| View Blog
|
|
|
|
| 10,000 miles |
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read but a page” St. Augustine
The road south through Tennessee wasn't nearly as brutal as I was expecting....After turning south from Marion, KY it was a 77 mile ride to get out of KY, which was my only goal of the day...at about 40 miles I entered the “Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area...it's a peninsula formed by the convergence of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers...It forms a literal rectangle that the Trace Road splits on the way to Dover, TN...It is at Dover that there is the first of three battles during the Civil War that shot Ulysses Grant into historical stardom...Fort Donaldson sits on the Cumberland river and at the time was a major thoroughfare for the Confederacy and there were two forts in the area...One was Donaldson and the other was on the banks of the Tennessee river, Fort Henry...With the taking of Fort Donaldson, Gen. Grant split the confederacy in the western theater and gave the Union it's first victory...
But at the Piney River in central TN something I had been looking for for 7 months happened...I watched my Odometer go from 9999.9 to 0.0...I had rolled 10,000 miles! 7 months ago I set out to write a book, “10,000 miles,” those who have been following this epic trip have been reading the live notes from the trip....I now have my 10,000 miles and the notes are the framework from which I will build on the book...But in Tennessee, at a nondescript bridge I hit my goal after 24 states!
At Shady Grove I got on the Natchez Trace Parkway...It's an historical parkway that follows the old Indian route that goes from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN...There are ruins from tribes that date back to the time of Christ here...And I ran into the grave of another very well traveled man my first day on it...Meriwether Lewis, whom I first encountered way back in Montana...Meriwether Lewis was mysteriously shot to death on the Natchez Trace road on October 11, 1809 at the age of 35...He was then Governor of the northern Louisiana territory and was headed to Washington DC to defend his expenditures for the Corp of Discovery's trip to the Pacific ocean, he was also carrying all his notes and journals from the trip to edit them for publication...But on the night of October 11th, two shots rang out and Lewis was found with bullet holes in his head and chest...To this day no one knows who fired those shots...It is one of American histories greatest mysteries...Meriwether Lewis was 35 years of age...
The Natchez Trace also played a role in the Civil War during the siege of Vicksburg...Grant used the trace to send troops against Jackson, MS during the siege...The siege of Vicksburg would land Grant a place in the annals of warfare as one of the greatest military feats of all time...But today I am in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birth place of Elvis...I will be posting again soon, but this time next week I will be done with this epic adventure and working on rejoining the 'civilized' realm...In what capacity I don't know...The economy is whacked and I don't know what challenges await me, but I do know that I have a ton of notes and photos to assemble over the next few months...I have climbed many mountains this year, I hope the mountains I now face go smoother then I think...This post is short, but this post is near the end of the road for me and I am starting to think about the decompression...It'll be a long road for that...
“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.” Mark Twain
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Views: 25
Email This to a Friend 