Galina YoungTamara is in the bathing suit even before breakfast.
Girls drag us back into the lake as we desperately try to finish our coffees. We are in luck. Everyone is still asleep and we have the whole beach and the lake to ourselves. We swim, meditate in the water. Girls spend some time chasing a trio of Canadian geese around the lake and I am half expecting the dynamic to reverse but geese just move to the deep part of the lake, it must be southern niceness. The morning is clear and beautiful, the water is warm but refreshing. How lucky are we.
It is hard to leave but the road calls. We pack up the site and are on our way to Nashville. On the way out of Smokey’s we must stop by the BBQ place. First meal of the trip not cooked by us.
We actually have to be somewhere particular today. Our cousins, Eric and Barry, are Nashvilites. We arrange to meet up with them by Parthenon. Before that, we want to drop our efficiency off at the last scheduled site of the southern leg of the trip – Percy Priest Reservoir. We drive through gorgeous Grassy Cove on the way. Really remarkable views of the mountains and a lot of very picturesque overlooks.
I try and call ahead to local Nashville bookstores to find an ever evasive (seriously) book 4 of Artemis Fowl book series Tamara is reading. With the direction from cousins the book is located and purchased at Parnassus books. We are elated as I was not able to find it anywhere else along the way. They are even so nice to leave it for us outside as we would be arriving after they close for the day.
We roll into Persy Priest campgrounds around 4 – just enough time to drop the rig and make it to our randevoux point. Only… when we pull to the reservation booth there is nothing remotely under Young. Turns out in his many bookings and rebookings, as he planned out multiple versions of the trip, Sol dropped the reservation and did not rebook. No, they are 100% booked for the night.
The hostesses suggest a couple of other campgrounds in the area to try and kindly offer to fill up and dump at their site in case we need to spend the night in the Cracker Barrel parking lot (I am told, they bring you coffee in the morning). We thank them profusely and pull in to pick up some water as I am trying to book a site nearby. In that moment skies open up with a torrential downpour.
As we are almost to the water well one of the hostesses catches up with us on a golf cart. As only about half of him is covered by a puny golf cart canopy he is drenched. He rolls up to our window and speaks through the sheets of water falling all over him: “Ya’ll know…. We do have this one site that we keep for emergency use. And I can’t think of any other situation that would be a bigger emergency than yours …. “. We are eternally thankful once again as he shows us to our spot. Girls insist that we share our Costco brand cold brew cans with them. We oblige.
We are only about 30 min late to meet our cousins. They show us around Centennial Park and Barry is a treasure trove of Nashville history. Sasha, who thinks she is shy, immediately climbs to the top of the nearby tree. For the rest of the night she is trying to do the same with Barry who is tall and nice and is immediately admired by her. Dog is elated to meet Eric and Barry as well and promptly jumps into the nearby water feature to show just how much of a lab he is.
We find the remote and outdoor place to have dinner together and it is nice after the storm. It is nice to catch up with cousins. We all figured out that the last time we saw each other was in Canada when Tamara was 6 months old.
