One Last Party at Fort Loudon Lake

  Friends we met at Kentucky Lake back in May came to Fort Loudon Lake over the weekend. Steve and Dina met us out on Steve's brothers boat in a place on the lake called Prater Flat. It's their party cove area and on Saturday it was full of boats. I don't have a picture of it, but picture some water with a bunch of boats anchored on it. Some other boats tied up with us as the afternoon wore on and we had lots of fun and I won't go into it here.
  This morning we had to use our jumper cables to get one of the boats tied next to us started as the fella who owned it left his fridge on all night and killed his battery. Steve and Dina had a five hour drive ahead of them, so they pulled out early and we were right behind them. We were just a little under the weather and we didn't want to stay for the day, but plenty of people from the day before had wanted us to. Wasn't gonna happen.
  We drove down the lake to the Fort Loudon Marina and got fuel for the first time in 19 days. It was a deal at 3.59 per gallon. The fuel dock manager, Brett King told us that they like to keep their fuel prices low so people can afford to be out on the water. I wish everyone felt that way. We also learned that staying over night in a transient slip is only $30, that's with electricity too. We were tempted to stay just to enjoy a full day in the air conditioning, but we were itching to get down the river. Brett also offered us use of their courtesy car if we wanted to get some provisions, even if we weren't staying. The nearly $600 we spent on fuel helped, but offers like that aren't made every day. We didn't take him up on the offer, but we cannot say enough nice things about our short visit at the Fort Loudon Marina. We got fuel and water and called the lock and was told to come on down, the lock master would have the gates open for us in about five minutes. The Fort Loudon Marina is within sight of the Lock and Dam.

 We waited in the lock for three other boats and the lock master came out to chat. He was a really nice guy and we told him a little about our travels. He told us like many others do, that "we're living the dream" and thought it was great. He also said that "You can't have too much fun, and a woman can't be too pretty" as he motioned to Rosie. I didn't know they let lock masters drink on the job.
  We had a nice breezy day and we traveled another twenty-five miles on Watts Bar Lake to an anchorage we stayed at on the way upriver, near Kingston, Tennessee. It's a bit bumpy out here due to it being Sunday and all and a lot of boats are out. Things will settle down later and we'll get a much needed full nights rest.
  Rosie is making dinner and we're both looking forward to a good salad and the rest of the two inch pork chops we made the other night and couldn't eat because they were gigantic, rivaling the chops we got at Patti's in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. We failed to remember to eat dinner yesterday for some reason.
  We'll be traveling is some familiar territory as we make our way back down river to the Tenn-Tom but we don't expect it to be boring as we're seeing everything from a different perspective. Hopefully we'll have some good stuff happen that we can tell you all about.