Sheltowee Trace- Day 21- Stearns Coal and Lumber Company

 OK, I thought today's best feature was going to be the many creeks we followed. And of course, more rocks. But this is amazing! Those of you who know me know that I LOVE sniffing out historic railroads.

So, about halfway through our hiking day, just after we turned to go upstream along Railroad Fork (a creek), we entered this. "Railroad cut," I said. "Narrow Gage."

David wasn't really sure, but after we passed through the cut, this was the path we were walking.

We stopped to eat lunch where a substantial berm had been built to carry the tracks. This is almost always definitive. They didn't go to this much work for regular roads. And the grade stayed pretty even. It probably hit 3% in some places (2% is normal), but sometimes small railroads did this.

Where the trail now crosses Railroad Fork, it dips down to water level. But you could easily see where the track ran out onto an abutment and bridge, now long gone.

And on the other side of the creek you can see where the bridge came to. The trail climbed back up to the rail grade.

Once the trail and rail grade were on the west side of the creek it was benched into the hillside.

Altogether the trail follows that grade for almost 2 miles. A lot of it has been protected with environmental cloth and pea gravel laid over that. It was our best walking surface of the day.

Of course, I wanted to see if I could find out more about it on line. Sometimes this isn't really possible with small logging operations. The local museum might have info. But...

But! This is almost certainly part of the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company rail lines. And... can you believe it, this is the Justus Stearns of Mason and Lake County, Michigan fame (where I live)?! He was one of the early lumber barons. He has many ties to Ludington, building the first hospital. The Stearns Hotel is named for him. But in 1902, he decided to branch out into coal, and bought 30,000 acres in Kentucky. In McCreary County, where this railbed is located. The city of Stearns, Kentucky is just a few miles away.

At home, the lumber town of Stearns Siding (which burned in the late 1800s) was bigger than the nearby city of Baldwin is now. The North Country Trail uses several pieces of rail bed that are associated with Stearns.

So, I can not tell you where this line began and ended, but I can be pretty sure that it was built and operated by a man i've read a lot about.

Railroad sniffing heaven! But, of course, now I want to know more.

Miles walked in 2026: 545.2
Miles walked Sheltowee Trace: 207.8

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Rt 700 at Cat Run Rd to Wiborg TH, 10.0 miles

See Sheltowee Trace- Cumberland River

Sheltowee Trace- Day 20- Cumberland River

 Today, we were hiking along the Cumberland River for quite a long way, upstream from the falls. The river is beautiful, and it moves faster than you might think. It looks sort of lazy.

Almost immediately, we walked across this bridge that spans the river. It is a concrete, sandstone-faced closed-spandrel arch bridge. It opened in 1954. It's really beautiful, and I love to walk across special bridges.

The trail followed the river for quite a distance, and we were close enough to the water to actually see it in a lot of places. This was the best. Soon before we left the river there was a stretch of about a tenth of a mile where the rocks were a solid beach, and we could walk on that. It was hot, but it was so interesting that we didn't care!

There were plenty of the kinds of rocks we've been seeing all along, including this narrow passage for the trail.

We ate lunch in the cool shadow of a nice cave, just before heading onto the heat of roads for a few miles

Readers who know the trail may have noticed that a piece of trail is missing. It's the one nearest where we are camped. David will be with me one more day. We will hike together tomorrow. On Thursday, he will spot me to do that piece before he has to scoot for home and responsibilities there. A new set of companions will join me Thursday evening. I wear them out in about 10 days! wink

Miles walked in 2026: 535.2
Miles walked Sheltowee Trace: 207.3

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. Cumberland Falls Visitor Center to KY700 at Cat Run Rd, 9.5 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Cumberland Falls

Sheltowee Trace- Day 19- Cumberland Falls

 I guess the outstanding feature of the day was reaching Cumberland Falls. It's impressive.

But frankly, we were so tired by the time we got there that it almost didn't matter. The trail had much more elevation change than FarOut seemed to indicate.

Bark Creek was actually fun, but it took a long time to navigate it safely. It's a valley filled with boulders and you have to navigate across them!

Devil's Creek was ditto, but easier.

There was a lot of impressive rock work along the way today. Building rock stairways like this takes skill and time and muscle.

At Dog Slaughter Creek there was a good bridge! We were not sad. There must be a story that goes with that name.

We kept getting little hints of the Cumberland River. Although we were following it all day, there weren't many good views.

The trail kept going through interesting rock places. This one is novel for sure. The two rocks on top are just balanced!

We went by a sheer rock face that has to be over 100 feet high. We went up and down and up and down. The trail has had some damage just inside the Cumberland State Park border and we bushwhacked a bit. That is not fun in fallen trees and rhododendron.

