Land Between the Lakes

In April we went on a camping trip with my parents to Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.  My wife had scouted out the area ahead of time and found several good campgrounds in the area.

Access over 300 miles of undeveloped shoreline, 200 miles of paved roads, 500 miles of trails, and 170,000 acres of forests and open lands.

As part of America’s great outdoors since 1963, Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area manages over 170,000 acres of forests, wetlands, and open lands on a peninsula between Kentucky and Barkley lakes in Western Kentucky and Tennessee. The family friendly recreation area offers one of the largest blocks of undeveloped forest in the eastern United States.

With 300 miles of natural shoreline, lake access provides idyllic settings for camping, picnicking, hiking, fishing, boating, wildlife viewing, and water sports. Licensed hunts for deer, turkey, squirrel and other small game animals occur throughout the year.
--from Land Between the Lakes NRA website

We stayed at the Piney Campground in the southern portion of the area.  It sits on the lake just south of the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.

There are a number of lake-side sites in the campground.  We scouted the area out in person before selecting a site.

We saw a rather interesting camper as we drove around.

Ultimately we settled on this site.  It had some shade, but also plenty of sun (nice in the cool spring) and wasn't too far away from the lake.

We had two tents to set up as my parents have gone back to tent camping after selling their fifth wheel camper a number of years ago.

Our humble tent.  Once we started camping with multiple tents we upgraded to a larger tent that could accommodate our sleeping bags, a pack and play, and space for more kids.  Yet it isn't so large that it takes up too much space.

It really was a beautiful campsite.

 We enjoyed several beautiful sunsets.

We had a number of fires and even did some cooking over the fire.

The sunrises next to the lake were also beautiful.

While driving around one day we drove by the site of an old blast furnace.

I always read the signs when I see them and then photograph them so I can read them again later.

While only the stone is left the furnace used to be a decently large operation.

We may not have ancient ruins in America, but it is cool to see stone structures from the past couple hundred years.

Looking at it now it is hard to imagine how hot this chimney once was when active smelting operations were underway.

We also spotted some bison while driving around.  Though we ended up seeing quite a few more later.

We also went to several places in and around the area that I'll blog about separately.  The general photos from the Land Between the Lakes are in this album.

~Matt