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Wednesday, 28 March 2007, near Brushy Mtn State Prison.
 My hiking partner said we would have to drive thru the prison yard to get to Frozen Head State Park. Fortunately we did not but it was a bit unnerving as the road had been detoured so that it meandered very close to
the interior of the large Morgan County state prison facility just outside the entrance to Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg,
TN. The state is in the middle of building a new 1,428 bed prison expansion here and it now looks like it will be about the largest prison facility I've ever seen.
But that isn't the tale I started-out to tell.
Frozen Head state park is synonymous with fabulous wildflower displays
in early spring. Perhaps our favorite wildflower trail in all of Tennessee is the Spicewood Branch trail in this isolated
park where few people ever seem to be whenever we're there. The area is brimming with history involving logging, prisons and famous prisoner escapes (James Earl Ray escaped from here), coal mining and CCC construction
projects. The park, however, is much like a slice of the Smokies that has been inserted into Morgan County. Make
that a VERY lovely slice because, unlike much of the Smokies, this area hasn't yet been soiled by overuse and mismanagement
of its resources (no horses allowed here on most trails!).
Driving to Frozen Head from Maryville during rush hour traffic reminded us of how nice it is to no longer
have to put up with the mad rush of going to and from work every day. Fortunately, the much more peaceful drive
from Oak Ridge to Wartburg via the quaint community of Oliver Springs had a calming effect and we arrived around 9:30 am to
find ourselves the only visitors in the park. Rain was in the forecast so perhaps that was the reason for there being
no one else around.
I may as well get to the meat of the story: There were lots, and lots and lots of wildflowers!!! From the start of our hike
around 9:30 am until we emerged, dripping water in our rain gear, we were constantly entertained by fabulous displays of spring
wildflowers. Our 10 or 12 mile route included South Old Mac trail, the upper portion of Tower
trail and Spicewood Branch trail.
If you love solitude, natural beauty, songbirds and wildflowers then you MUST visit this park during
the period from the last of March until the middle of April. The experience will be unforgettable. Click here to see some of the photos we took along the way.
Frozen Head State Park--4 days & 7 major trails
Journals from 4 days of hiking during the period 3/28 thru 4/17/2007 during which I hiked seven
major trails in Frozen Head State Park. The wildflowers were stunningly beautiful right up until the last hike when
I got an eyeful of the damage caused by the Easter weekend freeze. On these webpages you'll find my mini-journals
for those four different hikes. Scroll down this webpage to locate the link to each of the stories. Links to photos
for each are included in the journals.
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