As I mentioned in the Frog Hollow RV Park blog post, we were advised by our campground hosts to visit Grenada Lake, which was only a 15-minute drive from our campground. We drove over, we were amazed by the beauty and the vastness of the lake. Grenada Lake covers 90,000-acres and contains public beaches, public forests, a waterfowl refuge and a massive dam. The Grenada Lake was constructed in 1954 by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to help control flooding along the Yazoo River Basin. We arrived later in the day, so we headed to the Visitor’s Center to learn more about the history of the park and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers work for flood control and fish and wildlife conservation on the property. Not only is the Visitor’s Center chock full of information, but it is situated with incredible views of miles of lake. We picked up some maps of trails in the area, but due to the fading light opted out of hiking that day. Driving along the levee road, and looking down on the lake, it’s hard not to notice that a good portion of the ground was dry.
It was November, so the water levels were low, and we couldn’t help but explore the formerly sodden ground of the lake. Wildlife could be seen roaming around – deer, egret, and geese.
The next day, after paying for the rest of the week at Frog Hollow, we ventured out again to Grenada Lake for a hike in the woods. We decided to hike the Lost Bluff Hiking Trail, which is a two-mile trail loop leading you through all kinds of terrain from easy to extremely strenuous. There are a lot of ups and downs along the trail, but the real strenuous part is going down an old wooden staircase walking a mile then going up another one. We did stop at a bench that overlooked a scenic part of the river. The trail loop also passes a Civil War earthen fort used by the Confederates. Looking over the edge of it, I would not have wanted to be a Union soldier climbing the ridge in the midst of battle. Even after an arduous hike, we still had not had our fill of Grenada Lake.
When we lived in Virginia, we hiked the area and Mike got me hooked on geocaching, which involves searching through urban or wooded areas using a GPS and/or compass to find hidden “caches.” We searched on the Geocaching website and got coordinates of geocaches scattered all over Grenada Lake. Mike loaded the coordinates into his GPS receiver and we set out to find them. These caches were mostly hidden in wooded areas, many not located on trails, so searching for them requires a bit of bush-whacking. The first few we searched for were located in the woods surrounding the lake and the hilly unfamiliar topography occasionally made it difficult to navigate without frequently checking the GPS. Sometimes it took as long to find our way back to the car as it had taken to reach the geocache. The caches we found were definitely off the beaten track, one was even hanging from a tree. The next ones we sought out were along the shoreline of the lake and in picnicking areas. One took us forever to find; I was grateful for the cold blustery weather so no muggles could see us publicly circle a clump of trees for 10 minutes trying to spot a tiny camouflaged film canister. They can be deceptively hidden but each geocache contained a logbook and sometimes a pen. We signed ours with a #WherertheHekawie, so if you happen to find one with that hashtag, we’ve been there.
Though we were focused on finding the caches, I was fascinated by the peculiar almost ceramic texture of the beach. I’m so accustomed to seeing beaches with granules of sand, but the shoreline was rocky yet fragile. Due to the low water level, the sediment of sand was clay-like. The plates of sand along the shoreline withstood minimal pressure, but once you stepped on it – plates would shatter into multiple pieces. It reminded me of clay pots made in high school art class, the sand felt like clay that was only partially dried from the kiln and fragment like eggs if mishandled. It also called to mind the geological history of the south we learned while exploring Mammoth Caves.
We’ve really come full circle – well maybe half circle.
