We made it back from California where we had a great time with Chris and Taylor and at Taylor’s big 30th birthday party bash, Camp Dirty 30. There were team competitions consisted of camp games; ax throwing, archery, golf pitching, and corn hole with the highest scoring team winning prizes. There was also the pool and a water slide for everyone to enjoy. It was a lot of fun and it was great seeing some of the kids, who are now adults with kids of their own, that grew up being part of the flow through our home during the growing years.

We also spent a long weekend in Big Bear with Bruce and Diane on their home turf along with our friend Susan. We had our usual great time when we all get together with chatting, eating way too much excellent food, drinking and inventing craft cocktails, and touring and hiking around the area. I love our friends and the mountains!

We too met up with our other long time friends Ray and Linda and Jeff and Pat. Ray and Linda live in California and Jeff and Pat live in Florida and have a second home in California where they were spending some time away from the Florida summer humidity.

We got back to the boat on August 13th and found her still floating and pretty much as we left her, except the spiders and even some ducks had a party or two on the deck and left quite a mess. Spiders are a constant battle in these parts. But everything turned on and there have been no problems found…yet.

While we were in the Knoxville area our friend Kevin reached out to us. He was in Knoxville helping his son’s family out for a week or so watching their 5 year old before he started kindergarten. Kevin and grandson Lincoln came by for a visit where we took the Lottie boat out for a little ride in the lake. It was fun catching up with Kevin and meeting Lincoln, who is a very lovely boy. He roamed thoroughly around the boat inside and out getting the total lay of the land. It was so nice to meet him and see Kevin again.

We left Ft. Loudon Marina, where we had been for the past month, and headed back down the Tennessee River toward our ultimate goal; Florida. Our first stop was Terrace View Marina in Spring Hill, TN where we are staying for 4 days, basically just using up time before we get back to the Chattanooga area were my step-mom Mary will be coming up from Big Canoe Georgia to join us over this coming weekend. The nice thing about this marina, and thank you Michael, is that it has a pool and YES! it’s open.

The weather has settled down enough that we can now plan on spending some nights anchoring in some of the little coves along the way. It’s been in the low 80’s during the day, but the direct sun is still really hot, and the nights are down to the middle 60’s which makes for very pleasant anchoring out nights.

That’s all I have for now. Keep following along as we wrap this adventure up in just a few more months. Love to all, Gina and Mike