Dale Hollow Lake, Tennessee - July 16th to 22nd, 2026

Dale Hollow Lake was where we met up with Ann’s brother and his friends. Dale Hollow Lake was formed by damming the Obey River just before it joins the Cumberland River. The large reservoir is partly in Tennessee and partly in Kentucky. We were camping on the southeast side of the lake in Tennessee, at the Obey River Campground run by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Thursday was a travel day, from Canal Campground just outside Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky to Obey River Campground on Dale Hollow Lake in Tennessee. The first half of the drive, we stayed on the interstate and listened to more of the Project Hail Mary audio book.

Then the second part was on small, winding roads through little towns. We turned off the audio book, because we needed to pay more attention to driving and navigating. It was a scenic drive, so we liked watching our surroundings.

While on the interstate, we stopped at two Pilot Travel centers for gas, bathrooms, and to eat lunch. In the small town of Celina in Tennessee, we pulled over at a food truck for milkshakes. The place was called Rose & Jo’s Coffee n Shakes. We’ve been rather disappointed with milkshakes lately, but these were pretty tasty. Keith got his usual vanilla and Ann predictably ordered chocolate.

We arrived at Obey River Campground just before 4 pm. Ann’s brother Mark was already there, starting to set up camp. After quickly setting up camp ourselves, we went over to Mark’s site to help. He had several shade canopies and chairs, so the group can hang out there. There was another couple from our group with a camping trailer just a couple of sites away.

Mark lives in Texas and doesn’t have a camper, but he rents one through Outdoorsy. The owner of the camping trailer delivers it to the camp site and sets it up. All Mark has to do is show up. The price of renting is worth it to him as he doesn’t have to travel all that distance pulling a trailer.

Mark and his friends have been meeting at Obey River every year for decades. They used to all camp at the campground, but as we have all gotten older, some of them didn’t want to camp any more. So the rest of the group rented a house just a few minutes drive away. For dinner, we all met up at the house. We are all taking turns preparing a dinner meal, while preparing breakfast and lunches on our own.

Friday morning, Ann got her paddle board (paid link) out. It turns out that the new roof bag (paid link) is not waterproof. Things were a little wet inside. Perhaps the water pooled up on the roof from the AC had soaked into the bag from the bottom. Luckily, nothing was moldy.

It had been about a year and a half since Ann last used her board. It didn’t take her long to remember how to set it up. There appeared to be no leaks. Yay!

The water on the lake was pretty smooth, but it was smoother earlier. By the time Ann was out on the water, more motor boats were going by. Most of the area of the lake was a No Wake zone, but it doesn’t take much of a wake to make it difficult to balance on a paddle board.

Ann was able to get up on her feet on the first try, but it was a slow process. She paddled around some before she took a rolling wave broadside that she couldn’t handle. Into the water she went. The water was deep enough where she went down that she could barely touch the bottom.

Ann’s never fallen in deep water before, so she didn’t know if she would be able to get back on the board or not. It was a struggle. You have to quickly get your center of gravity over the center of the board, otherwise the board flips on you. After a few failed attempts, she managed to get back on. She was breathing heavily, as it took a lot of physical effort.

Once Ann was back on top of the board, she realized that the leg leash was caught on the underside of the board, probably on the skeg. She had no desire to get back off the board to untangle it, so she carefully maneuvered herself around so she could pull the leash out around whatever it was caught on. After that ordeal, Ann paddled sitting down or on her knees for a while. She paddled around for about an hour, staying pretty close to the shoreline. She stood up briefly one more time before heading in. She managed not to fall that time.

In the evening, we headed up to the house again to socialize with the others. The house had a nice outdoor swimming pool. Several of us took a dip in the pool to cool off before dinner.

Saturday was pretty much a repeat of Friday. Ann had a morning paddle, but didn’t stand up this time. It was the weekend, and there were a lot more boats on the water creating waves.

