Mapping the Sheltowee

[Walkin'man]

Hello all,

This is a report from my hike March 18th and 19th.

My buddy and I left my car at the church on the corner of Big Bend and Rt 1036. Greeley Farmer gave me a phone number and I spoke with the pastor's daughter and she said it would be no problem to leave it there. We drove his car back around to Natural bridge and hiked to the car.

I don't have a lot of detail to post about this segment. The Natural Bridge area is pretty well known. Once you get past the bridge, the scenery does change and it's my first time down the Sheltowee in this section. Nice easy walk ridge walk on this segment; no water except mud puddles full of tadpoles. We did pass a lot of old oil derricks and pipe left over from those operations.

Going by my pedometer, the hike was about 7 miles, including about 2 miles of gravel road (Big Bend) back to the church. It took us about 4 hours including a lunch break.

We shuttled the cars around to 1209 where there's a old (closed) store directly across from the trail. I'd been told that it's OK to leave it there, but wanted to ask so I knocked on the door of the house next door. A super sweet elderly lady said she owned the store, and that it was fine to leave my car there parked across the gravel road in a wide spot. She's used to hikers asking and told me next time I didn't have to let her know.

My buddy drove me back to Heidelberg and up Crestmont (?) road to Todd's Branch all the way to where the trail leaves the road by an burned down house. He let me off and I hiked up the trail about a mile before making camp. This was a nice section along the creeks and streams; very peaceful.

The next day I continued up to the top of the ridge where the single track got onto a old logging road. I ran into about 15 turkeys roosting in a tree, but was too slow with the camera to get a shot

The old road doesn't look like it had been used much recently, even by four wheelers, but I did pick up a lot of trash before I'd reached my limit. The old road hit Hale Ridge road and goes back to single track, where it gets overgrown. Rootman commented on this section so I'll leave out my comments except to say it's a really too nice a section of the trail to leave neglected.

This section was about 4 miles from where I camped, so maybe five miles back to Todd's Branch, and took me about 2 hours to walk.

I'm looking for to hitting the next section for Trail Check 2011!

[Chilton]

Very nice. How'd the hammock sleep?

[Walkin'man]

The hammock slept awesome, as usual. I've had it for two full seasons and love it. It does take getting used to, but waking up without stiffness and hip pain makes it all worthwhile for me.

That particular night, some wind kick up before rain settled in, so I was rocked to sleep by the wind and lulled by the rain on the fly all night.

[rootman]

By the time we got past the Hale Ridge Road trail the tadpoles you photographed were out by the thousands and the slimy globs of eggs were empty. Great photo. It would have been neat to see them still in their eggs as you did. The salamanders nearby were probably looking for an easy meal. I'm not a biologist -- we had a retired ag agent with our group who provided all the education.