Another TVA Dam - Douglas Dam in Kodak TN

On our way to the family reunion at Thompson's Station we stopped at the Douglas Tailwater Campground in Kodak TN (https://camprrm.com/parks/tennessee/tva-6/douglas-tailwater-campground/). 

Bull Head Products, the fabricator of our custom truck bed, is located in Kodak and we wanted to meet with them to discuss some bed modifications and a new project. The new project was a swing-able rack mounted to the back of the camper to store a couple of solar panels that we could place in the sun with a tripod. The idea came about from a fabricator named Aluminess (see the first picture on the left of the second row under trucks here http://www.aluminess.com/photo-gallery/.

On our way to the campground was our first experience of finding the deficiencies of a navigation system. The navigation systems try to take you the shortest route which includes back country roads. Jane had looked into navigation systems for trucks and RVs but never pulled the plug on purchasing one probably because I dragged my feet. So we ended up on back country roads with low branches and bridges with load limit less than our vehicle weight. We got to the campground without any noticeable roof damage. Unfortunately I took the wrong turn out of the campground on our way to Bull Head from the campground and we ended up on a back road that where we weren't as lucky. A branch about 1 to 1.5" thick was low enough to clip the roof mounted antenna and basically destroy it.

Now the good part of the visit. Almost all the camp sites are on the water/river and that is where our site was. Four pictures from or of the camp site are below. You can see my feet from a picture I took sitting in my chair inside the camper looking out the back door (last one of the four below).

The main draw and activity of the campground was fishing. Since fishing isn't our thing we ended up just going to the dam overlook area. We only stayed two nights at the campground so between the visit to Bull Head, the overlook walk and just the campsite views we were able to keep ourselves entertained. Here are some pictures from the overlook. The overlook has an information station which is where I got much of the information about the TVA that I included in the Old Stone Fort Bicycle Route Posting. Also, there is a companion campground above the dam aptly named Douglas Headwaters Campground. Maybe we will stay there if and when we visit Bull Head again. 

You can see the lake above the dam has low water levels. I mentioned the low water levels in Cherokee Lake in the Panther Creek State Park posting. The lake water levels are lowered during the winter season on purpose as described here if you are interested: https://www.tva.com/environment/managing-the-river/flood-management/understanding-the-drawdown.