The Wilderness Trail and Cumberland Gap - Day 5

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We began day 5 by entering the Cumberland Gap, seeing a great Wilderness Trail video at the Visitor's Center, and finding some nice stuff at the gift shop. We then climbed the mountain road by car to Pinnacle Overlook which allowed us to see the convergence of all three states of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee.

 

We came back down the mountain and found the entrance to the Wilderness Trail where we hiked for 3 miles in the heat and humidity--which was about 2.5 miles more than I would have liked over hilly terrain. But we made it back to the parking lot with a great amount of relief and joy.

 

On that Wilderness Road a strange transformation took place where it felt like I became Daniel Boone with an Indian squaw--and actually when Daniel was captured by the Shawnees in 1778 and spent 4 months in captivity being adopted by the chief Blackfish as his son, it is rumored that he may have acquired a squaw. It was near Dayton, OH that Daniel was held captive and he escaped and covered 160 miles in 4 days at the age of 44 to get back to Boonesborough and warn the settlers that a British sponsored war party of Wyandots, Mingos, Delewares, and Shawnees was on the way to raid the settlement.

 

From there we backtracked the Wilderness Trail back to Kingsport, TN and found the place on the way that the Indians killed Daniel's eldest son James, only 16, on their first aborted attempt to settle Kentucky in 1773.  It was in 1775 that Daniel gathered a party of well-known frontiersmen as axmen who would mark out the Wilderness Road beginning at Kingsport, TN through the Cumberland Gap near Middlesboro, KY.

 

We finished the day under the stars watching the eerie Moonbow come alive at Cumberland Falls--the Niagara of the South. This moonbow can only be seen when you have a full moon, clear skies, and mist rising from the Falls--and we saw it!