Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky- July 12th to 15th, 2026

From St. Louis, we took a two-week break from Route 66 to meet up with friends in Tennessee. After that, we would return to St. Louis and pick up Route 66 where we left off. To break up the drive to Tennessee, we stopped at Land Between the Lakes to spend a few days relaxing.

Sunday, we left Route 66 to make our way over to Tennessee to meet up with Ann’s brother. It was only about a three hour drive to our next campground, so there was no rush. On the way, we did make one Route 66 stop, in Collinsville Illinois, for the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle. It was on the B Route in the Route 66 Navigation App and we had taken the A Route on our way into St. Louis, so we had missed it.

Our destination for the day was the Canal Campground, just outside the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, in Kentucky. We decided to just take the interstate most of the way there. That allowed us to relax and listen to more of the Project Hail Mary audio book, as we let Google Maps do all of the navigation for us.

We only made two more stops along the way. One was at a rest area for a bathroom break and to eat lunch. The other was at a grocery store to pick up a few items and use their restroom.

The Canal Campground is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The whole campground sits in the woods on the edge of Lake Barkley and the Barkley Canal. The sites are nicely spaced. We had a lovely site with a view of a little cove on the lake. There was a nice breeze coming off the water that, along with the shade of the trees, made it very pleasant outside despite the high temperatures.

We arrived at camp around 3:30 pm. After dumping our tanks and setting up camp, Ann went for a walk around the campground to get her steps in. She walked around every campground loop, covering about 3.4 miles in a little over an hour.

We ran the air conditioning until later that evening. With the cool breeze, we decided to turn off the AC, open the windows, and turn the fans on. We sleep so much better listening to the sounds of nature at night, instead of the AC compressor turning on and off.

Monday, we relaxed at camp in the morning. In the afternoon, we drove over to the North Welcome Station of the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, about ten minutes from our campground. The Land Between the Lakes (LBL) is a large area of land between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake, spanning two states, Kentucky and Tennessee. Lake Barkley was formed by a dam on the Cumberland River. Kentucky Lake was created by a dam on the Tennessee River. The Barkley Canal connects the two lakes, thus connecting the two rivers.

LBL is managed by the National Forest Service. It has 300 miles of undeveloped shoreline along with 500 miles of trails for hiking, biking, horses, and OHV’s. There are several campgrounds located within LBL. The friendly staff at the North Welcome Station explained all the different items of interest in LBL, such as the Woodlands Nature Station, the Elk and Bison Prairie (yes, there are bison here!), the Golden Pond Planetarium & Observatory, and the Homeplace 1850’s Farm.

It was getting late in the afternoon, and we just wanted a short bike ride to get some exercise in. There are not many routes for e-bikes, most of the cycling trails are for mountain bikes. The main trail recommended for e-bikes is the Central Hardwoods Scenic Trail that cuts across the middle of LBL, from Fenton to Devil’s Elbow. People also cycle the roads, but there are no shoulders on the main road, the Woodlands Trace National Scenic Byway, so we wouldn’t recommend that. However, there is a short two-mile paved trail from the North Welcome Station down to the forest road to Hillman Ferry Campground. So that is what we did.

We got our bikes out, Ann could not get her bike to turn on. Perhaps we forgot to turn off our batteries and Ann’s accidentally turned on. Since it was a short ride, she decided to ride without power. She still had 8 bicycle gears to work with. Looking back, she should have removed the battery to reduce some of the weight.

The ride was only 5.7 miles, with an elevation gain of 372 feet, but it felt like more elevation than that, at least to Ann. When we reached the campground, we originally wanted to reach the lake shoreline, but the last little bit was downhill, and Ann didn’t want to come back up that hill, so we turned around.

The trail turned out to be only somewhat paved. A network of cracks and tree root heaves made for a bumpy ride. Then there were quite a few downed branches and trees that we had to negotiate around or under. But all of that made it feel more like an adventure.

Ann had gone through most of her water, since she was getting a pretty good workout. We stopped at the campground store so she could buy another bottle of water. We made it back to the Welcome Center in a little over 45 minutes total.

When we got back to camp, we tried to figure out what was wrong with Ann’s bike. First we plugged her bike in with the charger. The light on the charger is green before you attach the bike’s battery, and it stayed green after connecting it to Ann’s bike. Was her battery still fully charged? Plugging the charger into Keith’s battery caused the light to turn orange, as he was down to 70%.

Luckily, we both have Lectric bikes. We tried swapping the displays and the controls to see if one of them was the problem. Both displays worked when connected to Keith’s bike and didn’t work when connected to Ann’s bike. Same with the controls. So they were not the problem. We tried tracing the wires to see if there were any bad connections, but didn’t see any issues.

We tried pulling Keith’s battery out so we could swap batteries, but we couldn’t get it to come out. We found out later that the batteries are different between the Step-thru frame (Ann’s bike) and the Step-over frame (Keith’s bike).

We were able to pull out Ann’ battery and put a voltmeter on the terminals. Zero volts. We then plugged it to the charger and left it plugged in for about an hour. Still zero volts. OK, time to contact Lectric and see if they can ship us a new battery.

