Land Between the Lakes 7/14-7/15 2008

[RakkasanFA]

This is my first time posting about a trip...

I took my 8 yr old son with me to LBL for a one night camping/hiking/exploring trip. The weather was perfect and there weren't many people in the park with it being a weekday. There are deer, wild turkey and even bison (in fenced in/proteced areas) all over the park.

We hiked some of the trails in the Fort Henry trail area. They were nice and there was nice changes in elevation but nothing too challenging. We hiked about 2-3 hrs.

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Next, we drove up one of the main north/south running gravel roads and stopped at a bunch of the offshoot trails and drove them. There are too many trails to count. Some led to graveyards, creeks or Kentucky Lake while others eventually hit dead ends. The truck did great and I only had to put it in 4WD a few times. There were a few trails I didn't feel comfortable driving through so we just turned around and found others.

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There is a huge ironworks furnace that was pretty interesting.
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We stayed the night and I was able to test out my new bed tent. It was great and took about 10 min to set up. In the morning, we had bacon and egg breakfast burritos courtesy of the Coleman grill.

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On the way home we stopped at Fort Donelson National Battlefield. I always enjoy checking out old artillery pieces. The park is really small but there are some hiking trails. We only stayed about an hour.
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[RakkasanFA]

More pics

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[Ursidae69]

Cool trip!

 

[tdesanto]

Welcome to ExPo. Thanks for sharing the photos and trip info.

Bacon...Goooood.

 

[Dave]

Cool, thank you for sharing!

LBL is one of those places that I've always wanted to check out, just never have. The trails that end at the lake, do you know if you're allowed to camp there by the water? I know they have boat in camping, but I've never been clear on whether or not there are primitive drive in spots like that.

 

[RakkasanFA]

Cool, thank you for sharing!

LBL is one of those places that I've always wanted to check out, just never have. The trails that end at the lake, do you know if you're allowed to camp there by the water? I know they have boat in camping, but I've never been clear on whether or not there are primitive drive in spots like that.

Yes, in fact that is where we camped. All you have to do is get a backcountry camping permit. I stayed by the water off of Trail # 403 which is in the SW of the park just below the Piney Campground. There are a lot of trails. We spent about 3-4 hours going through trails and probably didn't even touch the surface as to what is out there. Here is a link to the park's map:

http://www.lbl.org/LBLPublicAccessRoadMaps.pdf

 

[Dave]

Yes, in fact that is where we camped. All you have to do is get a backcountry camping permit.

Very cool. Sounds like I need to check it out some time.

 

[sandalscout]

Cool trip, I was almost in the same area this weekend, had planned on camping @ Boswell Point (at the end of 233) but ended up getting stuck at work all weekend! I enjoy camping on the lakes there, unfortunately sometimes the Barge Traffic on Kentucky lake gets really loud. Hard to imagine the weather was nice, while driving back to Nashville for work on Saturday, it POURED for 2-3 hours down this way, glad it wasn't bad up there!

Dave, just to expand on RakkasanFA's comments, you can camp anywhere in the entire Recreational Area as long as you are 200 feet from cemeteries and roads, and not in a marked area (maybe 10% of the park is off limits). Definitely worth the trip. I've 4wheeled about 20 miles of service roads here and just scratched the surface, lots of potential, some of it gets rough at times, as witnessed by a recent stick I had on a rough road.

 

[RakkasanFA]

Cool trip, I was almost in the same area this weekend, had planned on camping @ Boswell Point (at the end of 233) but ended up getting stuck at work all weekend! I enjoy camping on the lakes there, unfortunately sometimes the Barge Traffic on Kentucky lake gets really loud. Hard to imagine the weather was nice, while driving back to Nashville for work on Saturday, it POURED for 2-3 hours down this way, glad it wasn't bad up there!

Dave, just to expand on RakkasanFA's comments, you can camp anywhere in the entire Recreational Area as long as you are 200 feet from cemeteries and roads, and not in a marked area (maybe 10% of the park is off limits). Definitely worth the trip. I've 4wheeled about 20 miles of service roads here and just scratched the surface, lots of potential, some of it gets rough at times, as witnessed by a recent stick I had on a rough road.

We actually went on monday but there was astill a lot of wet ground from the saturday rain. I got to break in the new Bridgestones in a few areas.

Yes, there are tons of roads to wheel on but I just turned around if I felt there might be a good chance of getting stuck.

 

[jg45]

Great report. I love going to LBL. Especially in the fall when the leaves start to change. The best trip I had up there was in Oct. Those roads can be rough. I have seen mud holes with ruts deep enough to swallow a TJ on 35's.

 

[Dave]

Great report. I love going to LBL. Especially in the fall when the leaves start to change. The best trip I had up there was in Oct. Those roads can be rough. I have seen mud holes with ruts deep enough to swallow a TJ on 35's.

LBL might be a good venue for a fall ExPo Central/Mid-South States get together?

 

[sandalscout]

I would think so, nice and big, TONS to do there, and lots and lots of trails to explore....

 

[jg45]

Sure could be. There's tons of old cemeteries. The FS removed most of the structures that existed before it became a National Recreation area, but there are still some old cabins and some foundations back in the woods. Turkey Bay can be as easy or hard as you like trails to be.

 

[SixLug]

Im going to start a post about maybe making a trip up here for a meet type trip if anyone is interested.