Waking up at Callies Lake and Campground on Tuesday morning (09/03/2024) allowed us the opportunity to get a clean shower before heading back out onto the Kentucky Adventure Tour (KAT). Today’s adventure would take us from Bowen, Kentucky to the Turkey Foot Campground (Daniel Boone National Forest Campground) northeast of McKee, Kentucky.
This route would also take us through the Hollerwood Offroad Park area. We spent a lot of time off pavement today with several mudholes and small water crossings. Hollerwood Offroad Park offers 2,500 acres of valleys and ridges, making every trail an obstacle with breathtaking scenery. This part of Kentucky has enough offroading opportunities that you could spend a week just exploring the areas around Stanton and Slade.
I can’t help but wonder what this trip would be like in the early spring after the snow has melted, there’s more rainfall, and the creeks are full. We encountered some mud and water, but a spring trip would turn this into a whole different adventure.
The weather was absolutely perfect for exploring and camping. The daytime temp was in the mid 70’s with nighttime temps falling into the mid 50’s. It was 104 degrees when I left Texas, so the Kentucky weather was a nice vacation from the heat.
When you leave the town of Beattyville heading counterclockwise on the KAT you go through this tunnel that passes under a railroad track.
This part of the KAT spends a lot of time off pavement, and you really don’t know what the route will throw at you next. It’s full of ridges, valleys, rocks and creeks. While I didn’t spot any coal mining in these areas, there were quite a few areas of logging.
Beattyville was the only town we would pass through today, and we didn’t stop. Having plenty of food and fuel, we pressed our way southwest along the KAT. When the time comes to take a break, we simply find a decent place where we can all pull off the road.
We came across an open area that appeared to have been cleared out for a logging operation. It was a nice quiet place to stop, and this short stop turned into a lunch break. It was also a nice break for our dogs Marley and Livvy to stretch their legs.
You find some interesting ‘roads’ in Kentucky. This one appeared to have been cut out with a bulldozer and was only wide enough to let one vehicle pass through. Imagine encountering oncoming traffic? There wasn’t even a place to pull off and let someone go by.
One of my biggest concerns was where we would stop and camp for the night. Looking at the map, it appeared that Turkey Foot campground was going to be our best option and would allow us to setup camp around 5:00 – 5:30 pm giving us plenty of time to make camp and cook. The Turkey Foot Campground is located on Turkey Foot Road not far before the town of McKee.
Turkey Foot Campground is nestled along the banks of War Fork Creek in Jackson County. The road into the campground crosses a low water ford across the creek at the campground entrance and has a sign telling you to not cross if it’s flooded. Low lying areas are prone to flooding, so you have to be alert for flooding when driving, camping or crossing streams in this area.
The campsites were isolated enough that it would be easy to pretend that you’re camping all by yourself. Most campgrounds that I’ve been to have a group site. This one did not. There was a picnic area with a playfield at the end of the campground alongside of the creek. I couldn’t imagine anyone coming along at 5:30pm on a Tuesday wanting to have a picnic, so we decided to setup camp there so we could all camp together. My only concern was that a Ranger may come along and tell us that we couldn’t camp there, but my hope was that if one did come by and we were quiet and not causing any trouble, they wouldn’t bother us. A police car came by as it was getting dark, but they didn’t stop.
The landscape had been worked over quite a bit but was made to look natural. These stairs going down the river look like they have been there forever. There was a lot of that around.
This campground was a peaceful gem in the middle of the forest. No neighbors, no distant highway, no boats on the river. Just bugs, birds and the babbling river… and the occasional drone crashing thru trees. Yes, on my second attempt at flying my new drone, I backed it into a tree branch and watched in horror as it pinballed its way from branch to branch on the way to the ground. Fortunately, neither the drone nor the pilot was injured. LOL.
This is a primitive campground and only offers a vault toilet. While using the toilet I looked at the wall and discovered that whoever built the building did not stagger the cinderblock when they laid them. I’ve never seen this before.
I was also surprised that there was no trash dumpster here, so we made sure we hauled out our trash.
We all had our own methods of making dinner. Some had camp stoves and grills or simply ate something out of their refrigerator or cooler. All of my dinners on this trip were foil packs that I prepped on my tailgate, wrapped in heavy-duty foil, and then cooked over hot coals on a small grill. Tonight’s dinner was chicken with pineapple, shrimp, potatoes, carrots, green beans, onions, peppers, and mushrooms.
After a day of exploring, it’s nice to sit down with your friends, eat a good meal, and talk about anything and everything. I sat back and watched a few shooting stars and spotted some satellites flying over before we finally decided to call it a night and go to bed.
While this day was relatively uneventful, tomorrow would get pretty interesting!
Day 2 Maps:
Video:
Photo Gallery:
Click images to enlarge.