A storm passed close by, but the rain missed us. The wind picked up and the temperature cooled down, so everyone took advantage of the cooler air to take care of some maintenance items on their boats and bikes. Keith installed a new door on our Super Slider (paid link) which houses our sewer hose. We believe we broke it when we backed out of our driveway as we were leaving. We know we scraped the tail pipe and the Super Slider tube hangs down about the same as the tail pipe, but on the other side of the vehicle. Ann’s brother had brought a replacement door that we had ordered and sent to his house. Thanks, Mark!

The day ended about the same as the day before, up at the house, with a dip in the pool and dinner. Of course, there was plenty of reminiscing about our college days.

Sunday, Ann was out on the paddle board again. Even though the water was a little choppy and there were still quite a few boats on the water creating rolling waves, she managed to get up on her feet for a few minute. She went over to a little cove, where the water was a little smoother and she could turn the board to face the oncoming waves. There was a little break in the boat traffic, so she managed to stand up where she could see the waves coming. As soon as she saw some bigger waves coming, she got back down on her knees.

We were hoping that we would be able to go out on the ski boat that afternoon, but the thunderstorms arrived right after lunch and continued off and on the rest of the day.

Monday, Ann got out onto the water a little earlier, around 8:30 am. The water was really smooth. It was no longer the weekend and not many boats were out on the water yet. Ann was able to stand for about half the time. She even managed to stay up through a few sets of mild waves, but got back down when she saw some larger waves coming.

When she was done, a friend of ours decided to give the paddle board a try. He was able to get up on his feet fairly quickly. Later he told us that his legs were pretty shaky and he didn’t paddle much while he was up. He fell twice, but managed to get back up onto the board. He enjoyed having the experience, finding it challenging and exhausting.

In the afternoon, we all drove up to Burkesville in Kentucky to tour the Southern Kentucky Distillery. It is a small distillery that just started about four years ago in 2022. They just recently became a part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. They gave us an interesting tour along with explaining their origin story.

Most of us opted for the tastings at the end of the tour. They have a variety of products, from several different types of Kentucky bourbon, along with vodka, several different flavored moonshines, and a couple of flavored whiskey. We left with a bottle of Groovy Voodoo (a peanut butter flavored whiskey) and a few small jars of Slate Fork flavored moonshine.

Getting together with his friends is an annual tradition for Mark’s group and Tuesday was the traditional going out for breakfast for the ladies. While Ann was at breakfast, Keith stayed behind and went out on the ski boat with some of the guys.

The women drove into Livingston to eat at Stover’s Country Kitchen. It is in a rather plain-looking building and is rather easy to pass by without even realizing it is a restaurant. But all of the locals knew it was there. They were doing a pretty good business.

Stover’s had biscuits with chocolate gravy on the menu. Ann doesn’t recall ever hearing about chocolate gravy before. But no one in our group ordered it. Ann ordered the western omelette with hash browns. It was rather tasty. One of the others ordered one pancake with her eggs. It was a thick pancake, almost larger than the plate, so we all tried to help her finish it. We did not succeed.

Meanwhile, Keith was enjoying his time out on the boat. He is not much of a water person, but he didn’t mind being the spotter for the water skiers. A couple of the guys got up on skis before they saw some dark clouds rolling in. They headed back in to shore and got the boat out of the water, back onto the trailer, just in time for the storm to pass on by and the sun to return.

The guys only experienced a few drops of rain, but the ladies experienced a downpour where they were. They had gone into the Dollar General, so they hung out inside until the rain lightened back up so they wouldn’t get soaked running to the car. We had seen a few small ants around our kitchen sink, so Ann bought a couple of ant traps at Dollar General.

When the ladies returned to the campground, Ann was a little disappointed that she missed the boat. There was more rain in the forecast, so the guys didn’t want to take the boat back out. However, it looked like it would be a couple of hours before the next storm hit, so Ann took the opportunity to get out on her paddle board. The water was a little too rough to stand up, but she still enjoyed getting out on the water and getting some exercise.

