the Nashville Basin, Bells Bend on the Cumberland.

Camping at Sulphur Creek farm under full moon for my brother's birthday.
Eating copious amounts of Squash and Dinosaur Kale, going to sleep with frogs and waking up with cows!

West of Nashville, following the Cumberland (which has recovered pretty well from the May 1 flood), rolling hills increase gradually. Only a few miles away, yet feels deep in the country. And the farmers of Bells Bend feel it should stay that way, having via literal Grass Roots movement, kept developers away. There is a city park at Bells Bend too, including a nature center.
At the town of Ashland City, 12 miles beyond, we found a more placid swimming hole in Little Marrowbone Creek. Again, sweltering June sun makes natural baths such a necessary idea!!

A Turn to Tennessee, A Fiery Gizzard in the Rain

Imagine being the first autumn leaf at the bottom of these falls.












ttttennesssseee parks I visited last weekend, for the second time - Red Clay Council Ground in April was the first, the last gathering place for the Cherokee before the Trail of Tears was begun - and it was raining but that didn't stop me. I was standing in North Chickamauga River in a gorge with fog covering the peaks above and the water was warm.











Faith is a flat-iron in the valley rain. Hope is a blow dryer. Loneliness is a soggy daisy in Soddy-Daisy. And contentment is this spider on its riverside rock.








After this I was led up Monteagle Mountain, the truckers' favorite hill to hate, and at the top a mountain man suggested this white-dressed witchy woman wander to Grundy Forest and the Fiery Gizzard. One of the South Cumberland Plateau State Parks between Chattanooga and Nashville, on Scenic Hwy 41, it was like a mist tent going down the trail to the creek but I wasn't the only one out here in the rain.











Some waterfalls.....
Dog Hole (or Blue Hole)
















School Run























Foster Falls




and thennn....