July 20-26 — For the second time in four years we joined Fred’s brother and his family and several other local Chenoa [Fred’s hometown] friends down in Lake Shelbyville for a week of camping. While we’re newbies to this tradition, the rest of the crew has been doing ‘Shelbyville week’ for well over 20 years and having lots of fun together.
We had nice summer weather – hot days (thank goodness Charley has air conditioning!) and decent evenings. And while we were thankful for the one night of rain that we had, for it confirmed we didn’t have any leaks in our roof, we’re not so sure nephew Andrew and his friends sleeping in a tent were all that happy about it….
Highlights of the week of camping include:
- taking over all the campsites in a cul de sac in the Army Corps of Engineers Park campground at Lithia Springs Cove
- showing off our RV, Charley; everyone was eager to see our new home-to-be, and in less than a year from now we’ll be full-timers living in Charley – yikes!!
- daily water skiing, tubing, knee-boarding, etc.; Fred on the tube with Rachel – a great sight!
- grills full of food; we were 20 people eating each evening – shared food & shared fun!
- the sinking of Randy M’s boat – not good, but certainly an ‘interesting’ sight to see a sunken boat in the cove
- a midnight pontoon cruise sipping homemade lemoncello
- daily runs to town to get an afternoon Dairy Queen treat
We’re hoping we can join the group again next year, but we’re not so sure… we will be full-timers by then, and who knows if we’ll be around. If not, we’ll miss our time in Shelbyville, but appreciate the time we had to improve upon our camping skills, and have fun with friends and family.