While we were hanging out at our campsite, we spotted a velvet ant. In fact, we saw one several times during our stay. A velvet ant is actually not an ant, but rather a wingless wasp. They are known to have a very painful sting which can last up to 30 minutes. Its sting ranks about the same as a paper wasp, being more painful than a honey bee, but not as painful as a tarantula hawk. Thankfully, like the tarantula hawk, velvet ants are not aggressive and only sting in self defense.

That evening, we headed up to the house for dinner. It was our turn to cook. Our meal was tacos. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, but they probably enjoyed the wonderful conversations better.

Before we left the campground for the evening, everyone who was camping packed up much of their outdoor gear, taking down canopies and putting away mats and chairs. There was a severe storm predicted for overnight. So Ann packed up her paddle board. It was nice to have almost a whole week where she left the board inflated, making it much easier to just grab and get out onto the water. It did rain that night, but most of the storm seemed to miss us. It was just as well, since we only had one more full day left.

Wednesday, Keith had another dentist appointment in Cookeville, about a 50 minute drive from the campground. Hopefully this will take care of the issue until we get back home. We hung out at the campground in the morning until about noon, when we left for the dentist.

While we were waiting to leave, we took some more measurements on Ann’s e-bike battery. After we had determined that Ann’s Lectric bike battery was dead back when we were at Land Between the Lakes (Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky- July 12th to 15th, 2026), we emailed support at Lectric, explaining our situation to see if they could ship a battery to the post office in Byrdstown, just down the road from Obey River Campground. We never heard back from them. In the meantime, we contacted a bike shop called Premium E-bike Store in Troy Illinois, just northeast of St. Louis. Gregory was very responsive. He had a direct contact with Lectric and was the go-between for us. He was trying to get the battery replacement covered under warranty for us, even though we were willing to pay to replace it. Lectric wanted some more information, which we provided.

The last communication was that they wanted the volt meter readings of the battery when the battery switch was off and on and the key was turned off and on. Wait a minute! We thought the key only controlled the pin that locked the battery in place on the bike. We didn’t realize that it also controlled the power to the battery contacts. Sure enough, when we turned the key so the pin came out and had the switch turned on, there was the proper voltage on the battery contacts. It was now working again. Yay! Thank you Gregory for all of your help!

But this was very confusing to us. When the battery stopped working, it was on the bike, with the pin out and locked in place. We never use the key, because we leave the battery in the bike. We don’t even fold the bike in half when we store it inside the gear garage. We only fold down the handle bars, lower the seat and remove the pedals. So the key was never inserted into the lock on the battery between the time it was working before and the time it stopped working. We’re hoping this is not an intermittent issue. If it stops working again in the future, the first thing we will try is inserting the key and turning it off and on again. We’ll let you know how it goes (we had no issues the rest of our travel season).

The dental appointment went smoothly, but then we had to wait around for a prescription to be filled. While we waited, we did our grocery shopping, so we made good use of our time. However, we didn’t get back to camp until almost dinner time.

It was the group’s last dinner together and we were going out. We had reservations for the Steel Coop restaurant in Livingston. The food was decent, but the service was rather slow. Everyone was really hungry by the time the food arrived, but we had wonderful conversations while we waited.

Ann ordered the shaved prime rib sandwich with sweet potato fries. It was similar to a Philly cheesesteak, with cheese and green peppers. It was tasty, but too salty for Ann’s palate. Due to Keith’s dental procedure, he was rather limited on what he could eat. He had two orders of mashed potatoes, one with butter and one with gravy. At least there was something he could have.

The week at Dale Hollow went by fast. It was filled with wonderful conversations and laughter with wonderful friends. The other activities we participated in while we were there were just icing on the cake.

Check out our related video: Dale Hollow Lake, Tennessee

(Ann)