The Gang Goes to Lake Wateree, 2021
Bonnaroo is a 4-day annual music festival held in Manchester, Tennessee. People across the nation go to experience a wide variety of music genres in one place, from techno to folk to pop. Last year it was cancelled because everyone was freaking out about the big kahuna (COVID). Bonnaroo offered to refund everyone their money, but instead I decided to roll my ticket over to this year. The money was already spent, and I still wanted to go.
This year the festival was planned for Sept. 2-5. It’s about a 10 hour drive down from Pittsburgh, so my friends and I prepared to leave Wednesday morning to get camp set up in time.
The time had finally come. Tuesday night everyone is packing up their things, talking about what we need to bring and what not to forget.
A Change of Plans
Suddenly, we get an email.
The fields were muddy beyond belief. There was no way they could allow thousands of people in and have the conditions the way they were. We were devastated.
Last year, I was half-expecting everyone to freak out about COVID and have them cancel the festival. But this year was starting to look good- up until the final hours before departure that is.
Everyone in our group chat, having already taken vacation time off, decided that the trip must go on. It just won’t be to Bonnaroo.
The plan was still to leave early the next morning, so we essentially had a couple hours to get twelve people to agree on where we wanted to spend the next five days, and we were at square one. We were open to anything- the only requirement was that it had to be within a 10 hour driving radius.
Deciding between going on a beach trip, a camping trip, and a slew of other options, we finally settled down on a lake house. Just inside the border of South Carolina, was Lake Wateree.
To Lake Wateree We Go!
We met at Sheetz the next morning and assembled our four-car-long caravan down to SC. Nine quick hours later, we pull up to the house.
The property was beautiful. There was a main house and a guest house connected by a long wooden porch. From there you could walk down to the dock that stretches right out onto the lake.
The first night we played drinking games and got acquainted with the house. At around 2am, while we were beginning to wind down for the night, a group of four dogs randomly showed up. They all had collars on, bearing the name of the same owner, but we found no owner with them!
After greeting the new visitors for a moment, three of the dogs left to go back from wherever they came from. But one decided to stick around. We called the owner, telling them that their dog was here, and all he said was “I’m not worried, he’ll find his way back eventually.” Well, OK then!
The dog showed no signs of leaving. He was a good boy, so we welcomed him into the house and he ended up staying over that night.
Lake Wateree is Indeed Watery
On our third day we rented a pontoon boat and a jetski to zip around on the vast lake.
There was only one problem: the biggest boat available could only fit eight people. We had twelve people in our group.
The solution? We decided to take the paddle board and the canoe from the house with us. A couple of us got in the canoe and paddle board, rowed out far enough until the shop couldn’t see us anymore, then we “got comfortable.”
On our way out to the main channel of the lake, we asked one of the locals about a place where a bunch of twenty-somethings could hang out. He mentioned a small beach a little ways down the lake off to the right. We made our way down and soon landed ashore, with the jetski running up and down the whole way there.
The water was warm, the sun was shining, and the drinks were flowing. We had a great time hanging out on the small beach listening to music and taking turns riding the jetski.
After some time we eventually made our way back to the dock, making sure there were two people on the paddleboard and two people in the canoe as we were pulling in.
Lake Life
When we weren’t eating or hanging out on the porch at the lake house, we were sunbathing out on the dock, paddling around to the various islands, swimming in the lake, or jumping off the top dock over the railing and into the water below.
You might be wondering “Weren’t there any alligators in that lake?”
We wondered that too.
A quick Wikipedia search revealed that there were! We never actually saw any, but it would become a running joke (“Don’t swim out too far, or you’ll get bit by a gator!”).
As nighttime approached, we would make our way out onto the dock with pillows and blankets to watch the stars. There was hardly any light pollution to cloud our view; the closest city to Lake Wateree was Columbia, about a half hour south. The view of the night sky was breath-taking.
When you looked up, you could see the outline of the entire milky way galaxy. There were a few stars that were especially bright, and we would later find out that those were planets. We spotted several shooting stars while we were gazing, including one magnificent, bluish-colored shooting star that slowly streaked across the entire sky. We were left in awe as we laid out on the dock for hours, talking about life and marveling at the random points of light in the sky.
Good Times With Great People
Even though Bonnaroo got cancelled, again, we absolutely loved our time at Lake Wateree, SC.
We made countless memories, cracked dumb jokes, were constantly laughing, and had an overall great time with ourselves.
As we left to make our way back home Labor Day morning, we didn’t say “Goodbye” to Lake Wateree. We just said “See you later!”
