The trip from O’Bannon Woods in southern Indiana to our next stop at Piney Campground in southwestern Land Between the Lakes in northern Tennessee was a long one – just a little over five hours and not, unfortunately, without incident.
Driving through one of the towns along our way we were fortunate that someone flagged us down at a stoplight to let us know that we were about to lose our fishing poles. Yikes, not the fishing poles! We pulled over as soon as we found a suitable place to check it out. What we discovered was that we were about to lose the entire rack, not just the poles. We had hit a rather bone rattling bump earlier in the trip and apparently the effects of the bump rattled the rivets on the rack and sheared them off…
Ronnie took everything off the rack and squeezed it into the back of the truck between the bikes. The extra propane tank was put inside the truck and wedged behind our seats on the floor board where it remained until we reached our destination. It was not ideal but we were so very thankful that someone let us know. The rest of the trip was uneventful and LizzieBelle did extremely well for such a long drive.
Oh, the life of a traveling dog! I’m just truly glad I thought to do this. Being now blind and deaf I reckon her bed is her security blanket and as long as she has her bed and knows we’re around all is well in her world.
After a trip to the nearest hardware store Ronnie came up with a solution for the rack – heavy duty shelf supports mounted to the bumper with u-bolts.
He drilled holes in the brackets to align with the u-bolts. This rack was several hundred dollars so we wanted to at least get our monies worth before having to scrap it. The supports should help.
After the rack hiccup and the long drive we definitely wanted to find a tasty local restaurant. I was craving a pizza so Ronnie asked the camp host for a recommendation and he was told to check out TNT Pizza saying they would even deliver. We prefer our pizzas hot and right out of the oven so we drove a few miles to the restaurant. We were hungry so we ordered some cheesy bread as an appetizer and a medium pizza. We ordered way too much, took the remains home and had two more meals from all that.
Piney Campground is located right on Kentucky Lake and is a campers’ campground. There’s no day use allowed so all the amenities the campground has to offer is strictly used by campers. Piney has two boat ramps, a fishing pier…
… and a swimming area with a white sandy beach…
Even though the campground was almost full over the weekend it was still not crowded at the swimming hole or the fishing pier. Awesome!
There’s even an archery range, ball field, biking and hiking trails, and primitive cabins with basic necessities are also available to rent.
While at the hardware store Ronnie bought a three day fishing license. He spent a good amount of time fishing those three days but didn’t catch anything worth keeping.
Piney is a national park so we were finally able to use our Senior Pass and got a refund of $56. We need to find more national parks! Our campsite (which we were lucky to get at the last minute) was electric hookup only so we filled the holding tank, used water sparingly and walked to the bath house often to use the facilities. Again, we managed to have enough water for the seven days we were here and our black and grey water tanks didn’t get full.
Piney is a large campground so we were able to get some good bike rides in. We also rode them to the swimmin’ hole and to the camp store a couple times to cool off our innards with an ice cream cone.
Speaking of the camp store, it was probably one of the most well-stocked camp stores I’ve seen. There were grocery items, camp gear, souvenirs, ice cream, bait and more. We bought some mild ground sausage and made a delicious soup using leftover chicken broth (from cooking egg noodles), leftover yellow wax beans, leftover tomato sauce, leftover egg noodles (thrown in at the last minute), frozen corn, diced onions, a couple sliced carrots and Italian seasoning. We had no idea if it would be any good but, thankfully, it was. The wax beans, tomato sauce and corn were from last year’s garden. It thrills me to be able to eat from our labors even while traveling.
I rode my bike to the store one another time to get some salsa. (Since our fridge was quite bare I was grateful for the camp store). For the life of me I could not find the salsa I had put up. All of our home canned goods are stored under the bed in heavy duty, open produce boxes. They’re not organized in any particular way so it’s difficult to find what you’re looking for especially while holding the bed up with your head and shoulders while looking. Note to self: get it organized one of these days to make life a little easier! Anyway, I thought maybe we didn’t have any more so I hopped on the bike and headed to the store to get some. (I grabbed a jar of pimento stuffed green olives as well.) That night’s dinner was to be a rice bowl topped with black beans, diced onions, salsa and green olives and the salsa is a must. We usually add diced, grilled chicken but since we didn’t have any we left it out. It was just as good.
The camp sites were close together but most were arranged in a manner where you and your neighbor weren’t so close you could hear each other breath. We had a good spot with nobody directly in front of us.
We spent a good amount of time outdoors watching boats and barges on the lake (Kentucky Lake is a major navigable reservoir along the Tennessee River in Kentucky and Tennessee), enjoying the views, swimming, bike riding and watching the almost endless parade of golf carts drive through the campground and past our camp site.
Each day ended with the most gorgeous sunsets…
I was able to finish another cross stitch piece – another one that was started a long time ago by my Mom.
As I began working on it the shading was not looking right so after studying the colors I discovered that a couple of them were not labeled right. After getting the threads sorted out I now had to rip out the colors that were wrong and redo the stitches with the right colors. Once that was done the rest of it was fairly easy and before I knew it I was backstitching and it was done. Speaking of backstitching, it makes a world of difference in the final piece. The following image on the left is before any backstitching and the image on the right is the final piece with all the backstitching complete…
Are they not the cutest? I don’t know what I’ll do with it but I’m one piece closer to my goal of finishing pieces that were started ages ago either by me or my Mom.
Dates at Piney Campground: June 20 – 27
Eat.Travel.Chill 