Acorn Artillery and Lake Lakeside Trails: A Week in Nashville

We made it to our second official stop on this summer trip! I overheard the humans talking while setting up the leveling jacks, and it sounds like we’re settling in here for about a week.

Our current deployment? Nashville Shores Water Park and Campground, right on the edge of J. Percy Priest Lake.

The Great Acorn Attack

While the humans were excited about the lakeside views, I immediately locked onto the main feature of our campsite: The Squirrels.

This place is crawling with them, and they have developed a very specific, highly annoying tactic. They sit way up in the high branches and drop ripe acorns straight down onto the roof of the "Dog House on Wheels." Every few minutes—THWACK! BANG!—it sounds like we are sitting right inside a massive popcorn popper.

It keeps Patches on high alert, but honestly? It just makes me hungry. I really could go for a handful of fresh-popped buttered popcorn right about now. (I’ve put in a formal request with the humans, but so far, no progress on the logistics.)

Wildlife and Walking Trails

Outside of the acorn barrage, it’s been a pretty relaxing week. There are plenty of kids splashing around the water park side of the resort, and I’ve exchanged polite nods with several other four-legged travelers out on their daily strolls.

My favorite part of the day is heading out on the walking trails. And oh boy, did I mention they have a lot of trails?

One afternoon, while we were cruising along a quiet wooded path near the water, we rounded a bend and spotted a few white-tailed deer browsing in the brush. They stopped, we stopped, and Patches froze like a statue. I gave them a friendly, dignified tail-wag to let them know we were just passing through, and they went right back to eating. It’s always nice to meet the locals.

🐾 Shadow’s Mid-Trip Rating: 4.5/5 Paws

Great trails, excellent deer-watching, but subtract half a point for the relentless squirrel artillery on the roof.

📜 A Little History for the Humans

For those following along who care more about history than acorns, this land has a pretty cool story!

Back before this was Nashville Shores, the entire lake didn't even exist. In the 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Stones River to create J. Percy Priest Lake (named after a famous Tennessee congressman).

By 1971, this specific patch of shoreline opened up as Hermitage Landing—a legendary local spot for camping, boating, and even outdoor rock concerts in the 1980s. In 1998, it was re-imagined as Nashville Shores. So while Patches and I are walking the shorelines today, we’re actually walking on forty years of classic Tennessee summer history!