Saturday 3/29/2025

Pickwick Landing State Park TN to Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park
After coffee we walked the beautiful well marked 2.5 mile Island Loop Trail which was again a peninsula, not an island. Does no one take geography anymore? Signs along the trail informed us about the area. Over 500 families had to be moved in the 1930's when the dam was built by the TVA to bring electricity to rural areas. The only evidence left of these homes are some abandoned cisterns used to collect water.
As far back as 1847, between where we are standing and the boat launch across the water stood The White Sulfer Springs Hotel and Resort. It had a separate bowling alley for men and for women and held regular dances. It may have been used as a hospital during the civil war. It was burned down and built back but ultimately demolished to make way for the dam. 
At the tip of the peninsula there were empty bottles and cans. I wish I had brought a garbage bag with me. I get obsessed with wanting to pick it up. I would have hiked it again to come back and pick up the trash but my ride home would have left without me.
You may wonder where the name Pickwick came from. The areas first postmaster enjoyed a serialized novel by Charles Dickens titled 
The Pickwick Papers, and named his post office Pickwick. After awhile they officially named the town Pickwick Landing. The actual name of this novel is The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. It was Dickens first novel written at age 22 and it's available on audible.
The forest floor is thick with leaf cover. I've been poking around looking for signs of spring flowers with no luck. Finally, a few mayflowers. Then in a hollow with a small creek I spotted some Canada Anemones and Cut Leaf Toothwort. No wild leeks though. The forest here resembles a Michigan forest. A mixture of pine, red and white oak, maple, beech, ironwood, shagbark hickory, juniper, even sycamore. Feels like home...until a local strikes up a conversation and you're trying to figure out what they said.
We stopped to make a sandwich at a park in Big Sandy. Ornamental cherry and flowering crab apple trees are in full blossom, and a rare nod acknowledging that people died of COVID, by honoring those that died in their county.
Our original plan was to stay overnight in the land between the lakes which we love, but Dewey wanted to get a little closer to home.
We stopped at Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park KY
All new asphalt pads but they don't know what a level sight is either. Need more boards!  The rain held off long enough to cook up some corned beef hash and eggs for dinner and eat outside. The temperature is still warm if not sunny.

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