It was just too pretty not to go out in the kayaks. Beautiful weather that day.
Nat makes this look good.
Category: Lake
Nature Day
The day started with a raccoon in the trap so I put it in the truck to relocate. On the way out of the neighborhood we found this.
We picked him up from the middle of the road to take home for our back yard. While putting him by the lake in the woods we spotted this.
After cleaning up some debris along the lake and seeing a skink too quick for a picture I spotted this in the garden where Nat was working.
Later I expect to spot a couple of rugrats.
A Day on the lake
After some hot sweaty car repair it’s time to cool off.
Something odd floating out there. Turns out it’s a dead bloated groundhog. Ew.
engine
The engine block in my father in law’s boat was spraying water so we investigated. I found bondo covering something. A grinder showed that it was welded in the past. After cleaning I used JB Weld to cover and fill any voids. Tomorrow will tell if the operation was successful.
Well the next day showed that this fix held. Unfortunately the freeze plug just above this started leaking when the block held pressure. Then with the boat in the water we found water streaming in through the transom somewhere. Time to cut our losses and sell this thing.
Lake levels are receding
A few days ago the water was up to our light pole. As it drops it’s leaving us lots of trash.
We could have a bonfire for days.
Oh Dam
Given the high levels of the lake we made a trip out to see the dam. We were curious to see how close to the top the water was.
Coming up on the dam from the overlook side it’s hard to tell how close to the top the water on the other side is.
Closer still you notice the campgrounds. Better have your sleeping bag on an air mattress.
Over on the lake side you can start to get a feel for the height.
We hope to go back and get pictures here at normal and then winter low levels for comparison
While on the overlook side we went up to take advantage of the long range view.
Man I love this area for its views as well as the people and fantastic motorcycle roads.
Heading over to the campground to see from water level what things look like. This is from the bridge over the French Broad river just below the dam. The other side of the bridge shows another campground being flooded by the amount of water they’re releasing.
Then we got to the campground on the lake side that we showed earlier. Here’s some of the campground and some of the dam beyond. Try to notice the crow on the railing to get a sense of scale and how close to the top the water is.
That’s a lot of water. It rained hard later this day and more the next.
Mountains in evening light
Douglas Lake is flooding
The water can’t get much higher before it starts going over the dam. In the meantime water levels are wreaking havoc. Here my floating dock is pulled as high as I thought it would ever need to be. I would have to detach it from my winch cable and move it higher. I probably won’t because the lake will drop again as soon as TVA is able to lower it without more flooding down stream.
Some of my neighbors are having a tougher time though.
This is my next door neighbor’s dock. I tried moving that tree but I’ll have to wade in to get enough leverage. It’s very large and mostly waterlogged. That makes it really heavy. Yesterday afternoon a large float of debris washed up our little cove. The far end must be several feet deep in debris. Several dead animals are floating in the mess too.
Farther down is more debris trapped by a floating dock. Beyond that is a neighbor’s DECK that’s been covered. Their floating dock is still working though.
Taking a closer view. You’d have to swim to the ramp and wade across that to get to the dry floating dock.
Irises going nuts
Looking at our pretty irises and seeing the extremely high lake levels in the background.
Sunset
