quality lake time

got up to the lake right in time to watch dave's mastery with a fileting knife, he made short work of several fish on the dock while waiting for his friend to show. after we got his friends boat in the water, we pushed out into a rain shower, going out to an island point that candice, the kids and her parents had been staking out by floating in front of it for a couple of hours. we got there and tied ropes for the houseboat in the rain and then they went back to tow the houseboat out to the point. after getting it settled and tied in, candice's dad brought her and the kids back, and we got back in for some more swimming & floating. then as the sun went down, the pre-fishing started.

dave dropped these giant green tube lights in the water to draw bait fish, and when the sun finally went down, the waters were practically churning with lil fish, which proceeded to swarm and circle the lights, looking like a fish hurricane viewed from satellite. it was thoroughly fascinating to watch(which i had plenty of later). dave proceeds to begin dropping a net down into the fish storm for some bait, & then the fishing began. so after a few quick trout catches, a couple of them immediately as soon as the worm was to depth, dave and his friend take candice and the kids back to the marina to spend the night on her moms houseboat. they left a few poles baited that i couldn't legally touch, but this one bell just kept tinkling, so i couldn't resist. after losing the fish but not the bait, i was going to put the worm back in when i see the outline of a boat floating dark out in the lake close-ish to our mooring. so i'm thinking hell, i'm busted for sure. but the boat never came closer, and i eventually realized it was a dead boat with folks swimming it back to the marina, haha...but to my credit, the boat WAS shaped exactly like the game warden's and completely unlit.

so, i'm there on the boat by myself, waiting, waiting, waiting when all the swimming, beers and whiskey kicked in. after more than an hour i gave up the catnapping on the hammock chair and crawled into the cabin cruiser and fell into the sleep of the dead. i got up when they eventually came back hours later(they had towed the dead boat back to the marina), watched them catch a few more, but could barely hold my eyes open so crawled back in my hole. i didn't realize how much i missed growing up on the lake and being rocked to sleep by the houseboats i used to spend my summers on. it had been close to 25 yrs since i'd been out on a lake, i think i slept better up there than i have in years, thoroughly asleep the whole night, apnea be damned. i may just have to buy me a houseboat or a cabin cruiser now.

i was the first one up, and proceeded to lament my forgetting coffee, but made the most of the morning by reading in the cool lake breezes. the day before had been perfect for me, being overcast, the sun was not brutal at all, but eventually, as the morning wore on, the cloud cover started to clear and began cooking my ass. made a makeshift shade with a beach towel, but proceeded to get my feet burned, so after a morning swim, i decided i'd skip the sunburn and make my way slowly back to nashville on the back roads, checking out little towns i'd never been through before. eventually i ended up in rutherford county for a visit to my old mama for some free lunch. was a damn good weekend, gonna have to take them up on their offer in the fall when it's not quite so hot. they got a lil slice of heaven on that lake, it's gorgeous & so freaking clean, no wonder they spend so much time up there. thanks, y'all

they don't call him the fishfinder general for nothing & that's not even a 1/3 of his armory

courthouse in gainesboro

the old bridge over into carthage

dale hollow, here i come

finally getting around to accepting the oft-given invite to come up for some houseboat partyin' with dave n candice. yeehaw, can't wait

supposedly 3rd cleanest lake in us...this is the old school house for sunken town of willow grove

http://www.dalehollowgravedigger.com/Articles/Willow%20Grove%20the%20town%20that%20drowned.pdf

i love you wata, hot goddess of fuzz!!!

friday night meh's

robe-ing it in the ice cave after a thoroughly satiating afternoon, with 180 gram vinyl "boris" blasting out of the other room, the christmas lights going & the cold beers flowing, i figure why go out. i'd only get let down...

