Home

 Here we are- me and Ester- two buddies who have known each other since 1994 when we both worked at Matthaei Botanical Garden. We sure are older, but wrinkles don't define us.

She fed me a scrumptious breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy. Now I have to start dialing back the food intake to real life, not hiking life! I left there around 11 am for the final leg of the journey home.

Stopped at the grocery store on the way to get my salad fixings and some other things and arrived home at about 2:30. I promised myself that I only had to accomplish one thing. I emptied the car into the kitchen and took care of the perishable food items.

I enjoyed a bowl of my ice cream. Since leaving home 6 weeks ago, I've only had two ice cream sandwiches and that one serving of hot fudge cake that had a ice cream layer. Yum.

And I fixed my usual salad for dinner. I've had quite a few salads on this trip since we were traveling with a cooler, and many places now sell packaged salads. Nevertheless, it was good to have my own selection of ingredients and my favorite dressing. Yum.

I plunked down in my chair and finished the book I started on the hike that really was in the category of "too good to put down," except on a hike I was too tired to do that! I'm sure it will be on my end-of-year best books list.

I'm less enthused about being back in my own bed. It needs some work to be comfortable. I really liked sleeping on a mat on the FLAT ground. I need to stiffen up the bed. Maybe that will happen this fall. I've been impressed with how happy my back has been with the ground and just a mat.

Tomorrow, I'll begin trying to get back to "real" life.

See ADT- Dovou to Anderson Ferry

Meeting Hikers

 Sue and Doug both left early this morning- Sue to head home, and Doug to hike more of the NCT in Ohio.

The big news of the day is "meeting" two hikers. I knew I'd met one of them in person before. Turns out I'd met them both, and that's a fantastic story.

There is a hiker who is approximately my age with the similar name of Judy Young. We are not related. She's done a lot of trails, and she asked if we might manage to meet while I was on my way home. She lives near Lexington and my route went right by there. So we met for lunch. Here are Judy Young and Joan Young.

Well! It turns out that one of the reasons she wanted to meet with me was because we HAD met before. In 2005 I went to the ALDHA (Appalachian Long-Distance Hikers Association) Gathering in 2005 right after I had published my first trail book-North Country Cache. I was so proud of that book! I thought that the ALDHA vendor venue would be a perfect place to sell a book of trail stories. Ha! Most of the people there just turned up their noses at anything North Country. "It's not a real trail," sort of reaction. I sold one- count it, one- book over the entire weekend. Guess who I sold it to- Judy! So I got to thank her. We talked a lot about various trails, and she wanted to know more about the NCT.

Then for dinner I was treated by Pat Long, volunteer with the Buckeye Trail Association. He is going to spot me for the next two days to hike all of the American Discovery Trail in Kentucky, Don't get too excited... it's not very many miles, but it's fun to say you've completed one whole state. And there is a patch. I'll connect it to the Buckeye Trail in Cincinnati.

So we talked for 3 hours about trail stuff. What fun! And this is perfect, because these will be short hikes. It's a nice transition back to home life.

But I do have to get up early tomorrow to be spotted, so I'll say goodnight for now.

See Hikers

Sheltowee Trace- Day 25- KY to TN

 Today was out of sequence, so we still have one day to hike in Kentucky, but today we crossed the state line. At least Kentucky had a sign!

There was actually a little trickle of water coming over this rock. Can you just see the splashes where it is hitting the rocks below? It doesn't seem to have a name.

Then we walked for nearly a mile in/beside this unnamed creek. This is when we were walking in the creekbed. In addition to this, the trail crossed it 19 times. I don't think this is a trail to hike in springtime.

We saw a harmless Black Rat Snake.

For the last big climb beside Massie Branch (creek) we were again on an old rail bed. This made the climb very easy!

Judging by the patterns of moss growth when we got a little higher, I thought they had not pulled out the ties. When we got a little higher, guess what!? Exposed ties.

And guess what again? This is yet another part of the Stearns Logging Railroad empire!

We got a bit of a late start hiking. We had to move to our final campground, and then do some exploring to get good intel about some of the pickup points I had planned to use. We massaged our plan a bit, but we like the new one a lot. Tomorrow, we'll go back and fill in the missing piece in Kentucky.

Miles walked in 2026: 589.3
Sheltowee Trace Miles: I think I messed this up somewhere. I think I'm at 260.7. I'll double check tomorrow.

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky and Tennessee- Peters Mt. Trailhead to John Muir Trailhead. 9.0 miles

See Sheltowee Trace- Tipple Bridge

Sheltowee Trace- Day 23- New Support Crew

 Last night two friends arrived to see me through to the end of this hike. I can't believe there is only about a week left!

