east for state park or some place outdoors to enjoy a March Saturday. The weather continued its unexpected warm streak, so we set out in long-sleeved shirts. Nancy dubbed some women in the parking lot the Hooker Patrol, and I agreed – skimpy tops and tall boots with metal buckles seemed out of place in a state park.

 We walked to the dam, where uprooted trees and other debris jammed into the gates. A gate emblazoned with safety warnings blocked its bridge across its span. We followed the narrow, path that alternated between the bluffs and shoreline, At one overlook, two hillbillies necked as if they were in a hotel room. For some reason, the male of the species had a guitar. He played not a note while we stopped at the overlook just long enough to be disgusted by their ridiculous behavior.

Ignoring those folks, the path beckoned. Damp and steep, it wound above the river whose roar grew progressively louder. We hiked across the rolling path that followed the canyon’s bluffs over three sets of falls. If the river had only three falls, one might be forgiven for turning back. But at Burgess Falls, you have to go all-in on the final plunge. From the final overlook, we saw the mighty cataract that descends 136 feet to the canyon floor.

A little storm enlivened the biggest falls.

I had visited Burgess Falls, but not this Burgess Falls. Instead of a perpetual flow over terraced rocks, we found a torrent flowing white Appropriately, as we descended, the Hooker Patrol came up from the falls’ base, all of them drenched. We only made it halfway down before the mist became too thick. The sun had not risen atop the canyon yet; combined with the spray, it felt 15 degrees cooler than the overlooks. The park includes a one-mile loop that follows the steep ridges deeper into the Fallling Water's canyon. A few miles up, it meets Center Hill Lake, a recreation-oriented reservoir.

We angled through Cookeville and soon landed firmly in farm country. Narrow roads, barns in various stages of collapse and subsistence farms dotted the landscapes. As we cruised north, the hills began stretching to mountainous heights.

Twenty miles later we drove on a narrow ridgetop road headed for Standing Stone State Park. The state route descended into a steep hollow, where a single-lane bridge crossed the muddy Standing Stone Lake Our next target was the Dale Hollow Dam, which impeded the Obey River seven miles above its confluence with the Cumberland. The dam barely allowed two lanes of traffic, but no one else passed while we crossed.

All is quiet on the reservoir side of Dale Hollow Dam.

We stopped, and admired the silence. Aside from the faint electric hum and a lone duck cleaning itself in the blue reservoir, silence enveloped the valley. Every few seconds his wings thrashed against the lake's cerulean surface. No boats split the waters, no other fowl swam near the great concrete barrier.

Thanks to errors in my navigation, our path would not run into Boiling Red Springs.Instead, we made repeated paths across the Cumberland’s rough loops and its tributaries. No turn caused as much trouble as our journey down Tennessee Route 85, which wound through some of the steepest switchbacks in range of Nashville. In 20 miles of road we encountered no other cars, a blessing of sorts. Too many of the switchbacks required tight turns. Later I found the round listed on motorcycle touring sites, akin to some of  the more treacherous highways I finished in Montana and Idaho. Finding one so close to Nashville seemed crazy, but not when we were making multiple hairpin turns.

 The road finally came to Carthage, touting itself as Al Gore’s home. At one point, perhaps the former VP lived here. Nothing caught us in Carthage, so buzzed back to Nashville, landing in time for some Irish pub grab at McNamara's in Donelson. A full belly and a Guinness made me feel every switchback and every dam crossing northeast of Nashville, but would not dull the austere beauty of those wild landscapes.