Location: From Bloomington, east on SR 46 about nine miles; forest entrance is one the north side of the road.

Description: Yellowwood is a pretty forest, and a pretty scattered one; there are non-contiguous bits of it all over the place. It has 22,508 acres total, so there is plenty of room in some of the parcels, at least. The campground by Yellowwood lake is nice; it is probably popular on fall weekends, but when I visited during the week in October the campground was empty. There are two long trails, especially the 16 mile Ten O'Clock Line Trail at 16 miles from Yellowwood to Brown County State Park. This trail, for some peculiar reason, is blazed only in one direction, from the state park to the forest; to follow it the other way is chancy and involves a lot of looking over your shoulder. Still, it's a nice trail mostly--some parts are along heavily rutted logging roads and gravel county roads. The other trail is the Scarce of Fat Trail, which runs mostly along a streambed to an overlook of Yellowwood Lake. For a description of some other trails and some great pictures, check out these Field Reports from Mark Tarrant and Carol Polsgrove.

Nearby Points of Interest: Brown County State Park; Morgan-Monroe State Forest; Hoosier National Forest.

Cautions: Insane traffic congestion on surrounding roads on weekends during the fall foliage viewing season; try during the week. This is a multi-use facility with hunting seasons for deer, squirrel, rabbit, grouse, woodcock and quail. Nearby town of Nashville is strictly a tourist trap. Sorry, Nashville, you used to be a cool place.

Facilities: 80 primitive camping sites. Hiking trails, in addition to the fire lanes.

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