Historic Mansker's Station

Our wonderful fall weather seems to be going downhill over the past couple days.  We had some pretty stout winds blow through over the weekend.  That’s died down now, thank goodness, but it brought the clouds and overcast skies.  Big rain is in the forecast for tomorrow.  We certainly can’t complain.  We have enjoyed a very long stretch of almost perfect fall weather.

Gene had a couple errands to take care of downtown this morning so we couldn’t do our usual Monday hike.  We didn’t want to sit around without getting any exercise though, so after lunch we drove over to Mansker’s Station and Moss-Wright Park.

Mansker's Station was something like this.

Mansker’s Station is a reconstruction of a typical frontier station that might have been found in any of the early Cumberland settlements.  Kasper Mansker established a station on Mansker Creek in the 1780s after coming to the area as a long hunter and this reconstruction would be similar to his station, although it wasn’t located on this site.  During the summer months re-enactors dressed in period costume are busy at the station doing all the things occupants would have done in the late 1700s.  Today, of course, it was closed.

The Bowen Plantation House

A look at the back of the house

Also on the site is the Bowen Plantation House.  This frontier home was built by Revolutionary War veteran Captain William Bowen just a few years after Mansker built his station.  The house has been restored and tours are offered on the weekends during spring, summer, and fall.  Today, of course, it was closed.

The outdoor oven is still used by re-enactors

The old well

And the cemetery

Adjacent to the Mansker’s Station complex is Moss-Wright Park.  This is a Goodlettsville city park and has a playground for small children, softball and soccer fields for older kids, and a doggie park for dogs, young and old.  Around the whole area, Mansker’s Station and Moss-Wright Park, is a loop path two and a quarter miles in length.  That’s were we went for our walk.  Most of this loop is paved with a short half mile portion which is gravel.  Because it’s a short loop, it’s not suitable for bicycles and there are no pets allowed.  It’s strictly a jogging and walking path and we saw a few of each as we made our way around the loop.

We found these bat houses along our walk

While Gene was away this morning, I started the process of copying the Trip Journal posts from our New York trip in 2008.  I’ll start entering those into Blogger tomorrow.  The 2008 Appalachian Trail entries are all now posted on Blogger.  The process takes a little time, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.  I thought I was going to have to search through my CDs for the photos, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.  I can copy the photos from the Trip Journal page.  It is so easy.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.