Sue is the support person, giving rides and fixing dinner. She's had a lot of practice at this- she did the most months of anyone on the North County Trail hike. Doug S. is hiking with me. We look the same size because he's standing in a ditch!

This was too funny. It was just break time, and what did we find in the woods but two empty folding chairs! Of course we used them.

We saw Beech Drops today. They are a parasitic plant that is usually found under beech trees. And there was one beech nearby.

As usual, there were lots of amazing rock walls. One was a large shelf cave that the trail went through.

But the most significant natural feature was that we joined the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. We were seeing it through the trees a lot, but you can't really get good pictures. Finally, we were closer with a break in the greenery.

From the Yamacraw road bridge there was a good view.

We wanted to reduce the miles for the next hiking day a little bit, so we went on to the Kentucky & Tennessee Yamacraw Railroad Bridge. This is a high bridge of concrete arches, no longer in use. It was built in 1906 to carry coal trains. When it was built it was the largest concrete bridge in existence.

It's really high too. Doug took this picture of me down on the trail from the bridge deck.

The trail surface was pretty good most of the day, but there were an awful lot of fallen trees to go over, under or around.

This is the longest walking day I've done since the big North Country Trail hike. It didn't kill me, but it doesn't feel good. We are taking tomorrow off. We'd like to wait a couple more days, but there may be serious rain tomorrow and all the rest of the days look like nice weather.

Miles walked in 2026: 565.8
Sheltowee Trace miles walked: 234.8

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. Wiborg Trailhead to K&T Railroad Bridge. 13.9 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Laurel River

Day Off- Lin and Joe

 Longtime readers of this blog will recognize the names in this title. Lin started out as a blogging friend in the heyday of blogs, and is one of the group of us who turned those relationships into real-life friendships. I visited them in Tennessee a couple of years ago.

Lin and Joe live close enough that they were happy to come visit at our campsite and bring us lunch!

They brought everything! A tablecloth, real plates and silverware. A rich butternut soup, foccaia bread and a kale and chicken salad. There were peanut butter cookies for dessert!

This morning I lay in the tent until I wanted to get up. The sun was well up by then. I read my book and wrote one of my newspaper columns.

After Joe and Lin left, I read some more. Tomorrow we hike! I do feel refreshed and ready.

See Sheltowee Trace- Laurel Lake

Sheltowee Trace- Day 15- Turtle on the Turtle

 Well, Bill left this morning, and David and I are on our own. Problem 1- The road commission closed the road we needed just as we got there. We had to take a long detour. Problem 2- Google took us to the wrong place and I had to figure out how to get to the right place with no cell service. Problem 3- Then we had to take a car back to Raccoon Creek Road. Yikes! We didn't start hiking until 10:30 despite leaving the campground before 8 am.

We did find a nice box turtle on the Big Turtle Trail. This was a smallish box turtle, but friendly.

We had to wade Horse Lick Creek twice.

It's a good thing we decided to hike the double mile and not check out Horse Lick Road. The whole thing is a mud pit ATV trail- none of it driveable by a car. Hard to walk at any decent speed. We did meet 4 horseback riders.

The entire day was ATV trails and then 4 miles of actual road walk. Poor David hasn't seen any real trail yet, and I think tomorrow is all road walk too.

Despite the bad footing, this was a pretty scene of light through the trees on Horse Lick "road."

Found a completely new-to-me flower on the road walk. This is the native Orange Noah Morning Glory, Ipomoea coccinia. Very cool!

The campground where we stayed last night had one chicken. She loved being given treats like the innards from a pepper and pizza crumbs. She was pretty funny!

So we hiked until 4 pm, then had to retrieve the car on Raccoon Creek Rd which took an hour, then drive an hour south to our new campground. We stopped at an Arby's for a quick dinner. Got the tents up just as it was getting dark, and I'm now blogging in the dark and the bugs. Have to get to bed quick.

Miles walked in 2026: 490.6
Miles hiked on the Sheltowee Trace: 162.7

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. Raccoon Creek to Robinson Cemetery Road that counts- 9.8 miles (plus 1.1 mile of overlap on Raccoon Creek Rd). We are tired.

See Sheltowee Trace- Car Spotting

Sheltowee Trace- Day 14- The Car Spotting

 We DO have internet tonight. The lady who runs this campsite was here when we came this afternoon and gave us a Wifi password.

But, here's the best news of the day. David, Bill and I got to hike together again for one day. If you know me, you know that the three of us hiked together quite a few miles on the recent NCT hike. For example, in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota.

