Undeveloped Lakes: A Thing of Beauty

This year for our annual family trip, my parents, sister, brother-in-law, husband and I went down to Southern Indiana to see Patoka Lake. This almost-9,000 acre lake is beautiful. One of the reasons it's so beautiful is that people can't build on it. I'm sure if they could, they would, as all beautiful things it seems must be ruined by development.

We rented a pontoon and spent 9 hours cruising around the lake. Yes, there were lots of other boaters out there, but even that didn't take away from the pristine beauty of this beautifully clean lake.

Nowadays, when people talk about going to the lake it seems they're always speaking of a lake that has multi-million dollar cottages built on it and an overwhelming amount of people. To each their own, but to me, that's not relaxing AT ALL. I enjoy nature for what it is, not for what people want to abuse it for.


I think one of the only things that would have made Patoka even more beautiful would be had it been a natural lake. Obviously it's not, it's a huge reservoir built to sustain 11 counties' water needs. I'm not big on that, as I'm sure you can tell by the nature of my blog. Nearly 6 million gallons are taken out daily for the water needs of these people. When they built the reservoir, three towns were evacuated and covered by the almost 60 billion gallons the lake holds on any given day.

Now, the lake serves as valuable habitat for a variety of creatures -- great and small. But what about when it was created? How many were displaced because of this massive lake? That's another story. Right now, I'm still relishing the fact that I got to see this treasure. There's no doubt I'll go back. Next time I'll spend more time and get to hike around the lake. The area surrounding the lake is managed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Hoosier National Forest surrounds parts of it, as well.

One of the islands in the lake