back to the hole

so cap'n o'connor n i drive out to cheatham county after i get off, hustling to race the sun. not a scorcher today, but i don' need the heat to get my swim on. even though we managed to make good time, it always seems like such a longer drive in the car than on the bike, but we got there with more than a hour left til sundown. doesn't seem so cold when it's not cooking out, but was still perfect. was kind of a mild afternoon, considering the week we had, so i expected it to be a ball crawling shocker to get in, but was nice, perfect complement to the temp. swam out to the point and jumped the cliffs once, floated for awhile, then stroked back over to far end to watch some locals pop off some cone fireworks on the gravel bed n swing off the rope. about an hour later we split, heading to hobbit holler for some quality porch time w/ j. & c.. after the hike down into the holler, a couple of beers & a few pulls on the moonshine jar and i was good n lit. good end to the work week, porch swing time always tends to calm me down. thanks fellas

let me tell you bout that country shit

i can't believe i've been spending so much time in bfe cheatham county this summer. ok, fine, i'm addicted. i can NOT go to cheatham county without hitting up the swimming hole. AND it's still cold as hell, so had to investigate. after finding the og locals, turns out those bluffs i raved about have an underwater cave, with springfed coldness oozing. this mother was cold in july, i been waiting for it to get hot n sticky like every other hole, but noooooo. such a sweetspot. after swimming laps, jumping off the cliffs, floating and chatting up & sharing beers with the country gals, time for dave "breaktime"'s bday crawfish boil in ashland city. paulie was working his coon-ass magic on them bugs(big up, p), i was sucking brains n beers all afternoon, mmmmm. i can't believe i left the marble shootin throwdown for some bs here in the city. bumbaclaat... thank yall, good times...

comin through your city, comin through your town

lake winniemuckamuck

so i jammed it up into the mountains mid-friday. i have NEVER passed the stuckeys at the lip of the cumberland plateau without stopping, the biscuits and the stuckey shot glasses ALWAYS call to me. ALWAYS... and this trip was no different. i love these places now, even though they seemed so chintzy back when i was a kid, "aw mom why are we stopping here, gawwww...". always with the pecan log...love the old school decor up in here. that wood-mounted cougar in the bathrooms is to die for.
arrived at the brothers house right on time for central, fully proud of myself until i got on the porch and found out i was an hour late. hah freakin time zones. we hustled back out and crawled a valleyed creek off of suck creek road to "their" swimming hole. killer spot up a crick where locals have rustled boulders into a makeshift dam, deceptively deep hole. the pictures do it no justice, bout 5 ft deep in center, that boulder was a good 4 ft high. good launching rock, and SUPER cold mountain water.
i'd been itching for winnepausogah the last 3 trips, and he's shown absolutely nil interest so, after a brief attempt to sidetrack me once again, i set off alone to appease the carny sirens. and on his behalf, it is a shit park. the kind of place where
carney rides go to die. but damn, they got an orbiter. rode that sucker 5 times, didn't lift that bar until i was thoroughly satiated. super freaked out mushroom heaven fun house ride, that strobed-light clownhead was 6ft tall. the himalaya, the mousetrap-like mini-coaster, the pirate ship, the tilt-a-whirl, the shake-the-hell-outta-ya coaster(rode it 3 times), the genie centrifuge, the gravity well "oh zone", hell i even rode the ski lift for sundown...like fair park but un-bulldozed.
so we hook back up and go out to his friends party porch, and get deep into some jameson and some extra-friendly licorice-fig moonshine. hillbilly jaeger, so good.

saturday saw a slow start but we eventually went up the ocoee valley for a day trip. couldnt get on a raft for free, so that part of the plan fell through too. crawled way up a mountainside that i mis-remember the name of, good views of the valley all the way up, scatter and proceed to run ragged a mom-deer and bambi a few miles up the side of said mountain, then coast back down to a swimming hole on the ocoee lake. chill cove until the starchshirt a-hole ranger showed up and broke out the no swimming rule. haha i hovered on my float behind a just ramped ski-boat until he was through berating the swimmers, then kept some bushes between me n him until he split. he never saw me, good thing, nathan had scatted off to leave me to get ticketed by then haha.

so after being cooked all day, i was in dire need of a nap, we head back into his casa, and while he furiously tried to get his new bike running i got about an hour of shuteye. i could tell he wanted to join his ol lady up in the valley, who had been guiding rafts down the ocoee all day, so after striking out hitting abby in k-town on her phone, i said fugget and headed home. to break the roadtrip chain-smoking by leaving a trail of peanut shells from hamilton county to nashville, like a modern day, chubby, middle aged hansel, i swooped down off of the cumberland plateau, weedeater's cover of truck drivin' man comes on just in time to see 2 different municipal firework display finales on opposite sides of the highway, about 20 mile apart. g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s...so i had to stop and load up. i am back, loaded and armed for bear...i'ma light noah's yard up