Meriwether Lewis National Park

Beautiful! Shady! Free!

We journeyed to Hohenwald Tennessee in May to visit the Oliver Travel Trailer Factory to handle a few issues with our trailer. Afterwards, we wanted to find a nice place to camp where we could put down roots for an entire week to get caught up on projects and just spend some time enjoying being at home.

The folks at the Oliver factory told us about the nearby free campground located along the Natchez Trace Parkway – so we decided to check it out before venturing further afield to find check out a few promising state parks.

We were blown away.

This place is free?!? Wow!

The 444 mile Natchez Trace Parkway runs from just south of Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi. It is administered by the National Park Service, and it is one long interrupted greenbelt that completely isolates you from modern buildings, commercialism, advertising, and even trucking. This route has been in use by travelers and animals for hundreds of years, and the only indication of what century you are in is the ribbon of asphalt cutting through the trees instead of a dirt trail. The Natchez Trace is one of the most beautiful scenic drives in the country.

The forest is beautiful and quiet. Even over Memorial Day weekend the campground did not fill up.

There are three free campgrounds located along the Natchez Trace, and the one located at the Meriwether Lewis Park near Hohenwald is a beautiful wooded oasis. We found the sort of tranquility we were looking for, and we even had a workable cell signal to get some work online handled too!

The Meriwether Lewis National Monument is located within the park, and it marks the grave of the famous explorer. Lewis (most likely) committed suicide in 1809 while spending a night at an inn while traveling along the Natchez Trace. He was journeying from St. Louis to Washington D.C. to handle some problems with reimbursement of his expense reports for the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Clearly frustration with bureaucracy is not a new invention…

The park offers no hookups (not even a dump station), but fresh water is available from centrally located faucets and there are very clean bathrooms with flush toilets.

All of the sites are in the trees, which is great for shade but which limited the effectiveness of our solar system. We ran the generator for an hour or two every other day to keep our batteries topped off.

Despite being free, the Meriwether Lewis Park campground is beautifully maintained, and it is even staffed with a campground host to keep an eye on things. The bathrooms lacked showers, but flush toilets and running water are available.

Meriwether Lewis Park is a gem, and we thoroughly enjoyed a chill week catching up with ourselves there.

In the future we will certainly return, perhaps while journeying the full length of the Natchez Trace southward.

Summary Details:

View: Beautiful forrest.

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Cell & Data Coverage:

AT&T – Weak, but usable.

Sprint - Very slow but still usable CDMA 1xRTT. (D: 115Kb/s, U: 56Kb/s, 669ms) (Sprint indicates roaming – probably on Verizon)