Tag: lakes

Iona’s Beach: the singing beach on Minnesota’s North Shore

Nathan

Minnesota, or the Land of 10,000 Lakes, boasts a lot of beaches to choose from, with their pictoresque rocky shores and beautiful sandy dunes alike await visitors every summer. Each offers its own beauty, but there is one beach in particular that is truly unique. It is Iona’s beach, unlike any other in the world as, instead of silky, golden sand, it is covered in smooth pink rocks that, if you know when to listen, sing. The beach sings its signature song as the waves come in and disturb the…

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Devil’s Lake (and its stories): a remnant of the last Ice Age in Wisconsin, this lake is surrounded by fascinating rock formations.

Leo S

Nestled near the small circus town of Baraboo, Wisconsin, is Devil’s Lake State Park, named for the large lake that sits at its center. The lake is located in the middle of a deep chasm, with no visible inlet or outlet. Its name comes from a misinterpretation of a term from the Ho-Chunk Nation, the region’s Indigenous inhabitants. In any case, on a cool foggy day, it’s not too hard to imagine why, and imagination probably had a lot to do with it. At the time when white trappers, then…

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The Inca legend of Lake Titicaca and other mysteries about its origin

Ivan

We are in Peru. The history of the creation of some local cities is sometimes based on the Inca mythological legends. One of the best known is the myth of the origin of Lake Titicaca, whose main characters are the inhabitants of Puno, a city in southeastern Peru, not by chance located on the shore of lake. Lake Titicaca is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. It is located in the Andes, on the border between Bolivia and Peru, with a surface elevation of 3,812 metres, and It’s always…

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World’s loneliest monk lives in his own temple in the middle of Tibetan lake 100 miles from nearest town

Robin

Located on top of a small mound, on a sliver of land stretching into the serene Yamdrok Lake is Rituo Temple, the home of just one solitary monk who spends his days chanting sutras and meditating. Rituo literally means “the stone on the mountain” in Tibetan, and it is often referred to as Tibet’s loneliest temple. Its history goes back more than 700 years, but it’s still today considered one of the country’s hidden gems, and few tourists venture out to visit it. That’s because it’s located in the middle…

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The Legend of the drowned city of Kitezh submerged in Svetloyar Lake

Ivan

According to a Russian legend, hidden beneath the waters of Lake Svetloyar, in the Nizhny Novgorod Region north-east of Moscow, there is Kitezh, a mythical city built by Georgy II, the Grand Prince of Vladimir in the early part of the 13th century. Its first reference comes in an anonymous late 18th century book known as “the Kitezh Chronicle” which was thought to have originated among the Old Believers of Russia. The book does not actually say that the city disappeared or that it was covered by the lake, but…

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Corenno Plinio: enchanting medieval hamlet on the eastern branch of Como Lake

Anya016

Corenno Plinio is a small and charming medieval settlement just few minutes far from Dervio, on the eastern branch of Como Lake, Italy. It is an enchanted place that few people know, that stands atop a stone spur overlooking the waters of lake.Walking through its narrow streets and along the stairs built in the rocks, from the castle to the lake, it is impossible not to be charmed by this small hamlet that sweats history in every corner.Not by chance, it is also know as “The village of a thousand…

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Catemaco: the witchcraft capital of Mexico

Ivan

We are in Catemaco, in eastern Mexico. Built on the shores of the eponymous lake, the town has a long history of fishing, even though nowadays, the town’s main economic activity is tourism. In the 1970s, tourism to Catemaco spiked massively owing to the fame of Gonzalo Aguirre, a renowned sorcerer who lived and practiced in the region. During his lifetime, Aguirre performed rituals for politicians, actors, and business leaders. He also organized a witchcraft convention that brought together the country’s top shamans for a black mass. After his death,…

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Pozzo del Diavolo: was this cave created by Hercules’s wrath, the devil, or volcanic activity?

Ivan

We are in Italy, in Lazio region, above Vico Lake in the beautiful beech forest of Monte Venere, part of the UNESCO’s Primeval Beech Forests of Europe transnational network of protected sites. At 507 meters above sea level, Lake Vico is the highest volcanic lake in Italy and the beech forest of Monte Venere is among the lowest in the country (most beech forests are located above 900 meters). Thanks to its peculiar natural characteristics, the lake offers a rich variety of plant species and different environments, allowing the life…

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The frozen lighthouse of Cleveland, Ohio

Nathan

In Cleveland, Ohio, there is a lighhouse that is placed so close to Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes of the Midwest, that a wonderful weather phenomenon takes place. Each winter, in fact, the West Pierhead Lighthouse is literally fully encrusted with ice. It started during the winter of 2010, when local Cleveland news stations began reporting on a gorgeous natural phenomenon: an ice sculpture rising from the waters of Lake Erie. But this wasn’t a work of art, but the lighthouse encased entirely in ice, looking like a…

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Whiting: the natural phenomenon that causes Nevada’s Lake Pyramid to turn turquoise

Robin

Once every 7 to 10 years, a remote lake in Nevada experiences an algae boom so significant that its color changes from dark blue to a vibrant turquoise, in a phenomenon known as “whiting”. Located in a remote desert area of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribes’ Reservation, about 40 miles northeast of Reno, Lake Pyramid is famous for the whiting events that occur there every decade or so. In the course of a few weeks the water turns light blue, turquoise, and, in rare cases, even white. Despite this spontaneous…

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Crater Lake: the deepest lake in the United States, and once the site of epic destruction that lives on in myth.

