A honeymoon at Watauga Lake

Karen here. We get more honeymoon bookings than people would guess for a small lake townhouse in east Tennessee, and I want to write the article I wish had existed when we first started hosting them.

A honeymoon trip is not a couples’ weekend with a different label. It has its own shape. People are tired in a specific way after a wedding, and they are also reaching for something they have been imagining for a year. The pacing has to make room for both.

This is the trip I would plan for two people coming up for their first stay as a married couple, with no kids, no in-laws, and no pressure to perform a vacation.

Why a Sunday arrival

If your wedding was on Saturday, drive in on Sunday afternoon. The day after a wedding is the day the adrenaline finally drops. You do not want to be on the road for five hours that day or driving into a busy resort lobby. You want to walk into a quiet house with the bags from the car and sit down without anyone asking you anything.

The trip we plan for honeymooners is four nights, Sunday afternoon through Thursday morning. If you only have three nights, drop Wednesday and arrive Sunday, leave Wednesday morning. The Saturday photo I will get to below moves to Tuesday. The shape still works.

A Sunday arrival also means the local roads are quiet. Most weekend guests at the lake are leaving on Sunday afternoon. By the time you pull onto US-321 east of Elizabethton, the traffic has thinned out and the road feels like it was cleared for you.

Sunday: the arrival

Pick up groceries in Elizabethton on the drive in. Food City on West Elk Avenue covers anything you forgot to pack. Stop at Watauga Vintners on the same block for wine or a decent bourbon, the selection is better than people expect for a town this size. There is a small florist on East Elk if you want fresh flowers for the kitchen, or message us the day before and we will have them on the island when you walk in.

Get to the townhouse by four in the afternoon. Self check in through the keypad, so you do not have to talk to anyone. Drop the bags in the front hall. Do not unpack yet. Walk the whole house first. Walk out onto the back porch and stand at the rail and look at the lake. Then walk up to the queen suite balcony and do the same thing from a different angle. Then sit down on the couch for ten minutes and do nothing.

This is the arrival ritual we suggest to every honeymoon guest. It sounds small. It is the whole reason for a Sunday arrival. The trip starts when you sit.

Dinner the first night should not be a reservation. You have just driven in and your bodies are still processing the last 48 hours. Order pizza from Hampton, fifteen minutes away, or cook something simple from what you brought from Elizabethton. Eat on the back porch with the fire pit going, a glass of whatever you brought, no phones, the lake going dark in front of you.

The first night in a new marriage should be the night you do nothing on purpose.

Monday: the slow morning, then the trail

Sleep until the light wakes you. There is no plan before breakfast. Coffee on the bedroom balcony if it is over 50 degrees, which most mornings in April through October it is. Eggs and toast in the kitchen. Take a second coffee out to the deck.

This is the morning that earns the rest of the trip. Honeymoon guests almost always tell us the same thing in the review, that the morning with no alarm was the part they had not known to plan for and the part they remember most.

Late morning, drive five minutes to Shook Branch Recreation Area and walk the flat section of the Appalachian Trail along the lake. The trail hugs the shoreline for about a mile and a half, mostly level, mostly shaded. You are not climbing anything. You are walking next to water clear enough to see the bottom in the shallows, with the white AT blazes on the trees, hand in hand. We had a couple last August tell us that this was the walk where it first felt real that they were married. The trail does that. The lake does that.

Bring a small thermos of coffee and a snack. There is a bench at a small cove about forty minutes out, which is a good place to turn around.

Lunch back at the townhouse. Pull out whatever cheese and bread you bought in Elizabethton and eat on the deck. The afternoon is yours. Most honeymoon guests use it for a nap or a swim if the weather is right, or sit on the deck with a book. The plan for Monday is to not have a plan.

In the late afternoon, drive ten minutes to Watauga Lake Winery for a tasting on the deck. Sit through one full flight, slowly. If the live music is on, stay for it. The wine is good and the view is the lake.

Monday night is another stay in night. Cook pasta. Fire pit on the porch. Bed early.

Tuesday: a sleep in, then the dam

Tuesday is the day to sleep in for real. No alarm, no plan, coffee in bed if that is the kind of marriage you are building. By the time you make it to the kitchen the morning is half gone, which is the point.

Mid morning, drive eight minutes to the Watauga Dam observation point. The road climbs up and ends at a parking area with a railing-fronted overlook of the dam and the lake stretching out behind. The dam itself is striking, three hundred feet of concrete dropped into the river gorge in 1948, closed on December 1 of that year, holding back 6,430 acres of water that did not exist before. The Appalachian Trail crosses the top of the dam and you can walk out on it. Standing on the dam looking down into the gorge is a kind of perspective that resets the scale of whatever you have been thinking about.

This is also the spot for the photograph, but we will save the photograph for Saturday morning, when the light is better and you have had a few more nights of sleep.

