42/95 - Stewart County

In which I saw the Land Between the Lakes...

Honestly, don’t have much of an intro for this run. It was my last Christmas Adam run, and it was a pretty good one! I got to see Lake Kentucky again, and she was just as beautiful as when I had seen her 3 hours ago!

Quick Facts

County: Stewart

City: Dover

Route: Miscellaneous LBTL trails

Mileage: 1.5

Date: 12/23

The County

Stewart County was created from Montgomery County. It has a pretty memorable shape right on the NW corner of Middle Tennessee. Other than the Civil War battles at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the county doesn’t seem to have had a particularly outstanding history. However, not every county has to. Its location on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers led to a thriving iron industry. (A lot of Tennessee has a history of ironworks. However, I just haven’t taken the time to *care* about metals 😂) Great community names include Big Rock, Standing Rock, Bear Spring and Bumpus Mills.

The Route

I ran a combo of trails at the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. The two lakes in question would be Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. I had never been to LBTL before and didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t get to explore much of the gigantic peninsula, but it looks like a cool place to go camping sometime. There’s also apparently a living history museum on site. (Living history museums are some of my favorite things!)

This was another Civil War history trail, but I honestly don’t remember anything from it so here’s the Wikipedia article on Fort Henry if you would like to see what I have forgotten 😂

Highlights

After I got done with my run, I drove to the Kentucky Lake shoreline. To be fair, I probably could have run it, but I was exhausted. I’ve been working on listening to my body when it tells me to consider stopping before I hurt myself, and this was a good time to practice that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, Kentucky Lake was BEAUTIFUL. It started to rain a little bit, and the combination of the grays and blues and huge expanse of water was just what I needed to finish a jam-packed day.

Misadventures

The trail map showed a parking lot at the trailhead I wanted to run. When I got to the turnoff, I saw that it was a dirt road, but I didn’t think much of it because I’ve taken my Avalon on many a dirt/gravel road. However, this road had more than its fair share of potholes and puddles, and I started to get nervous. However, there was nowhere to pull around so I had to reverse back through the potholes 🙃 My car is still fine though!

Points of Interest

Not gonna lie, I totally forgot this was a heading in these posts 🙈 Umm but anway the hotel where one Ulysses S. Grant earned his nickname “Unconditional Surrender” is in Dover in Stewart County. I’ll be storing this one in my file for “Trivia Questions That Will Never Get Asked.”