Eastward, Ho! Day 25: 2nd Failed Wheel Cylinder, exploring the LBL south of us.

 Wednesday, June 30

After a leisurely breakfast, I took Yagi to explore the other camping loops this morning, I ended up by the rental kayaks for pics:

They're $15/hr and I think we'll be renting two of them on Friday morning before we leave for the next campsite.

Later, I went out to the Sammy to check the fluids prior to us departing to do some exploration of the LBL or Land Between the Lakes to the south of us; found the brake fluid reservoir down below expected max level!

A quick inspection and yep, there was brake fluid coming out of one of the brake shoe retaining pin mounting holes!  Dammit.

Luckily, when I bought the replacement wheel cylinder for the left rear wheel, I bought a second one for what I believed would be the eventual failure of the right rear wheel's cylinder.  

Disassembly went well, I took a shortcut in not fully removing the rear brake shoe, merely moving it out of the way before tackling the removal of the failed wheel cylinder.  

Not fully removing the brake shoes made it a bit ackward to put the new wheel cylinder in but I managed.  What I didn't realize at the time was that I caused the cam that adjusts the position of the brake shoes to push the shoes outward more once mounted!

Struggled for quite a bit of time but couldn't get the dang hub to go onto the brake shoes!  Finally made a call to Sammy Guru Mike W.  He explained to me that I had to use a flat tip screwdriver to push the cam in and voila, the hub fit right on!  Sigh. 

I put the wheel back on, tightened everything, then with Martha's help bled the brakes once more.  Brakes bled without issue, then took the Sammy for a test ride and all is well once again, no leaks so far.

So we went out exploring after lunch.  First we tried the Bison Preserve but the $5 fee for admittance and the dismally small chance of seeing Bison outside of evening or early morning hours caused us to turn around.

We instead visited the Visitor's Center, paid for the 1PM Planetarium Show (which I mostly slept through) and then we went to check out the Old Homeplace Farm about 10 miles down from the visitor center.  Along the way we checked out the Turkey Bay OHV area (a small part of it):

In the small area we explored, we saw several dispersed camping sites and signs stating one could run their generator 24 hours if desired!

We got to the Old Homeplace Farm but the heat had sapped our wills by this point and we skipped it instead of paying the $7/person fee to see it.

I had been remarking to Martha, as we drove about Kentucky, that it seemed a bit less "neat" or "trimmed" in terms of forest landscape than Tennessee.  Martha told me I was just comparing a TN state park to a KY NF site.  Well, we crossed the state lines on the way to the farm and damn if I wasn't proven right!

The road shoulder on the Kentucky side was thigh high in grass and weeds, to the point you couldn't really tell the condition of the shoulder.  Soon as we crossed the Tennessee border, the shoulder was mowed and the roadside trees further trimmed back!

Looking back towards Tennessee, note the nicely mown 

shoulders along the pavement

Looking towards Kentucky, from the space between State signs!

So Martha admitted I'd been right!  :)  Such an infrequent thing, small victories.

Let's see, then we drove over to the bridge near the entrance to the road leading to Energy Lake Campground, we crossed over the bridge then found a nice spot for a picture near the village of Canton:

Along the underside of the bridge, we found a long row of Cliff Swallow mud nests clinging to the wall of the bridge supports:

Just four of the probably over 30 nests we could see

Martha spotted this Swallow peering out at us crankily.

We then returned back to camp, to relax the rest of the afternoon away.  I took another dip in the lake and Martha relaxed by the VRRV.  Bugs finally drove both of us inside for a bit, this place seems to have more than the previous campsites!

Had us a campfire of sorts, wood was damp and the fire was hard to keep going much less make it bigger.

We quit the outside and watched the fireflies flitting about in the gathering darkness from within the VRRV.  A good day.

Eastward, Ho! Days 23 & 24: Pin Oak State Park, Lunch in Paris and Energy Lake NF Campground

 Monday, June 28

The original plan had been to displace to a Harvest Host site provided by the Samuel T. Bryant Distillery in Jackson, Tennessee.  There was much traffic, construction, detours and traffic, did I mention traffic as we transited south of Memphis, TN.  We were tired when we finally arrived at the site and it was quite small and not appealing for dry camping.

So Martha picked up a few bottles of Moonshine anyways and we continued on via twisty country roads till we finally got to the Pin Oak State Park.  After talking to the camp host, we found an empty spot by the lake and Martha went to call it in to the lodge.  (The fee booth was not manned even though it was before 5PM).

Anyways, I set up camp while she arranged payment and all was finally well after a couple of slugs of the moonshine to "settle our nerves" and a nice dip in the warm waters of the lake.  Man it was a hot day for traveling!  It took the AC about four hours to cool down the inside of the VRRV!

The lake surface was quite calm when we arrived and it was a

pleasant change from the choppy waters of Greers Ferry Lake!

Good Stuff....

Tuesday, June 29

We displaced to head to our next planned campsite in Kentucky.  But first, we went to Paris for lunch!

Yep, Paris, Tennessee that is!

Little Martha

Godzilla Martha

We crossed into Kentucky from Tennessee at the border town of Murray, KY.  We picked a "not great" gas station to get gas for the Sammy, ended up being cut off by this idiot, waited on her to get out of our way; then figured out that we could actually pump our own gas....the attendant was just there as a "courtesy".  Yeah, OK.

Finally got away from Murray and about 45 minutes later, after a short but intense rainstorm, we made it to the US Forest Service Campground at Energy Lake.  We had a nice site, a bit tricky to back into due to some uneven surface but no problem otherwise.  It's got electric hookup but no water, but there's a common use spigot nearby so no problem.  We'll be here three nights.

C2

We hope to rent a couple of Kayaks while here.