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