Sheltowee Trace- Day 26- No Bridge Over Troublesome Waters

 Today, we went back and hiked the missing piece in Kentucky. From now on, everything should be in north to south sequence.

Ha ha! I was going to post about the bridge over troublesome waters, but it washed out several years ago. However, it was OK, because Troublesome Creek didn't even have any water in it today. We aren't sure why it was so troublesome to someone.

There was a bridge, however, over Difficult waters. Difficulty Creek bridge had been recently repaired. And the creek valley was deep and had water in it, and it would have been a steep scramble down to creek level. We are very happy for bridges.

For a large part of the day we followed a very old road grade that we are thinking was used to access the Beatty Oil Well. Now here's an enigma of hairsplitting.

The Beatty Well struck oil in 1818 and produced quite a lot of oil. However, it was originally drilled to find brine (salt) not oil. The Drake Well in Pennsylvania claims to be the first commercial oil well (1859). The difference seems to be that the Drake Well was drilled specifically to find oil. To split the hairs even finer, Noble County, Ohio drilled for brine in 1814 and struck oil. It was bottled and sold as Seneca Oil, an all-purpose medicine. Most of the "snake oil" remedies sold for decades across the country were crude petroleum products and mixtures. So, who really had the first well? Who knows. But this is where the Beatty Well was, and at its height, it oozed 100 barrels of oil a day. It was sent down the Cumberland River to be repackaged and sold as linement, pitch, and lamp fuel.

We saw another box turtle, but this one's legs and the top of his head were gorgeous with bright yellow spots.

The mornings have been cool and foggy. I finally got a picture of the sun rays breaking through.

Tomorrow will be our last day over 13 miles. That's fine with me! Only 4 hiking days to go.

Miles hiked in 2026: 600.6
Sheltowee Trace miles: 272

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. South of Ledbetter TH to Peters Mt. TH- 11.3 miles

See Sheltowee Trace- KY to TN

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 24- Tipple Bridge

 You know if there's a good railroad story it's going to be my highlight of the day. Today we walked past the end of the Tipple Bridge. We visited it by car yesterday down at the lower level. Today we were high on the hill at the level of the bridge. It's closed even for pedestrians, but at least I could sort of shoot a picture down its length.

What is a tipple bridge, you ask? It's where gravity is used to transfer coal (most commonly) from one train to a different one. Here is what it looks like from down below. Trains with coal would come across the high bridge, and dump the coal through this light gray structure into the waiting cars below. You can just barely see black cars below.

There was one other chance to see this bridge from an overlook today. However, when Doug and I got there, there was so much fog we could barely see it. Sue took this picture earlier in the morning. It sort of puts that huge bridge in persepective in the landscape.

They had an excellent model of the operation. I managed to get one picture without too many reflections. First of all, let me say that the trail goes along the orange and blue lines near the top. Trains would come over the high tipple bridge (orange line), and dump the coal down through the building. Then the train would continue on the orange line. When the last car was clear, they could back up (blue line). When the engine was clear of the yellow line, the train could descend to the lower green level. I should have broken the green line to show it's lower than the bridge. Hope you can figure it out.
I'd love to know more about the general lines in the area. This was ALL under the control of Justus Stearns whom I mentioned a few days ago. There is a biography of him, but I haven't read it because I wasn't so much interested in his southern operations before. But now, I really want to know more.

Other memorable moments of the day.

We started with a wade of Rock Creek. But we need to rename it as Lost Stick Creek. We got across, and Doug looked back and realized he'd left his hiking stick. And he'd already changed out of his water shoes. So he changed back and went to retrieve his stick.

We knew there were going to be showers during the day. We didn't mind hiking in the light rain much, but just sitting to eat lunch didn't appeal very much. We found a cave! It was completely dry under the overhang. You can see how dry the dirt is.

We saw two more box turtles- both of them small. We were able to hike right along. For the most part, the trail was in good condition. I was a tiny bit concerned about the distance because there were a lot of hills. But the big difference was that there was not a fallen tree to deal with every 10 minutes. I wasn't overly tired at the end of the day.

And we had a cheering section! Sue came and found us near the end at Waters Cemetery. We just had about an hour to go after that.

We hiked a little farther than the trailhead to reduce the mileage for the next day. Actually, that won't be tomorrow. We have to change campgrounds, and the logistics are tricky, so we are "jumping ahead" to hike shorter mileage tomorrow. Then we'll come back and connect from today.

Miles hiked in 2026: 580.3
Sheltowee Trace miles: 248.3

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. K&T Railroad Bridge to junction with trail south of Ledbetter TH, 13.5 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Rain and Fun

Sheltowee Trace- Day Off- Rain and Fun

 Boy, did we make a good choice as to which day to take off. Can you tell what we did in the morning? Laundry. We almost needed to jump in the dryers after running from the car. It poured all morning and a little bit into the afternoon.

Then we ate out. I had a B-B-Q pork sandwich, and we had to have hot fudge cake after that!

After one grocery stop, we came back to the campground and had to move to a different site which took a while, and we had to dry some stuff out because the tent I'm sharing with Sue leaked a bit. By then the weather had cleared and we decided to go see some local points of interest.

This is the view of the Big South Fork from the Blue Heron overlook.

We drove down to the Blue Heron mine town and the coal tipple bridge. This is very cool from a railroad fan perspective and has even more ties to Justus Stearns, but I'll just show you the bridge today. It's closed even for pedestrian use, but the ranger said they have asked Congress for money to make it safe for pedestrians.

We had seen two small arches along the road. One of them has a name- Wagon Arch, because supposedly before the road to the mine was built, it was part of a wagon road. Sue found a geocache there.

There was one more tiny arch. You can see how small it is in this picture with me climbing down from the top of it.

Then we came back to the campsite and Sue made us grilled cheese sandwiches. A great day off!

Miles walked in 2026: 566.8

Maybe a mile walking to various overlooks and things.

See Sheltowee Trace- New Support Crew

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