All Good Things Come To An End

It’s been a great 3 months at Dale Hollow Lake State Resort Park. We’ve been Camp Hosts here. Not only is the park laid out beautifully with eighteen camp site loops of 8 spaces each (laid out in a wagon wheel fashion), but the work has been easy with plenty of unscheduled time available to us.

And the people – all the staff here have been just fantastic to get to know and to work with. We’ve been invited to come back in the future and who knows? It just might happen!

Some special people in our lives made our visit here really special. In early May our daughter and son-in-law (Sara and Stu) came down for a visit. They rented a camper right across from us. It was a great week! Stu got a lot of fishing in while we visited with Sara and as you can see from the pictures, we enjoyed some great meals together too!

In early June, good friends from Ohio and Arizona came for a visit. We shared a few meals together, we visited the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, we rented a deck boat and spent time out on Dale Hollow Lake, and we enjoyed each other’s company around the camp fire in the evenings.

Enjoying the slide off the deck boat on the lake

We want to acknowledge some of the folks at the park that made our time there so enjoyable.

Jenny (in the first picture below) is the General Manager of the entire park. She and her staff of about 45 are responsible for the campground, the lodge and dining room, the golf course, the picnic areas, and all the 3400 acres within the boundaries if the park. Jenny’s a super hard worker, great at multi-tasking and utilizes a great management style that has earned the respect of her staff. It’s a well-oiled smooth run operation that everyone at the park can be proud of.

Our next special person is Bobbi. Bobbi has responsibility to run the Country Store at the entrance to the campground. This entails registration of all new campers as well as keeping the store well stocked with all the goodies – food, ice, and souvenirs that travelers are looking for when they check in to a new place.

Robert, along with his work partner Jeff play a super important role in the campground. They do a super job of keeping the bathouses spotless. As we talked with campers, they always told us what a beautiful campground we had and what a fine job we did keeping the bathrooms so clean. We were always quick to tell them about and give credit to Robert and Jeff.

The spotless air conditioned bath / shower houses

Another special person that helped make our time at Dale Hollow (although I neglected to get a picture) was Gary, or “Speck” as he’s known at the park. Speck is the maintenance manager and he helped us countless times by getting us any tools or supplies we needed to do our jobs. He was also just a great guy to sit and talk with a bit. As he told us “just a country boy”. We always enjoyed talking with Speck.

You might recall that our arrival here was delayed from mid-March to mid-April because of my scheduled left shoulder rotater cuff repair surgery. I had the operation in Ohio on March 16th and the doc wouldn’t release me to drive the coach until early April.

Still, even though I could drive, my shoulder was still very stiff (and weak) and we knew I’d need some rehabilitation therapy in order to get me to as close to full range of motion as possible.

Once we got to Dale Hollow, I registered with Cumberland County Hospital and received twice weekly physical therapy through May and June. We went first thing in the morning Mondays and Thursdays. Sonya, Melissa, and Veronica did a wonderful job, the hospital is lucky to have such a great team running their PT department.

Not only did I get shoulder therapy, but both Kathy and I were able to receive traction (spinal decompression) for lower back pain. We’ve found over the past few years that we try to take advantage of this therapy whenever we find it exists in an area that we are in.

Kathy on the “rack” (Spinal Decompression Therapy)

We were originally scheduled to stay at the park through the July 4th weekend and depart on the 6th of July. We found out the week before the 4th that due to an administrative error our site was reserved for the July 4th weekend. Due to the fact that the park was reserved fully for the holiday weekend, we had no choice but to depart early.

That was fine for us since I had this upcoming hip replacement surgery with pre-op testing, it actually worked out great for us to head on out.

All in all, it was a great experience at Dale Hollow and we will miss our new friends. Maybe sometime in the future, we’ll be able to come on down for a visit. As a matter of fact we are already talking with our “gang of eight” about renting one of those big houseboats for a few days next summer!

Thanks for riding along with us, now to head on up to Ohio for a month or so to get this hip surgery and some rehab taken care of before we head west to Oregon. More on that to follow.

Our Day Trip to Cumberland Falls

We’ve been camp hosting at Dale Hollow Lake State Resort Park since the middle of April and our time here is quickly coming to a close. We try to get a away from the park periodically to see the surrounding area. Although the weekends find the park full and it’s necessary for us to be here, the weekdays are very quiet and so that’s when we take off and do a little sight-seeing.

This week we heard about 76 Falls and Cumberland Falls. Although we’ve been to Niagara Falls and we’ve seen 15 or 20 of the falls of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, we wanted to see what this part of Kentucky had to offer.

76 falls is located just north of State Route 90 near Albany. It’s part of the extreme southwest corner of Lake Cumberland and offers a wonderful hideaway for the folks vacationing in one of the many rental houseboats on the lake. The small picnic area at the top of the falls, along with the steps up to the overlook were most likely built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) back in the 30’s as part of FDR’s plan to revitalize the country by getting able-bodied men and women back to work.

We moved on from 76 Falls and continued north and east to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park. It’s located right on State Route 90 southwest of Corbin, KY and alongside the Cumberland River. The state park is actually inside Daniel Boone National Forest!

You can see in this map the relationship between where we are working (Dale Hollow), Lake Cumberland, and Cumberland Falls. Dale Hollow is the lake at the bottom of the photo mostly in Tennessee, Lake Cumberland is the lake closest to Monticello, and Cumberland Falls as marked

This park has a beautiful lodge that was also built by the CCC in the 30’s and has been tastefully modernized while still keeping the historical and architectural value of a property nearly 100 years old. There are 51 lodging rooms, a restaurant on the lower level, a large veranda overlooking the Cumberland River, and a nearby campground with 50 camp sites, cottages, and cabins for rent.

Before we left, I had the opportunity to set up my portable ham radio station down by the river (found a great shaded spot) and worked a couple dozen stations both stateside and abroad. A great afternoon away with my sweetheart!

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We hope to see you down the road …. in the meantime … be good to yourself and those you love!

Herb & Kathy