Fontana with Boy Scout Troop 88

Brandon cooking chicken stir fry

Isn't this awesome!? Marc Kauffman at the bow.

At the old copper mine...shhhh...don't tell anybody

Our crew at my fav campsite...#78

Here is another great trip. I took six Scouts and leaders on a five day paddle of Fontana in the summer of 2006. I put a post on paddling.net if you want to read about it there as well. We began at USFS Tsali Campground and did a day trip out to the highway bridge and back (which is where the Little Tennessee pours into Fontana). After spending the night at Tsali we hit the main channel the next day. Kirkland campsite inside the Smokies was our destination (campsite # ). The next day we paddled all the way to the Fontana Marina. There we hiked on the Appalachian Trail to the TVA Fontana Dam and had showers and ice cream. We hiked back, poured rainwater out of our canoes (yep...it stormed) and paddled on up to the Eagle Creek campsite inside the Smokies, Campsite # (a total of miles that day). We did some conservation work for the Park Service the next morning and then paddled all the way up to NPS campsite #78 by the afternoon. Wow! What a day! The campsite is on an island and is as wilderness as you can get on Fontana. No roads, cars, motorcycles, streetlights or anything. I went out swimming that night and just stood there with my head above the surface of the water perfectly still. If you stand on the floor of the lake and stand very still, your body will heat a film of water just around your skin and you will stay warm. Looking up I could make out individual stars in the Milky Way it was so clear that night! The next morning we paddled back to Tsali and completed a total of about 56 miles of paddling and hiking in five days.