Wild Goose Chases

We got a long way to go
And a short time to get there...

Long way to go indeed.  One of our last stops on a trip like this is usually Shipshewana, Indiana.  We’ll load up on cheap groceries from E&S Sales and some fantastic meats from Yoder’s before taking the final leg of the trip home.  So we have to make sure we time our arrival when all these stores are open.  If we stop for the night in southern Indiana, we can arrive in Shipshewana in the early afternoon tomorrow and arrive home tomorrow early in the evening.

So with those parameters in mind we set out on I-65 North..

We left the freeway for a while to travel on US-31, which parallels I-65 through quite a bit of Tennessee and Kentucky.  Any chance to get off the interstate is welcome.  The two-lane roads and not having to drive so crazy fast just makes for a more pleasant experience.

Navigator Deb was doing some online reading about the Natchez Trace and some other things in Western Tennessee.  We decided to go check it out and ambled off the freeway just after crossing into Tennessee.  After traveling some minor roads, including another section of US-31, we ended up on the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile stretch of road that roughly follows the Old Natchez Trace, a historic travel corridor used by Indians, settlers, slave traders, soldiers, outlaws, and a number of other people, both good and bad.

We only drove about 15 miles of the road, but stopped at a few historic sites, such as Napier Mine, an old open-pit iron ore mine, and the place where Meriwether Lewis died and was buried.  He either died from foul play on the Old Natchez Trace or self-inflicted gunshot wounds and his body was buried here, with a monument being erected later.

Lots of other history along this corridor, worth coming back to see.  The campground here is free and is quite full in the summertime, according to a guy we talked to in the campground as we were driving through it.  Today there were only about four or five sites occupied.  We parked in an empty site and made lunch.

We ended up in the town of Linden.  We probably should have checked out the Commodore Hotel, looked like quite a place from the outside, but we moved on, ending up nearly 10 miles west of there at Mousetail Landing State Park.

Time constraints wouldn’t let us stay at the park for very long so we turned back east towards Nashville.  All in all, these wild goose chases added about three hours of drive time.  Wandering around does come at a cost.

Back on I-65 North, we managed to cross the remainder of Tennessee and most of Kentucky before refueling.  $3.99 for diesel.  Cheapest yet.  After driving all day, we felt we needed a good stiff drink so we stopped at a Culver’s on the south side of Louisville, Kentucky for a Concrete Mixer.  While there, I saw that another headlamp bulb was burned out.  These things go with disturbing regularity.  We stopped at an AutoZone just down the street and picked up a new bulb to replace it.

We stopped for the night just north of Louisville, across the Indiana state line, at a Cracker Barrel in Sellersburg.  The GPS says we have 4 hours and 10 minutes to Shipshewana.  Perfect.