We did some beach cleanup after taking our dock out the other day.
The storm that tipped a tree over onto BOTH my parents’ daily drivers, and released my father’s boat from its mooring, also drove a ton of lake-bottom muck onto the beach. The boat drifted onto that beach as well, and got filled with water and muck, but was OK after we cleaned it out.
On the positive side, because the water was low, all this muck that accumulated on the beach was easily (ahem, uh, as easy as it can be to shovel lake muck and haul it uphill) removed from the beach, leaving a large area very nice and sandy, which can often fill in with debris under the right conditions. But for now, it’s about as clean and sandy as I’ve ever seen it.
Technically, this beach is on our neighbor’s property, but their waterfront stuff is really focused on the other side of their land, so they’ve always allowed us to use this beach. It’s at the bottom of a steep bank, so it’s kind hard for them to access anyway, whereas it’s easy to get to from our side. I do wish I could have gotten the truck right down there, but it would have meant driving across the neighbor’s lawn, to the one area where they can get down to this beach. We’ve done it years ago, but their lawn is much nicer now, and wasn’t frozen on this day.
In any case, it’s nice to have this all clean - the area in front of our house is shallow for a long distance out, with no big rocks to worry about. It’s great for the kids to play, and they spend hours doing exactly that - just as I did as a kid.
Anyway. The muck spent a night in my truck, making a cool icicle off the rear bumper as the water slowly drained out of it.
Just one more job for the truck - retrieving a Christmas tree - and it’ll go away for the winter. I’m careful only to drive it on days when the roads are dry, which is tricky right now. It should be warm enough today for me to hose out the remaining muck from the back.