Days 141 to 145: Barren River Lake, KY

We used our first full day at Tailwater Campground (Monday, the 15th) to take care of chores.  The gas mileage for our van has been dropping lately, so we used our layover to have the oil changed in Bowling Green.  Sure enough, it went up dramatically with the new oil.  That suggests that we will probably plan on changing oil about every 5,000 miles from here on out.

We have enjoyed the campground, as we are camped beside the boat ramp and next to a closed section of the campground.  The ramp makes it possible for Lana to cool off by playing in the water, and with access to the closed campground she gets to walk off-lead and we can play ball with her there (at those times when it is cooler out).  So, if it weren't for the complete lack of cell coverage here, this has been a great place for us to hang out while we wait for my replacement chainrings.

One day we decided to explore the campground nature trail, thinking that after 240 Boy Scouts had camped here last week that it would have been cleared of any spider webs.  Wrong.  Luckily Alea had her cane with her, so she blazed the trail for Lana and me.

She's got moves like Obi-Wan Kenobi!

While driving around doing errands I also took the opportunity to see where my 4th great grandfather (Simon Williams) had lived from about 1805 to 1815, about midway between Allen Springs and Halfway, KY.  There is a pretty good chance that the land to the east of his property (which currently has a corn crop growing on it) was cleared by him and his sons a couple hundred years ago.  My speculation is that the 75 acres that he owned was in exchange for their labor on that and an adjoining property, as he likewise received property from his neighbor on the opposite side, which was owned by Brooks Hall Davis.  And it was the proceeds from selling the 75 acres that he owned in Kentucky that led to him and his children to eventually own about 800 acres of land in and around Posey County, Indiana.

A map I created of the metes and bounds property boundaries near Allen Springs, KY circa 1815.

Two views of the property that Simon Williams had owned back in 1815.

The chainrings are finally scheduled to arrive on Friday (tomorrow), but we have no idea if that will be in the morning or in the afternoon.  They showed up in Nashville at 1 am this morning, but they haven't budged since then.  We suspect it will likely start moving again this evening.  Then it is a matter of how long it takes the post office in Scottsville to get everything processed...

So we hope to be rolling again tomorrow, but that will depend somewhat upon the weather.  The last two days there have been showers throughout the day, and this morning there was a period of a few hours with non-stop, heavy rain.  So we may wait the rain out at our current campground, but we're getting a touch of cabin fever, so we would prefer to head south.  We're hoping to ride through Nashville this weekend, so that we avoid commute traffic.