Lakebed Cleanup While We Can! Trash or Treasure?

Chris and I ventured out on Monday, June 23rd for a solid 4 hour mud intensive cleanup around the receded lake. Since there is not a clue as to when the water will rise again, we have decided to seize the wonderful opportunity to gather decades and decades of revealed trash and TAR! Yes, there was a mess of tar down very close to the water. We can only hope that this was not dumped recently. Chris and I folded the tar over on itself several times to make it more manageable. The viscous black substance seized all the earth within reach even modling to our arms like pizza dough as we lifted.

We collected everything from ancient 'talking cameras' to boxer shorts abandoned by skinny dippers of the past. Chris and I concluded that the drink of choice back in the day must have been Pabst Blue Ribbon. Pabst barely beat out Coca-Cola as the most popular bottles/cans we found around the lake. There was also an old fence which may have marked low water levels of the past. The steel fence posts had rusted into a rubbery substance. There was also quite a variety of homemade anchors, the most interesting of which being a long piece of phone line strapped to an old brake drum with a leather belt. We also found a giant piece of auto glass, which had been broken in a couple places.

The most challenging obstacle to out cleanup was the black, all consuming, "quick-mud" that immediately surrounds the water. We used some scrap wood from old sunken boat hauls and tossed them ahead in lines to balance beam our way out to recover a rusty can, mucky bottle or shoe!. An incredible treasure that I have noticed among the waste left in the lake are these naturally forming terrariums! Some of the bottles have actually used the greenhouse effect of nurturing seedlings with no assistance from humans other than the act of littering. I have brought one home so far and plan to either drill some holes or score and break the top open to encourage further growth. So maybe the bottles aren't all bad, but the plants will definitely need a hand towards the next step of freedom.

We have also been saving all intact bottles which I am personally cleaning and recycling. I've recently picked up the hobby of home brewing and decided it would be neat to fill these lake bed bottles with my own carbonated beverage. There should be more pictures to come on this topic, and believe it or not I'm sure we will find even more spectacular treasures. I wish we had a camera for the tar and fishing rods we found.

Chris and I also stumbled upon an incredible wildlife encounter while trudging through the mud. There was a small pool with hundreds of salamanders dipping in and out of the lake. This seemed to be very out of character for salamanders to be so social and out in broad daylight! Whelp that's about all I can remember for now. When Chris gets back in I'm sure there will be more to share.

Toodles and talking cameras,
Greg