We were in mega poison ivy with no way to avoid it. I've showered, but I don't have enough hiking clothes to change every day. Sigh.

Generally, the footing was awful with lots of rocks, and the benching has eroded so it's very narrow with too much outslope.

Miles walked in 2026: 525.7
Miles hiked Sheltowee Trace: 197.8

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. Bee Creek Rd to Cumberland Falls Visitor Center. 10.6 miles (and it took us 8.5 hours. Ugh)

See Day Off- Lin and Joe

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 18- Laurel Lake

 Today, we did hike, but it was a short day. We hiked from VanHook Falls TH to Laurel Lake and into our campsite!

Laurel Lake is a reservoir. The water is low, about 11 feet below summer level. That fits with everything we've observed about the area being dry.

The trailhead is a really nice one, probably because it's also the access to VanHook Falls in the other direction.

Can you find what we saw? It's well camouflaged in the fallen leaves.

It's another good-looking box turtle!

We did not waste the rest of the day. We went to town and did laundry.

We also hit a big box store because there were things I was out of or low on after 3 weeks.

Still, it was a fairly restful day, and tomorrow we are really taking a day off. But there is a surprise coming too.

Miles walked in 2026: 515.1
Sheltowee Trace miles: 187.2

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, VanHook Trailhead to Laurel Lake boat ramp, 4.2 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Halfway

Sheltowee Trace- Day 17- Halfway

 I'm sitting at our picnic table blogging in the rain. Fortunately, we managed to get a tarp up this morning before hiking. So far, we are sitting here dry.

The big news is that I passed the official halfway point on the trail. Actually, this is more than halfway for me because I have to skip the miles that are still closed from a tornado last year.

The day turned out to be a lot more difficult than we anticipated. We thought it would be a fairly easy 8.5 miles. The beginning was roadwalk, and we crossed over I-75.

Then, I think we broke a cardinal hiker rule. I think there is one truck stop on this entire trail. We passed up a real bathroom, an extra cold drink, and an extra snack, and walked right by!

So far, easy. Then the trail went on a gravel road which turned into a sand road. Except for the fact that everything so far had been a climb this was pretty easy. Then we turned on Fall City "Road." This was mostly bare rock going up and down, and it was all slippery. Yes, David is standing in the "road."

The real problem was that the humidity was climbing, and I don't do well with that. Finally, we descended with bad footing to Hawk Creek which we knew we would have to wade. Yup. The log used to be the decking of the suspension bridge. The water doesn't look deep, and it wasn't a bad wade, but it was over my knees.

Then we had a 1.7-mile climb to the car. This wasn't too bad, but we were just moving slowly. It took us 5.5 hours to do 8.5 miles. Not great.

I wanted to tell you a story from yesterday. A young guy in an ATV stopped as we were climbing our last significant hill of the day. We'd already walked 11 miles. I wasn't struggling yesterday, so I assume he just had to say something "between the boys." He said to David with a conspiratorial grin, "She looks like she could use a tow." David graciously just said, "Me, too."

Tomorrow we skip to the south end of the tornado damage and are doing a short day. My body is glad.

Miles walked in 2026: 510.9
Miles walked on Sheltowee Trace: 183

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Olive Branch Church to Somerset Rd. 8.5 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Wildcat

Sheltowee Trace- Day 16- Wildcat

 We walked a lot of hot miles today, but finally David got to see some real trail.

The largest common denominator was "Wildcat." Finally got some vistas from Wildcat Trail Road.

Wildcat Trail Road is a road and a trail. It began as a decent gravel road, but then became an ATV trail. I tried to get a picture of one of the rockiest places, but it doesn't show the bumps very well. We were passed by one ATV and one pickup truck.

One more good vista. I just don't have any idea what I'm looking at though. I'm not familiar enough with the area.

We reached Camp Wildcat where a battle of the Civil War was fought. There was lots we could have explored, but we were too hot and tired to do much except take a few pictures.

Then we joined Wildcat Happy Hollow Road which interested me a lot. It was part of the Wilderness Road that was begun in 1795 and brought thousands of settlers to Kentucky.

It was this Wilderness Road that the Camp Wildcat battle was fought over. In fact, the fighting went on for a long time as control of the road was important to both the Union and the Confederacy. I would like to learn more about the road. It came through Cumberland Gap, the same as Boone's Trace, and a native path before that. But I'm too tired to do more about it tonight.

Miles walked in 2026: 502.4
Miles walked on Sheltowee Trace: 174.5

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky. Robinson Cemetery Road to Olive Branch Congregation Church. 11.8 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Turtle on the Turtle

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