And here we are today.

Most of what we hiked today were also ATV trails that looked a lot like this.

The problem was, this looks about the same as the road we were using to spot a car at our planned ending point. This is the road.

Well, we got down it as far as Raccoon Creek Ford (after driving through three other fords), but we still had a mile to go to get to our destination. And it had taken a lot of time to carefully drive this far. Meanwhile Bill was waiting at the campground he had found for us. And we still had to go back and pick him up.

We were already fairly stressed out at this point. And the ford had a problem. We would have had to get on the concrete ribs in just the right place to not bottom out the cars. And the road on the other side didn't look worse, but it didn't look any better either. Um... no thanks. Then we realized the trail went right through that point. Decision! We put the car right there and shortened the day by a mile.

So, now I've massaged the next couple of days to even out the miles. Tomorrow we will start at a point where we have to re-walk one mile, but we decided that's better than driving that last mile again!

It turns out that Sand Gap, Kentucky, has an open gas station, a Dollar General Market (that has actual groceries), and a pizza place. Can you say celebration of our one day together? (Don't ask me why I have my hand against my face?)

But tomorrow morning, we have to say goodbye to Bill. David and I will go on for about 10 days until the companions will change again.

Miles walked in 2016: 479.7
Sheltowee Trace miles hiked: 152.9

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. S-Tree Tower Rd to Raccoon Creek, 8.6 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Details

Sheltowee Trace- Day 11- Across the Kentucky

 Today was almost all roadwalk again. Soon after starting we crossed the Kentucky River at Heidelburg on the Albert Updyke Bridge. I think Heidelburg used to be a decent town. Now all that's left is a park and a boat ramp except for the bridge.

I was surprised to learn that the headwaters of the Kentucky River aren't very far upstream from this. However, there are a number of low-head dams that help regulate the amount of water flowing more consistently. In fact, one was just upstream from the bridge, but I like the downstream picture better. From here, it flows northwest until joining the Ohio River east of Louisville.

The first 8 miles were on roads- fairly populated roads. We needed a place to sit and eat our snack, and I needed to pee. A small rural church appeared at just the right time! They had a welcome banner, so we made ourselves comfortable on the edge of their ramp. (There were no steps!).

And they had two primitive but clean privies! Everything was perfect. Thanks for the hospitality, Cressmont Baptist Church! We left no trace... just sayin'.

Finally we left the road, but this also meant we started the first of two big climbs for the day. We ate lunch beneath this shelf cave.

Most of the afternoon was kind of tough with two big climbs and a downhill between them. But the weather didn't get too warm, and except for a couple of messy trees to get around the trail was pretty good.

Our new campground was serving nice dinners at a reasonable price, so we did that for our evening meal. Brisket, mac & cheese, vegs. Yum!

We did 13.3 miles today. The biggest challenge of the day was loose dogs. One pack of 5 were overly friendly. 3 of them followed us for about a mile. Then the 4th went a little farther, and one went maybe 2 miles before we convinced it to go home. At another place, one dog came for me, and actually got its lips on my elbow, but the teeth didn't connect.

Miles walked in 2026: 449
Miles hiked on the Sheltowee Trace: 122.3

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Quillan Cemetery to Arvel. 13.3 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Sinking Creeks

Day Off- SkyBridge

 Today was a day off... well from long hiking. There wasn't much about it that was restful. More on that momentarily. But we started out on what we thought would be a short, easy trek that Diane could participate in. This is the trail to SkyBridge Arch. It was one of my favorite arches and the loop trail past it is only 0.7 mile.

The trail you see above is actually the top of the arch. Diane made it out to there.

From that point you can see the whole span of the central Red River gorge. This is Revenuer's Rock that we could also see from Hansen's Point when Marie and I were here before.

But Bill and I did the whole loop to go down beside SkyBridge Arch. It's truly spectacular. Yes, the other pictures are up on top of that arch.

Most of the rest of the day was spent playing campground roulette. The primitive campsite I had chosen to go to next turned out to be a little too primitive. Getting down the road to it was so bad that the travel time to use the site (with no amenities) just wasn't worth it. Cell service here is so bad that communications are a real problem. But we now have the next two sites reserved, and perhaps a refund for the snafu when we checked in at the place we are now. We ate one meal out.

Not very restful, but I crossed off several things from the to-do list. The serious rain never materialized, but the weather for the next week looks very good. Tomorrow we walk the trail.

Miles walked in 2026: 411.1

SkyBridge Loop Trail, Red River Gorge, KY. 0.7 mile

See Sheltowee Trace- Day 8- Magical