Tuesday we drove down to the Woodlands Nature Station in LBL. The staff at the Welcome Center recommended the Honker Lake Trail. It started and ended at the Nature Station, and encircled Honker Lake. Honker Lake is separated from the Cumberland River/Lake Barkley by a dam. The trail goes across the dam. We decided to give the trail a try.

Not far from the Nature Station, we spotted an osprey nest. OK, so far so good. The first two miles of the hike were through the woods, with a couple of bridges spanning some small streams, and surrounded by some marshy areas in places.

Then we came to a section where it looked like the trail was under water. Water was flowing from Honker Lake over the trail and out to Lake Barkley. Keith was ready to turn around. Ann went a little closer to investigate it further. She took a couple of steps out on the wet trail. The water didn’t even go over the soles of her hiking boots. Look, the trail is hard-packed, not muddy. Wait a minute, it’s paved concrete. Looking ahead she could see a set of stairs that led up to higher ground. Ann managed to talk Keith into continuing the trail.

There were nice views out over both lakes. Honker Lake was lined with lily pads. Some of the lily pads were huge, almost two feet in diameter, with blossoms on the end of one foot stalks. We’ve never seen that before. A Great Egret was wading among the lily pads.

We’re not sure which part of the trail was the actual dam, but we eventually were on an earthen dam with rocky boulders lining each side. Then Keith spotted it. We believe it was a river otter. He tried getting a video with his phone, but goofed it up in his excitement. Ann managed to somewhat capture it on the GoPro, but couldn’t get any pictures of it as it stopped poking his head up out of the rocks after just a few times. He was a cute little guy.

We didn’t see another soul on the trail until we were past the dam. Because of that, we were going through a lot of spider webs across the trail. We took turns leading, swinging our trekking pole out in front of us so we wouldn’t take one in the face, but somehow we still did every now and then. After we passed the first person going the other way, we could take our guard down a little. But she was shorter than either one of us, so we still had to pay attention. Then we could relax after a small group of people went by.

Well, at least we could relax about the spider webs. We were steadily walking along when Keith yelled at Ann to stop. She jumped a little and took a step or two before coming to a complete stop. You just stepped on a snake! Well, we weren’t sure if she really stepped on it or not, but it looked like she did from Keith’s point of view. Ann didn’t even see it. She must have thought it was a stick lying on the trail. We both looked at the snake. It didn’t look smooshed anywhere. Then it slowly slithered off the trail. Hopefully Ann had missed it and the snake was fine.

Thankfully it was not a rattlesnake. Well, if it was a rattlesnake, it probably would have started rattling as she got close to it. Ann encountered a rattlesnake on a trail back in New River Gorge National Park back during Season Five (New River Gorge National Park, West Virginia - May 29th to June 1st, 2023). The rattle was so startling that Ann stopped dead in her tracks and took several steps backwards before it even registered in her brain what the sound was.

By the time we returned to the Nature Station, we covered 4.7 miles with an elevation gain of 295 feet in two and a half hours. We counted it as hike 11 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2026.

We turned on the AC inside Red Tail and ate lunch inside. We’re able to run the AC off the batteries for several hours and we’ll be able to plug in and fully recharge the batteries back at our campsite. We ate lunch there so that we could check out the Nature Station afterwards.

The cost for entering the Nature Station was $7 per adult, half price for America the Beautiful pass holders. It was worth the price. There are displays inside and enclosures behind the building containing live animals of the area. There were snakes, frogs, turtles, owls, turkeys, vultures, a bald eagle, a hawk, a coyote, a couple of red wolves, and lots of hummingbirds.

Then we headed back to camp. We didn’t feel overheated during our hike, as most of it was in the shade. But we really felt drained afterwards, as it was hot and humid. So we soaked in the AC and drank plenty of water until we felt better.

Wednesday was cleaning day. We were about to join Ann’s brother and friends in Tennessee and some of them have not seen Red Tail yet (our Winnebago EKKO). And we didn’t want them to see it all dirty.

First we drove in to Eddyville, about 25 minutes from our campground to do laundry at a laundromat. There were a few washers and dryers in the campground, but, at the laundromat, we can do all three loads at the same time. Plus, we were low on quarters and we didn’t see any change machines at the campground.

While Ann was watching the laundry, Keith walked over to a nearby Napa auto parts store. One of our windshield wipers needed adjustment, as it was getting caught beneath a stop and rubbing the edge of the hood. He needed a special tool called a gear puller.

After laundry, we went over to the grocery store in town, a Food Giant. It is a small, employee-owned store, but we managed to find everything we needed, or something close enough to what we were looking for. It’s always good to try some new and different products.

Back at camp, we cleaned the whole interior of our rig. Afterwards, Ann went on a walk around the campground to get her daily exercise. A couple of bucks and a doe were alongside the campground road to greet her. They didn’t seem to be too bothered by Ann’s presence, but she gave them plenty of space anyway.

Land Between the Lakes was more of our typical type of travel, usually involving hiking and cycling, and not stopping to see so many attractions like we had so far on Route 66. It was a nice break to slow down the pace a little.

Check out our related video: Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky

(Ann)