Scenes from Red River Gorge

Tuesday
It was another gorgeous autumn/Fall day for my birthday. Today’s trail was in an area we hadn’t explored before, starting with a short section of the Sheltowee Trace, which is a 319-mile National Recreation Trail that spans the Daniel Boone National Forest and Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area in Kentucky and Tennessee. The name "Sheltowee" honors the history of Daniel Boone, who was captured by Shawnee Indians while making salt in an area close to the present-day trail. Chief Blackfish, his adopted Shawnee father, renamed him Sheltowee, which meant "Big Turtle." We started at the Suspension Bridge over the Red River - we weren’t actually crossing it, but we went on it to take some pictures, including the one of Roger shown in my collage. The trail went through differing sorts of forest scenery, and along the foot of towering cliffs. We saw one more arch, Indian Arch, and some wonderful forest vistas, before returning to another parking area by the river via the Bison Way trail, and then we had to do a stretch of about a mile along the road, before picking up a riverside trail back to our car. It made for a total of almost 9 miles, so once back at the cabin, we were very glad to have a soak in the hot tub once again to ease or tired muscles (!), and then Roger was kind enough to fix us dinner. While he was cooking, I received a call from Jen - we didn’t have any WiFi in the cabin, but fortunately we did have some phone signal!