Hiawassee River Weekend

We had hoped to have the time to take an extended excursion up river...Watts Bar Lake, Fort Louden and Tellico Lake, etc. But, unfortunately Rob's work schedule temporarily got in the way. They are moving their office space to another office in the same building, and as luck would have it, the time we picked to go up river turned out to be in conflict with the timing of the office move. So, for now, this extended trip was postponed.....but we took off for the weekend and headed up river anyway!

The Hiawassee River is a tributary to the Tennessee about 25 miles up river from our marina. It is a beautiful (smaller) river with great bird watching and some awesome scenery. We have been up here a couple of times previously...most recently last Thanksgiving to see the Sandhill Crane migratory flock.

We anchored for the night in a shallow-ish embayment near Hiawassee Island. There was quite a bit of weed growth that narrowed our choices some, so we just made the best of what the river would give us. Here's a couple of pics of our anchorage at sunset...quite peaceful...



The anchorage was a bit more exposed than we prefer, but it worked out fine. One snag that came our way was thanks to some weeds that drifted past about 9:30 pm. One batch of weeds got sucked up into our generator cooling water intake line and all of a sudden, the generator quit, which meant that our air conditioning and a bunch of other stuff that was running, immediately shut down. It was rather a surprise, but after only about 20 minutes of fussing with the strainer and cleaning the intake line, we were back in business...and no other surprises for the night!

We also determined as a result of this trip that we don't really like it when the doggy walk spot is 1/2 mile from the boat by dinghy...at least on a dark river. Making this journey after dark was a small adventure, and not really one that we want to repeat often if we can avoid it. All worked out just fine, but it wasn't all that simple or enjoyable.

 

We found a stark contrast in the boat traffic up there that we really liked...there wasn't much! Our lake can get kind of crazy busy on weekends, which we were reminded of as we got closer to home. But while we were up there, we had cruising like this:

It was really pleasant, with periods of time where we saw practically no boat traffic at all. All in all, it was a nice weekend...we only wish that it had a been a week instead!