Sunrise by the lake. Whatever drama is displayed in the sky is amplified and reflected by the calm surface of the lake. The combined effect is breathtaking beauty that makes you stop and take notice.

When people say the lakes are getting low, it just means water restrictions in the future to most people. To people that know and love those lakes, it means a lot more than just inconvenience. It is the loss of favorite places to swim, ski, and fish. It is sunrise without the amplification of water.

This picture is from the same vantage point as the first as the water on Lake Buchanan has receded about 15 feet.

Sunrise just doesn't look the same without the water. Same vantage point. You can see just a little of the receding lake at the right. Lake level at about 20 ft low.

The approach to our boat dock. Should be 14 ft of water and gentle swells here, but not this year!

This is a good example of the extremes Lake Buchanan can go through. In the background you see the empty lake begging for a good rain, but in the foreground you see the aftermath of a flash-flood. A road sign washed in from some roadway miles upstream serves as a reminder that things can change real fast!

Although it looks like an alien landscape from some barren world, there is plenty of life here. The light green haze you see on the ground is the beginning of the massive growth of vegetation that will help to recharge the lake when it does fill up again. Grasses, brush and small trees will decay beneath the waves one day nourishing everything in the food chain from algae to stripers and providing good cover for fish to lay their eggs and hide from predators.

This cycle is vital to insuring a lake is healthy and able to sustain good baitfish and gamefish population.

Taken 6 weeks later at very near the same spot as the previous picture, you can see how the nut grass has grown over the mud flat.

More of the new growth on the mud flat 8-24-09. The water you can see in the distance is a foot or so deep and the herons love it. Part of the river makes a turn through a little low spot here and has left us with a "reflecting pool". NIce to look at, but too shallow to use and too muddy to get to for fishing. When the ducks begin their winter migration we will see a lot of them stop here this year because now we have a marsh or swamp instead of a lake.

As the water level falls, the gravel beaches give way to mud flats on the upper end of Lake Buchanan where the silt from 70 years of flooding gets deposited as the lake widens out letting floodwaters slow down. It's very slick and deep, so you want to avoid stepping off into it. It will suck the shoes off your feet and you may have to crawl out of it on your belly like a turtle!

Driftwood...more remnants of flooding past. This is driftwood that has become waterlogged and sunk to the lake bottom, making for yucky swimming, but great bass fishing. When the next flood comes, this stuff will be all dried out and ready to go again, joining the great floating masses of driftwood that follow the flood current. There is no real point in trying to clean it up because there are miles and miles of this stuff along the rivers and tributaries just waiting to catch the next wave!

If you are into collecting driftwood, you are in luck! There are some very odd and interesting pieces out there, you just have to find them...