Chickasaw State Park

Chickasaw State Park is approximately two hours and fifteen minutes from Nashville. This entire area was once the hunting ground of the Chickasaw Native American tribe. Approximately 14K acres of this land is Chickasaw State Forest, and 1,200 acres of this forest is Chickasaw State Park. It opened in 1955.

This park has fishing, swimming, tent and RV campsites, 13 cabins, a golf course, a campground, a beach, a visitors center, a gift shop, a basketball court, a volleyball court, boat rentals, archery fields, and a tennis court. It has eight hiking trails- the Fern Creek Trail (.65 mile), the Forked Pine Trail (1 mile), the Friends Trail (1.2 miles), the Horse Trail (.6 mile), the Lake Lajoie Trail (1.8 miles), the Lake Shore Trail (1.75 miles), the Owens Spring Trial (.8 mile), and the Tent Loop Trail (.4 mile).

The coolest thing this park has- and something I haven't seen yet in any state park- is that they have horses. As we pulled up to the horses, we wondered out loud if these horses were the park's, or a private company. We walked up to the horses, who were fenced into an insanely large plot of park land for them to run in. The horses were well taken care of. We've been to privately owned horse stables and have seen horses that weren't well groomed. Super awesome.