Water Water Everywhere

We're moving on Lake of the Ozarks but the lake is still. Another amazing (ha) video by Cutest.

In Kansas City, when anybody says they’re going to "the lake," it usually means they’re going to the Lake of the Ozarks. Anywhere from two to three to four hours away, one can be a part of the lake lifestyle for awhile.   Unlike the Prime series, the Ozarks are not drugs and hillbillies but 55,000 acres of fresh water, with more shoreline than in any other state.   Back in the 1930s, eight towns were flooded and a lake created to provide electricity for a growing rural America.   Today you can sit on a dock, a screened-in porch, or a perfectly placed restaurant or bar and get your lake fix for a day, a week, a month, or a summer.   

This lake has radically changed in the last ten or so years, providing space for what seems to be ocean-going vessels, huge homes apparently designed for families of 20, and gigantic denuded swaths of land being prepared for either developments or more huge homes.  Example: the Tan-Tar-A Resort which opened in 1960 and transitioned to Margaritaville Lake Resort in 2017, a la Jimmy Buffet style, now with five or six pools (it seemed, I didn't count), three or four restaurants and bars, and crowds everywhere slurping down special Margaritas.  Yes, of course we felt compelled to try one.

But still, especially if you’re not there on the weekends when the rest of the world is, the lake remains quiet, beautiful, and serene.  The waves (from the boats) slap the shores rhythmically, the zillion remaining trees are beautiful, and the place is a world away from Kansas City.

On either coast, people probably take the water surrounding them more matter-of-factly. But here in the Midwest, Cute and I think sometimes people feel land-bound and forget that water is truly available in lots of different places around us.

Last week we had dinner with friends on a dock on Lake Lotawana (600 acres).  No, the view wasn’t quite the same, but everyone is welcome, and the meals were quite good at Marina 27 Steak and Seafood.  Its former incarnation from 1993 - 2019 was known as Marina Grog and Galley.  Although open to the public back then, too, it seemed like only Lotawanians went there, but judging from the parking lot licenses, that definitely is no longer true.

Still relatively close in on the Missouri side are the public lakes of Blue Springs (720 acres), Lake Jacomo (970 acres), Longview (930 acres) or Smithville (7,190 acres) as well as several other smaller lakes.   On the Kansas side, most of us don’t think about Wyandotte Lake (400 acres) and its pretty park. The smaller Shawnee  Mission Park Lake (120 acres) with its nice beach attracts many and so does Lake Olathe (172 acres).   Whether it’s a beach, a paddle boat, a kayak, a pontoon, fishing or swimming you’re seeking, there are lots of places nearby to have a real water experience that doesn’t include a cement swimming pool.

Maybe it’s not the Ozarks or the Pacific or even Lake Superior where I used to go as a kid for two summer weeks for one day of summer. Maybe you also don’t have to have a house on one of the private lakes around, but we do have lakes.  And if you’ve not been in a while, it’s amazing how good even 95° can feel if you’re by – or in – the water.

Cute and wonder dog Sola agree!

You know we don't show our faces! (Sola's OK with it.)