This is the best time of the year for hiking and Elkmont in the Great Smoky Mountains has lovely early flowers in the spring. It's also a fairly easy hike as it doesn't gain a lot of elevation.
I hiked the Cucumber Gap loop which is about 6 miles round trip. Elkmont is also home to the historic cabins in the Smokies that were a resort back in the 30s. The park is restoring the cabins to semi-ruins and they're interesting to walk around.
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tCheekwood's first outdoor even of the year is Cheekwood in Bloom, a display of spring flowers heavily featuring tulips.
There were windmills added to this year's display. The main shortcoming of this exhibition at Cheekwood is that the flowers are rather limited to the entry of the gardens. There are flowering trees blooming, but the majority of the flowers are near the entrance which causes something of a bottleneck when it comes to people trying to get photo ops.
There are several areas of daffodils in bloom at this time too. When the weather is nice during the exhibition expect the gardens to be very crowded.
First road trip of the year was to Shiloh National Battlefield in southwest Tennessee. I knew the Battle of Shiloh was important in the Civil War, but I was fairly unfamiliar with the details of it. That was okay because the visitor center offers a 35 minute movie about the events of the battle that makes events very easy to follow. We grabbed lunch at Subway and brought it with us and ate at the park before going into the movie. Everyone is given a map to the driving tour then which has 22 tour stops.
There is a small bookshop/gift shop we hit up before going on the driving tour. The tour is well marked with nice signs that tell you what road to follow and where to stop. There is a recreation of the original Shiloh Church meeting house that was destroyed during the battle and the map has good descriptions of all the stops.
There is a stop that includes a 1.1 mile walking trail around the Shiloh Mounds that has interpretive signs about the Native American village that used to be next to the river and was on the battlefield. There were a lot of artifacts excavated from this site that was abandoned by the inhabitants about 500 years ago for reasons unknown. The trail is a good place to stretch your legs while on the tour and get a good view of the Tennessee River.
At the battlefield we were given a voucher for free entry to the Tennessee River Museum in the nearby town of Savannah. We'd passed it on the way to the park and stopped by on the way home. The museum is small but has a large collection of Native American artifacts that have been found in the area and at the mounds. These include the very impressive pipe stand of a kneeling man that managed to make it through the centuries in very good condition. The museum is very proud of it as it touts the item as being a noted one nationwide.
The museum also details the importance of the Tennessee River to the economy of the region with regards to both trade and the mussel industry. There are also a lot of Civil War artifacts from the battlefield. They are planning on expanding the museum according to the lady at the front desk by adding a replica riverboat feature soon.
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AuthorA librarian who likes to travel and experience life. CategoriesArchives
June 2022
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