Lake Conway

If you've driven down I-40 past Lake Conway recently, you might have noticed that it's not really a lake anymore. The lake was emptied in order to start a five year project to clean the lakebed and to build a new dam on Palarm Creek. It's the first time that the lake has been emptied in 75 years.

I used to work in Conway (at AETN, many many years ago) and I used to head out on my lunch break to take pictures around Lake Conway. So I was interested to see what it looked like now, without water. It's been a hot and dry summer here, and in some places the lakebed has turned into a plain of dry and cracked mud.





Walking out onto the dry lakebed was a little eerie. It felt like the lake would have been the perfect setting for some sort of dystopian post-apocalyptic movie, with the cracked mud and old tree trunks jutting out of the ground like shards of broken glass.







Every once in a while you'd see a random piece of debris, which had probably been resting underwater for decades. There were several pieces of cinderblocks, along with some old beer cans and bottles. And also what looked like an old sunken boat.



The old lakebed wasn't completely devoid of life. There were a few plants trying to grow on top of the cracked mud. I'm definitely not a plant expert (as proven by our large collection of dead houseplants and our yard filled with weeds), but this almost looks like a pumpkin vine?





The formations in the cracked mud happen when "wet, muddy sediment dries up and contracts. A strain is developed because the top layer shrinks while the material below stays the same size. When this strain becomes large enough, channel cracks form in the dried-up surface to relieve the strain. Individual cracks spread and join up, forming a polygonal, interconnected network of forms called 'tesselations.'"



I walked around, trying to take pictures of the interesting patterns in the mudcracks...



At one point, I noticed that some of the mud was a slightly darker and different color. I got closer, thinking that the change in color might make for a good picture...



And it turns out that the mud is a different color because it's not completely dried out. The cracked layer on top isn't thick enough to support someone walking on it, which is bad news for anyone foolish enough to step on it.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I took a wrong step and sunk into the mud, down almost to my knees. There wasn't anyone else around, so luckily no one saw me struggling to extract my legs out from the murky depths of Lake Conway. The mud was a dark gray, and it smelled pretty bad. This was the view after I made it back to solid ground.



After that I learned my lesson and stuck to the drier areas.



There are lots of old tree stumps sticking out of the ground still, which I guess have been here since the lake was built in the 1940s?







After that I headed back to the car, leaving muddy footprints along the way...