Lunch at Captain’s Table at Watauga Lakeshore Resort and Marina if it is open, on the deck over the water. Call ahead, the operating status has been unstable since the 2023 fire at the previous operator, and you do not want to drive over to a closed door. If it is closed, drive into Hampton for sandwiches at Watauga Lake Mercantile and take them back to your own deck. The tomato and basil sandwich at the Mercantile is better than it needs to be.

Tuesday afternoon, the second winery if you want it. Villa Nove Vineyards is five minutes from the house and has a covered patio with a wood stove for cool days. Pick one winery for the afternoon, do not try to do both. The point of a honeymoon afternoon is to sit, not to drive between activities.

Tuesday night is the dinner. This is the one big planned moment of the trip.

The dinner

Drive thirty minutes east into Banner Elk, North Carolina, on US-321. The road climbs through Elk Park and crosses into the high country, and the light at six in the evening on that road in April or October is the reason people move to this part of the world.

Our recommendation for a honeymoon dinner is Stonewalls in downtown Banner Elk, a steakhouse that has been there for decades and feels like a real restaurant. Reserve a window table at least three weeks ahead. Tell them on the phone that it is a honeymoon. They will not make a scene of it, which is what you want, but they will put you somewhere good. Order the trout if you want the local thing, the filet if you want the steakhouse thing. The wine list is real. The bread is real. The waiter will not rush you and there is no one bringing out a sparkler.

The alternative is Painted Fish Cafe across the street, smaller, easier to get a table at on short notice, also good.

Drive home in the dark along the same road. Take it slow. Watch for deer above Elk Park. Back at the townhouse, the jet tub.

Wednesday: a true day off

Wednesday is the day you do nothing. This is the day a honeymoon needs that a regular weekend cannot afford. By Wednesday morning your wedding is far enough behind you that you can sleep without dreaming about it. By Wednesday morning the trip has settled into your body.

We tell honeymoon guests not to schedule anything for Wednesday. Wake up when you wake up. Make breakfast slowly. Sit on the deck. Read. Take a walk down the road and back, not to anywhere in particular. Have lunch from whatever is in the fridge. Take a nap in the afternoon.

If the weather is good and you want to be on the water, drive five minutes to the public boat launch on the south side of the lake and rent a small pontoon for two hours from Fish Springs or Lakeshore Marina. Pack a cooler, drift in a quiet cove, swim if it is warm enough. The lake does not freeze and it is too deep to ever get truly warm, the surface in August tops out around 80, but it is the cleanest swimming water in this part of the state.

Wednesday night, cook dinner at the house. Pasta or a steak you brought from Elizabethton. Bottle of wine on the back porch with the fire pit. Bed when you are tired. This is the night the marriage starts to feel like the rest of your life.

Thursday: the photograph, then the leave

Thursday morning is the sunset photograph in reverse. Wake up early enough to be at the dam observation point by 7:30 in summer or 8:30 in fall. The morning light comes in low across the lake from the east and lands on the dam itself. Set the phone on the railing on a timer or bring a small tripod. Take five shots. One of them will be the one you put in a frame.

If you have a real camera, walk out onto the dam crossing and take portraits there with the gorge falling away behind you. The dam is the kind of background that makes a photograph feel monumental. The picture from your honeymoon morning standing on the dam at 28 years old is the picture you will look at when you are 70.

Back at the house, pack slowly. Pull the last cup of coffee onto the balcony. Leave by eleven. The drive home will feel longer than the drive in. It always does.

A note about the Saturday version

If your wedding was on a different day and your trip falls Friday to Monday or Saturday to Wednesday, the Saturday sunset photograph is the move instead of the Thursday morning one. Drive to the dam observation point about an hour before sunset on a clear Saturday in fall or spring. The light comes from behind you across the lake and the whole gorge turns gold. This is the photograph guests send us back from Christmas cards.

What to ask us before you arrive

Message us if you want anything set up before you walk in. Flowers, wine, a cake, a card you mailed to us to put on the island. Message us if you want a name for a local photographer who will come for an hour on the deck on a morning you pick. Message us if you want help booking the right table at the right restaurant for the right night. None of this is a service we charge for. It is the kind of hosting we like doing.

For the small mechanics of how the property runs, see the property page. For the standard couples’ template, see our couples’ getaway article. For the longer milestone trip we plan for tenth and fiftieth anniversaries, see the anniversary weekend guide. For the photography logistics on the dam and around the property, see photographing Watauga Lake. To check availability for a specific week, go to the booking page and message us the date if it shows as unavailable. Sometimes we can move things.

Honeymoons are the bookings we put the most quiet care into. The trip works because the lake is quiet, the dinner is real, and there is a balcony where you can sit at 7 in the morning on the second day of your marriage and not have to be anywhere. That is most of it.