Sick Time in Tennessee

Sunday to Sunday (Jun 20-28) :

On Sunday (Jun 20) Connie and I went to the Cumberland Mountain State Park which is located a few miles outside of Crossville to do some hiking. We had some trouble locating the trail heads after getting a map at the ranger station. Ended up going back to the ranger station to get instructions on where the trail head was located for the Pioneer Trail which is a combination of two trails that total about 5 miles. We started out with two jugs of water and some trail mix in our back pack along with our hiking poles. Most of the trail is quite narrow with lots of rocks and tree roots, so we had to be careful where we stepped along the trail. Also it had rained the day before and there were areas of the trail that were muddy. The trail follows along Byrd Creek which has been dammed up in the park to create a small lake.

Are you sure we are on the right trail?

Various spots along the trail.

Going through "Fat Man's Squeeze"

A couple of bridges we crossed along the way.

Some "wildlife" we saw along the trail.

Various photos of the creek we traveled along on the trail.

Finally the end of the trail.

We saw this near the exit to the park, but we were tired and thought we would come back another day to visit the museum.

On Sunday evening I started running a fever which I continued to run for a couple of days. On Wednesday morning we went into Crossville to the Crossville Medical Group Walk-In Clinic. After filling out the required paperwork, we had a short wait before we saw Dr. Mark Sherrill who was one of the founders of this group. After an examination, some blood work and urinalysis, Dr. Sherrill diagnosed me as having an infection in my prostate (we were concerned I might have gotten something through a tick bite from the hike). He put me on an antibiotic and told me to take it easy for the next few days. We were impressed with the clinic, its staff and the efficient way it was run. I was expecting to have to wait for hours on everything, but we were only there for about two hours to have all of this done.

So not much to write about the last week. I have been getting better after running a fever for several days which left me quite weak. Hopefully things will continue to improve as we prepare to leave Crossville and head south of Nashville this week.