44th - Little Beaver Lake and 45th - West Beaver Lake

Saturday July 17th - Bright and Sunny day. Today I took Morgan done to Palmer Hay Flats to run a 5k race. The race was very interesting following the scout ridge trail system. Morgan finished fourth overall and the second female runner. The times were horribly slow, we all think the course was long. Several runners that was going to run the 5K ended up running the 10K race nobaody told them were to turn around. To say the least the race was not organized well from the course to the awards. The run is to support the Palmer Hay Flats which is a great cause but the need to work out the bugs if they want to continue with this race nexst year. Finally about 11 am we left and decided to go swim a few more lake in the Big Lake area. There are 8 lakes in the area that have been stocked. The last swim I swam two in the area and was hoping to swim 3 or 4 today. We decided to go to Little Beaver first since I have fished this lake and it was easy to find the public access point. The access point is right in the middle of the lake and since this lake is small I decided to swim a triangle. I am using my new precription goggles so hopefully I don't over shot by exit point. No problems with the goggles they worked great. Total strokes 579 to complete the triangle and a total time of 19 minutes and 8 seconds. One note on this lake their are weeds located at both ends and a few weeds around the shore. After swimming this lake we decided to drive over the hill to West Beaver Lake. We couldn't find the public access point to this lake we think it is at the end of the lake according to the map. Looking at this lake we noticed that the shallow end of the lake was full of lily pads and I had no interest of swimming through them. So we were driving along the lake and decided to stop at a house that was near the middle of the lake, but no one was home. We drove back up the road and next house we notice a lady working in her yard and we pulled into her driveway and asked her if we can have access to the lake through her property. Of course I told her what we were doing and typical response why and I reply why not nobody that I know has ever tried swimming all the lakes. She gave us permission and told us to watch out for the big rainbows (I already know this lake had large rainbows since it had been stocked with triploids) and leeches. Since the enter point was near the middle of the lake I decided to swim another triangle. I got my gear on and Morgan sat by the shore and watched me take off. 425 strokes later I reach the end of the lake and I swam another 425 strokes along the shore line passing my exit point which I can see because of the new goggles then it took me 96 more stokes to cross the lake to reach my original entry point. Thus, total of 946 strokes and 30 minutes 16 seconds to swim West Beaver Lake. We decided to drive over to Big Beaver Lake to see if i could swim that lake today as well. I have fished this lake before and knew it was a large lake. Once we arrived at the lake I knew that it had to be around 1 to 1.25 miles long. Thus, I decided that we should bring the boat the make the swim quicker since thenI would only have to swim one direction. In addition, the other remaining lakes are similar in size and would require the boat. So we headed home in hopes that Sunday would be like today.