Well, it rained.  A lot.  It's so 2020 to have to worry about flooding on a FALL trip. 

Rain is fine but the timing is really terrible.  With Wednesday and Thursday rains, the gauges won't do us any good because we won't know what the river is really going to be like until Friday and Saturday.  Like, when we are actually on it. 

It's possible we could thread the needle and get it just right, but it's more likely we would spend one or both of the nights huddled in a field wishing we had made alternate plans.  So let's go ahead and just make those alternate plans right now. 

We are going to redirect to Dale Hollow Lake where we found peaceful refuge in 2008 when the same thing happened. That worked out really well.

It being Halloween and all, I got us a permit for Graveyard Island:

 

Which is a whole lot prettier than it sounds:

There will be no rising water, but there are a couple of things we need to plan for.

First, we should assume there will be no firewood at all on the island so we need to bring everything we want to burn.  The second concern is wind.  It's a big lake and if Zeta is still hanging around we need to be careful.  That means bringing real like jackets and choosing our launch based on wind direction.  We have three different options and we can decide when we get there:

Hopefully we can choose #1 so we can paddle right over the top of the ruins of the "Drowned City of Willow Grove":

Especially the remains of the school:

The only thing that would make Graveyard Island more fitting on Halloween would be a ghost story about a tragic death and a body buried underwater right next to us.

Plus cold, clear skies and the last full moon on Halloween night for twenty years...