Here the Natchez Trace Parkway comes to a monument that carries a story with a question mark at the end. In October 1809, Meriwether Lewis, famed for the expedition to the Pacific with William Clark, stopped at a roadside inn called Grinder's Stand while travelling to Washington, and in the early hours of the next morning he was found dead of gunshot wounds. The official verdict was suicide, but some historians and relatives have argued for murder or robbery, and the argument has never been settled. A tall broken column, raised in 1848, marks his grave, and it is a sober, quiet place in the middle of the trees.
The site is also a good picture of the Trace itself. The old Natchez Trace was a trail that ran from Nashville to Natchez, used first by animals and the Choctaw and Chickasaw, then by boatmen who floated goods down the Mississippi and walked home. A short section of the original trail is preserved here, a sunken path under the trees, along with the foundations of the inn and a small cabin. A ranger station, a campground and a picnic area make this a convenient stopping place, and the Parkway is quiet enough that you may have the grave to yourself.
The riding on the Natchez Trace Parkway is some of the most relaxing in the country. The speed limit is 50 mph, trucks and commercial vehicles are not allowed, and there are no signs or billboards, only forest, meadow and the long gentle curves of a road designed for sightseeing. The surface is excellent, the corners are easy and the scenery shifts slowly from hardwood forest to farmland. Deer are the hazard, especially at dawn and dusk, and it pays to watch the verges. Spring brings dogwood and redbud, and autumn brings colour, and in summer the humidity can be heavy.
Lawrenceburg, a town of some ten thousand people about thirty kilometres south, has the services you need, and Hohenwald is closer to the north. Bring water and food for the day, and top up before you set out. At the monument itself, spend a few minutes reading the plaque and the displays, and consider the strange fate of a man who survived the whole American West and died on a country road in Tennessee.