All full time and part time RV travelers know that regardless of the state of the RV industry, holiday weekends are nuts. It is best to either avoid a holiday oriented destination or make reservations well in advance. We are camping on Lake Barkley so needless to say, we planned this. Our campground, the Eddy Creek Marina and resort has a very small RV section which is mostly full of permanent units. There are only 4 rental sites and we are in one of them. It has been very quiet and the most traffic we see in our particular location are golf carts and the Polaris ATVs.
This is a huge lake region in western Kentucky. Two rivers, the Cumberland and the Tennessee have created two large lakes, Kentucky and Barkley. The Corps of Engineers built the dams to control flooding and create not only the lakes but also an area now known as the Land Between the Lakes. To drive around the entire region would take hours and it was about a 45 minute trip to get us from the eastern side of the lake into the Land Between the Lakes and the Visitor’s Center at Golden Pond. The LBL as it is known, is completely non-commercial, no restaurants or gas stations. The Visitors Center display explained the history of the area and told the story of what once was the “Land Between the Rivers” and how this became one of the biggest recreation areas in the Midwest. I say Midwest but in some ways, this area feels very southern although Kentucky did not join the Confederacy during the Civil War. Much of the land that was consumed by the water had to be taken by eminent domain and there was fierce resistance.
Just a few miles south of the Visitor’s Center, we entered Tennessee (still part of the LBL) and came upon the 1850s Homestead. We were pleased to find it was dog friendly. It is a working farm using techniques of the 1850s. It was the middle of week and a lovely day with cool temperatures but we were the only tourists there. The guides are living history interpreters, dressed in period clothing. They did a good job explaining what we were seeing. The house, called a double pen house because it was built in two sections is a log cabin that was moved to this site. The home was designed to deal with the heat of the summer, separating the kitchen from the living/sleeping area.
There is a smokehouse, a tool barn, orchard, and a vegetable garden. The crop field is full of tobacco which is cured on site. They did have oxen to pull the farming equipment but are in a transition state now, awaiting some new animals to arrive. The sheep recently birthed a number of adorable baby lambs and the chickens are a heritage breed that I had never seen before.