Land Between the Lakes - Canal Loop Hike

 Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Hi Blog!

After yesterday's trip to the Golden Pond Visitor Center in the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, we were eager to put our boots on the ground. The Land Between the Lakes is huge.  There are over 300 miles of undeveloped shoreline, 200 miles of paved roads, 500 miles of trails, and 170,000 acres of forests and open lands. Our biggest problem was choosing which hike to do. 

We studied the trail maps and decided to hike a portion of the Canal Loop Trail. We felt this trail would give us the best chance to hike along the shoreline of Kentucky Lake. On our way to the trailhead, we took the one mile Kentucky Lake Scenic Drive. We don't have any pictures from the drive, because the trees have grown so much, we couldn't see the lake from the road.  Perhaps its name should be changed to merely, "Drive."

Our hike started at the south end of the North Welcome Station, which lies at the North end of Land Between the Lakes.

The Canal Loop Trail is also open to mountain bikes, so David had to keep looking over his shoulder as we took this photo.  Fortunately, we only ran into three trail bikers over our 6-mile hike, so there was not much to worry about.

The smooth dirt track made for easy hiking. The hills and valleys along the lakeshore made it interesting.

On the way to the shoreline cliffs, the trail cuts across a large powerline easement. 

We got our first look at Kentucky Lake by hanging onto a tree and peering over a very steep cliff to see the beach below.

We found an old side trail, now overgrown and unmarked, which led down to the cove below. Runoff from the recent rains was trapped by a gravel berm created by wave action from the main lake.

Kentucky Lake is a navigable reservoir along the Tennessee River. We have seen a number of river barges go by. The lake was created in 1944 by the Tennessee Valley Authority's impounding of the Tennessee River by Kentucky Dam. At 160,309 acres,  Kentucky Lake is one of the largest artificial lakes by surface area in the United States, with 2,064 miles of shoreline.

We combed the beach looking for sea glass, rocks, shells and unusual items to photograph, like this beached buoy.  At first, we thought it looked like an unexploded artillery shell, but its styrofoam innards identified it for us:

Once upon a time, Kentucky was covered by a huge inland sea. Just under the topsoil are layers of sand, silt, clay, gravel, and lime deposits and shells, all left on the ancient seabed. The unconsolidated material erodes quickly.

We never expected to find sea shells in Kentucky!

The U.S. Forest Service is working to bring back native trees like shortleaf pines, oaks and  hickories to provide habitat for an abundance of wildlife. With acorns like this one, the deer and squirrels won't go hungry.

Over the years, we have walked into countless spider webs. The blue color of this web caught our eye. The way the spider spun its web over a hollow stump was cool.

The trail took us by a backcountry campsite perched right on a small beach.

Another chance to explore:

The eroding cliffs yield an interesting mix of conglomerate gravels, as well as solid breccia:

We also found a bluejay feather.

After lunch, we hiked back toward our trailhead. We ran into a fellow hiker from Paducah. He told us to look across the lake to a barren area on the far side. He told us that is where the same tornado that flattened Mayfield, Kentucky in December 2021 came through and destroyed part of Cambridge Shores. The tornado skipped across the lake and bounced across the Land Between the Lakes before hitting Princeton, Kentucky, not so far from our campground in Cadiz. We didn't realize we were that close to the path of that deadly tornado.  If you look closely in the photo below, you can see a treeless section of shoreline in the center-right of the photo, where the ground slants down to the water.  Some houses still have tarps on their roofs.  Several new buildings have been constructed where destroyed buildings had been demolished and cleared.

As we hiked along Nickell Cove, we could look down and see the wind-driven waves churn up the shoreline. Click the link to watch a short video showing the Kentucky Lake waves lapping at the shore and stirring up the golden sand.

And so ends another great hike. We leave you with a harbinger of spring.