Lake Mendota

Nat Geo calls Madison the Midwest's most effortless giveaway.

The city sits on the isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona and has more than 200 miles of trails.

and about 300 parks, which is among the most per person of any U.S. cities.

So congratulations to Madison for making this list.

yeah i'm in oh my gosh sorry my wife's facetiming me um i am in madison wisconsin and um I'm in Madison, Wisconsin, and we're going for common carp, buffalo, like bigmouth buffalo every now and then, but targeting common carp.

So that's where we're at, and there's plenty of fish around here, Lake Mendota, Lake Monona.

There's plenty over here.

Big waters have big fish, and that's what we come here for to try to go for it.

And I was just so intrigued by that knowledge of global trade 2,000 years ago.

So I came back to Madison, got certified at Hoofer's Scuba right on Lake Mendota and got a PADI certification, so for life.

So then once you're diving and you're getting that training, the dive sites are the local shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.

And I was astounded by the incredible preservation of these wooden vessels over 150 years old.

Yes, so I would say I have worked with Tamara Thompson.

She's our state underwater archaeologist and who's found...

the canoes in Lake Mendota.

So right off...

And then as we continue to collect real-time data, that turns into then that historic climatological data.

So we can continue to monitor those trends We do continue to see climate change impacting Wisconsin, like less ice cover on the lakes, a shorter ice season over Lake Mendota, Lake Monona, warmer winters that are impacting the cranberry growers.

So it's something that is going to really be an impact to Wisconsin is climate change.

And we are monitoring that with our data and that data.

Now, experts with the Wisconsin Historical Society have determined that the vessel is a roughly 1,000-year-old dugout canoe, likely handcrafted and used by Indigenous communities in the late 10th or early 11th centuries.

Numerous dugout canoes have been found throughout Wisconsin, including 16 in an ancient canoe parking lot in Lake Mendota, near the state capital Madison.

But the newly discovered vessel is believed to be the first found in Pewaukee Lake, a 2,437-acre spring-fed body of water located in Waukesha County on the western outskirts of Milwaukee.

Shackner, a 45-year-old member of the Four Seasons Scuba Diving Club, was participating in a volunteer trash cleanup dive in Pewaukee Lake on May 6 when he spotted the canoes.

Immediately, he realized that he had stumbled upon something special.

He made note of the vessel's location and got in touch with Tamara Thompson, a maritime archaeologist with the Society.

It stuck out to me, Shackner tells the Wisconsin State Journal's Barry Adams, adding that he was aware of the dugout canoes previously found by Thompson and her colleagues in Lake Mendota.

I always keep my eyes peeled.

And so, um, Now we're in the state, it's funny you mentioned like the, we love forest too much.

When I was at UW Madison, I was doing some restoration work and the university actually owns like 300 acres right around Lake Mendota.

That's historically Oak Savannah.

And there's still some of the legacy open grown trees, but it's entirely forested now and it's all full of invasive species.

Well, that was one thing I was gonna bring up, is it's not just Devil's Lake- There's a story in R- uh, Rock Lake, in Lake Mills, where there's also a sea serpent.

And we have one in Waukesha where there's a sea serpent in the Fox River, and we have Lake Mendota.

There are these sea serpents all across the state of Wisconsin.

Lake Geneva.