I may not yet be ready to hike the AT, but someday I hope to do at least portions of it. In the meantime, on a beautiful day like today, it makes me very happy to go hike someplace new. We decided to try one of the hikes in the book 60 Hikes within 60 Miles: Nashville. We have a few Tennessee hiking guides, and this one is the one we turn to again and again. We thought we were doing a 6.3 balloon shaped hike, meaning to eat our picnic lunch about halfway through, named the Old Trace/Garrison Creek Loop.
However we parked at the wrong area on the Natchez Trace and only did the loop. It was absolutely beautiful and by the time we were back at the car it was definitely lunchtime! That would be in part due to some "random detours" we took along the way . . .
towards a b&b along Leiper's Creek Road?
However look at the trail along which we got to walk:
and the tree under which we lunched:
and the view from the parking lot:
After we finished lunch, we realized we weren't ready to go home yet. So we pulled out the guide book to find another close hike and decided to attempt the Burns Branch There-and-Back. Hopping back on the Natchez Trace Parkway, we went down the road about another mile. When we got there . . . we found a sign which let us know this was the parking area for both the hikes we attempted this day. Now we know for next time . . .
This was a much shorter hike, 1.4 miles and 1.4 miles back. However about one mile out we discovered they were doing some sort of work and a detour had been set up. Not knowing where we would end up . . .
. . . we opted to head back to the car instead, happy and a bit worn out.
Hopefully we'll have a few more days like today we can take advantage of before it gets too cold . . . since we did little hiking over our extremely hot (and busy) summer.