Leo S

Crater Lake, Oregon, has been known different names. It was first known, to non-Native Americans anyway, as “Deep Blue Lake,” as named in 1853 by its discoverer, John Wesley Hillman, an American prospector. Later, in 1885, it was dubbed Lake Majesty, and finally Crater Lake. Today Crater Lake and the Crater National Park that surrounds it are popular destinations for hikers and campers, but it was once the site of enormous geological upheaval, and one of the largest volcanic eruptions ever witnessed by humans, so terrifying that it has been…

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The mystery of WWII bomber plane that still lies in North Carolina’s Badin Lake

Leo S

Apparently some North Carolina lakes of considerable depth generate as many legendary tales, expecially fish tales, but not only. Badin Lake, just outside the town of Albemarle, is not an exception. Created in 1917 by the damming of the Yadkin river, the 5300-acre lake reaches depths of over 60 meters and holds in its belly the remains of farmhouses and entire forests, as well as, according to a legend, the mysterious wreckage of a World War II B-25 Mitchell bomber. As story goes, Mary Elizabeth McDaniel hurried through an early…

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“Old Man of the Lake”: the tree log that has been floating vertically for 120 years and no one knows why.

Leo S

“Old Man of the Lake” is not a legend or a myth, but a real 450-year-old hemlock that’s been floating vertically in the Oregon’s Crater Lake for at least 120 years. The floating tree stump has been bobbing in the blue water of the deepest lake in the United States, and the ninth deepest in the world, baffling everybody, including scientists, with its upright orientation and allegedly even controlling the local weather. Its first account dates back to 1896, when geologist and explorer Joseph S. Diller described a splintered and…

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Captain William Robinson: the keeper who won’t leave his lighthouse in Whitehall – Michigan

Anya016

White River is nearly twenty-four miles (about 38 km) in length and passes through White Lake before emptying into Lake Michigan. When in 1675, Father Pere Marquette stopped in the area, he learned that the Native Americans called the stream “Wabish-Sippe,” meaning the river with white clay in the water, which probably originated the names of White River and White Lake. The cities of Whitehall and Montague are located on opposite sides of the river at the head of White Lake and were first settled by Europeans just before the…

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The beautiful old shipwrecks visible from sky above to crystal clear water of Lake Michigan

Pavel

In these days of quarantine, in which nature seems to be reborn thanks to the forced interruption of human activities, many photographs circulating on the web of clear waters, or animals that reclaim spaces previously occupied by man. The images of wrecks that stand out distinctly on the bottom of Lake Michigan, in the United States, could seem to be taken these days, due to the extraordinary transparency of the water. Instead, each spring on this lake, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to see shipwrecks due to the incredibly…

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Buntzen Lake Powerhouses: the set of Stephen King’s IT Miniseries~

Leo S

The area around Indian Arm, British Columbia, is a very beautiful place to go for a hike: there are many trails accessible by foot, by mountain bike, or by horse. But beware around the Buntzen powerhouses on area’s eastern shore: There were some really creepy clown sightings there some years back! Buntzen lake used to be named Trout Lake, and was also called Lake Beautiful,and was renamed to Buntzen Lake in 1905 at the opening of the tunnel to Coquitlam Lake. Along the edge of the water, there is a…

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Travelers Monument: one of the most curious parts of the journey on the Mojave Road, California~

Leo S

The Mojave Road, is a historic route across what is now the Mojave National Preserve in the Mojave Desert in the United States. This rough road stretched 147 miles (237 km) and today has become a famous trek for off-road enthusiasts. The Old Mojave Road was first used by Native Americans, then Spaniards, and later early American settlers to make their way west through the dangerous Mojave Desert. The traveler’s Monument is one of the most curious parts of the journey on the Mojave Road. This large pile of rocks…

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Tanzania: the lake Natron and the petrified animals

Ivan

Don’t let the ring of salty marshes along the edge of Lake Natron fool you: this body of water is one of the most inhospitable areas on Earth! We are in Monduli, Tanzania. Even if the salty red hell is a beautiful sight for eyes, unfortunately conceals a terrible secret. Colored a deep red from salt-loving organisms and algae, the lake reaches hellish temperatures and is nearly as lethal as ammonia. We known that most human settlements throughout history have formed around lakes and rivers, however, the barren and inhospital…

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