Disaster at Faifield Lake State Park

On this trip to Fairfield State Park we found the place almost empty and scored the spot we had always wanted but had never been able to get. We shared the Park with only 8 other camping groups and were in a pull through close to my fishing hole. The weather was perfect and I headed out for a fabulous mountain bike ride. The Dockery trail, also called the perimeter trail is a nice ride with some tough climbs and an out and back distance of 14 miles if you also ride the primitive campsite loop at the far end. I really like the section in the pines and the quiet of riding on pine straw.

Now for the disaster part and the reason the Park was almost empty, a major fish kill has happened with over a million fish involved. Somewhere around 50 thousand of these were large mouth bass, which is almost all of the bass in the lake, in fact I am surprised it held that many bass. The reason for the fish kill was a lack of oxygen in the water, since this is a power plant cooling lake the water got very warm and an algae bloom consumed almost all of the oxygen. What a tragic event that will take many years to recover from, if it ever does.

Last weekend we visited Lake Mineral Wells State Park with our friends Gary and Lugay where we camped, saw numerous deer and rode 40 miles of rails to trails along with surviving a major rain storm before the ride.

This is a very nice Park with sites spaced far apart and with good vegetation between them. The facilities are also nice.This Park stays booked up and I can see why, with good fishing, hiking and biking and is less than 2 hours from the house.

I will have another post soon, we just returned from our first ever trip to the Grand Canyon and I need to look over this Flagstaff Arizona real estate guide.

Dennis