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Crisp Fall Dawn |
BULL
SHOALS LAKE
Launch:Lakeview Recreation Area (Corps of Engineers), Lakeview, ------Arkansas. This is near the dam and a good access.
Comments: The Lakeview Marina is clean, well-kept, and has fuel. It ------is just around the corner from the ramp. ------Bull Shoals Lake is big, has clean water, great fishing, and a mostly undeveloped shoreline. |
A FINE FALL CRUISE
INTRODUCTION
------So many lakes, so little time. The Ozark region is a veritable smorgasbord of delightful cruising lakes, and the choice is difficult. We read through the Corps brochures again and kept asking more boaters for their local knowledge of the lakes. "Beaver has too much development." "Lake of the Ozarks is a zoo of fast boats and developed shores." "Looking for quiet, pretty water, and big lakes? Try Table Rock or Bull Shoals - they're the best."
------On such thin threads, a cruise is planned. Since Bull Shoals is directly north of Ouachita, we headed there next with the idea that we could then do the more westerly Table Rock next on the way to our friends at Applegate Marina. We intended to leave Halcyon there for a few months while we headed westerly for the annual dentist/doctor checkups and holiday times with family.
------Bull Shoals is the largest lake in Arkansas 45,440 acres at normal pool level. It straddles the Missouri-Arkansas border in the heart of the Ozarks. This is limestone country as described in Ark Rocks.
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State Line and Beautiful Bedded Limestones
GEOLOGY
------There is a special feature of the limestones of the mid-continent that is well-displayed in the rocks bordering Bull Shoals - karst. The Karst Coast along the Adriatic in Croatia is world famous to geologists, and it lends its name to this feature. Limestones, and their cousin, dolomite, are carbonate rocks. They are usually precipitated, often with organic help, in shallow marine waters along the edges of continents. Some limey deposits are more bothersome - they may precipitate on your dripping faucets, in your household pipes, or as a ring in your bathtub. Minerals that precipitate from solution, can usually be dissolved with a reversal of conditions. In the case of limestone, and dolomite, the slight acidity of groundwater slowly dissolves the carbonate rocks. With time, the rock becomes as full of holes as Swiss cheese. Eventually, ground water movement might connect these holes into an elaborate system of caves and sinks.
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Red Soil Filling a Fissure (left) and a Cave (right)
------The buckling upward of the Ozarks has fractured and faulted some of the flat-lying thin-bedded old limestones. If you keep a sharp lookout at the bedding along the lake shore, you will see numerous displacements of the bedding by small faults. Sometimes the movement along the fault planes bends the limestones, up on the upthrown side and down on the edge of the downdropped block. Like a jigsaw, and a little curiosity, you can match the sides back together.
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Both Faults Have Right Side Up (the Left Picture, the Right Side of the Fault Dragged and Bent)
GORGEOUS SCENERY
------Limestone, and karst topography, make for beautiful scenery. The lake has many arms and coves to explore and anchoring is easy in the near-shore muds. The views, local wildlife, and the sunsets are incredible.
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Local Residents: Kestrel, Screech Owl, and Noisy End
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End of a Memorable Cruise
(10 - 04)
