Lake Winnewanna

[gumpus]

I drove a couple of hours across to the east side of Michigan to spend the afternoon on Lake Winnewanna which is in the Waterloo Recreation Area about 30 miles west of Ann Arbor. Winnewanna is man-made, shallow, and full of stumps. I always enjoyed paddling among the dead trees. It's different every time you go with the water lilies often making many areas inaccessible but with all the rain in the Midwest one could really poke around. There are many small islands and it's a bit of a maze where sometimes you can go around an island if you find a path but other times you get stuck and have to turn around. The water lilies create pockets of dead calm water even on windy days. In the past I have sometimes tied off to a dead tree and napped and I remember one time waking up and having hundreds of blue damselflies on the gunnels all the way around the boat. I left the dog behind for a good long paddle and ended up having the lake to myself.

 

[latremorej]

Nice pics! Was that an old dock that floated away or something left over when the dam flooded the area out? Maybe a platform for duck hunters to set a blind on?

Jason

 

[gumpus]

Nice pics! Was that an old dock that floated away or something left over when the dam flooded the area out? Maybe a platform for duck hunters to set a blind on?

Jason

I'm guessing that it was a platform for bird hunters. There are other weathered blinds scattered around the lake but all of them are on land. I pushed on the platform and it was rock solid so not floating. Fun thing for me was that I had never seen it before because it was in an area that had never been accessible to me in the past due to thick plants and/or lower water. The fact that it's under water is another reminder of all the rain we've had in the Midwest.

 

[Gamma1214]

Nice pics! Was that an old dock that floated away or something left over when the dam flooded the area out? Maybe a platform for duck hunters to set a blind on?

Jason

My guess would be a platform for turtles to sun themselves. I know PA scatters them everywhere in the shallows.

 

[Gamma1214]

Oh yeah, great pics! Looks & sounds like a very pleasant day.

 

[gumpus]

Well Gamma I can tell you that Winnewanna has lots of turtles and a small snapper came up to look at me while I was near that platform but it didn't hang around long enough for me to get a pic.