more about the "floating island."

These are some of the still pictures we took. The video part of my camera uses a lot of power, so I switched to still shots so as not to run out of picture space. So, the weed whacker (Lake Mess Monster) pulled the island as close as it could to shore, then the people tried to haul it in. It was very, very heavy. The rope was tied to a tree trunk on the island, which must have been deeply rooted, since it stayed in place.

As the island came close, we could see that there was a dock underneath. We speculated as to how old it was - I'm guessing 30 or 40 years. I wonder if there's some dusty old archives room at the Parks dept where we could find out. I imagine it was for rowboats or fishing off of. The styrofoam supporting it was still in place, though large bits were breaking off. It was about a foot thick. Some of the Alliance workers broke off big chunks of the styrofoam to cart them away, so they wouldn't get ground into little bits and pollute the lake.

They chained the island (by it's thick tree trunk)to the bulldozer to be pulled out. The official name of the big yellow machine may be something else, but I'm calling it a bulldozer. There was some concern about its brakes, so the dumpster truck was chained to it, to make sure that the bulldozer didn't end up in the lake. The lake is not deep, but the bottom consists of several feet of mud and muck. It would be an unbelievably hard job to get the dozer out if it slipped in. At first, everything went well. The island was pulled about 1/2way onto shore, and the bulldozer's operator used his shovel to break it up. Then it grabbed the stuff in big chunks and put it over into the dumpster. the work went very quickly - the operator of the dozer seemed incredibly good at his job.

The problem came when they got to the second half of the island It was still in the water, and there wasn't such a solid tree trunk to grab on to. The crew tried several ways to get a grip on it and drag it out. Each idea involved retying the ropes and chains in a different way. By the 2nd or 3rd try, it was after 11, JJ was getting restless, and we still hadn't had breakfast, so we decided to head on home and let them work it out without our input and photography.

And they did. This morning, there was absolutely no sign of the "floating island" except for a few broken bits of phragmites on the shoreline and a few (not too many) styrofoam beads.

I'm still excited about getting to see this operation. What new treats will my park bring to us next?