Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Jerry's over there. This is short stuff. Getty up now,
Speaker 1: I've and the time of our lives. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I can't even sing that without thinking of the great
Speaker 1: Simpsons jokes. Same here the halftime of Our Life with
Speaker 1: Dolly Parton and Snoopy. Oh that's right, yeah, so the
Speaker 1: good one. So we're talking about Dirty Dancing and specifically
Speaker 1: uh Mountain Lake outside of Blacksburg, Virginia, where that was
Speaker 1: the location of Kellerman's lodge. Mountain Lake Lodge doubled as
Speaker 1: Kellerman's for the eighty seven classic film Dirty Dancing. It
Speaker 1: did um and that lake actually was a character in
Speaker 1: the film because they practiced. In a little bit of foreshadowing,
Speaker 1: Johnny Castle and Baby practice their dance move where he
Speaker 1: lifts her up over his head, which is basically the
Speaker 1: thing that brings the whole house down in the movie.
Speaker 1: It's like the climax of the movie is this dance
Speaker 1: move and they practice it in the lake. That's right,
Speaker 1: quick shout out. Jennifer Gray is still around in great
Speaker 1: She was in that TV show that I've binged, red Oaks.
Speaker 1: That is so fantastic that our buddy John Hodgman is
Speaker 1: and she's she plays the mom and she's wonderful. That's great.
Speaker 1: I gotta check that show out. Patrick Swayzy has leftist R.
Speaker 1: I P Yeah, he was wonderful man. Hell of a dancer,
Speaker 1: great fighter. It's pretty good actor, great singer, She's like
Speaker 1: the wind. Okay, I thought it was a good so
Speaker 1: I get chills every time I hear it. Still, well,
Speaker 1: I say, I know this is a short stuff, but
Speaker 1: I'll rank it as dancer, fighter, actor, singer in order
Speaker 1: of his best you know, his talents. I won't do
Speaker 1: spute that order. But it's just a spectrum of greatness. Okay.
Speaker 1: I loved him in He's great, So that's what I say.
Speaker 1: So the actual name of that lake, like you said,
Speaker 1: is Mountain Lake. Um. And the actual name of the
Speaker 1: resort that's that was supposedly Kellerman's resort, which I think
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be in like the Poconos, wasn't
Speaker 1: it not Virginia? But um there's the resort is actually
Speaker 1: in reality called Mountain Lake Lodge. And the people who
Speaker 1: own Mountain Lake Lodge and the people who are investors
Speaker 1: in Mountain Lake Lodge. They're not very happy about things
Speaker 1: these days because Mountain Lake keeps draining, and it keeps draining,
Speaker 1: and what was once a lodge and a resort that
Speaker 1: was based on fun and the sun on this lake
Speaker 1: in Virginia is now turning to things like archery and
Speaker 1: horseback rides and telling guests exactly why the lake is
Speaker 1: about at thirty five pc of its normal capacity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you just google dirty dan Sing Lake today or
Speaker 1: gazebo or boardwalk and you will see that that gazebo
Speaker 1: and doc boardwalk um or then in the middle of
Speaker 1: the field. Yeah, it's really creepy. Yeah, it's very weird.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna tell you why right now. Uh. Mountain
Speaker 1: Lake is one of two only two natural lakes in Virginia.
Speaker 1: Georgia has zero. They have to in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Speaker 1: And over the years, and we're talking every few hundred years,
Speaker 1: this lake empties and fills back up again naturally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird. And over the course of
Speaker 1: the six thousand years that this lake has been around,
Speaker 1: which I just find that so fascinating, don't you that
Speaker 1: a lake has only been around for six thousand years. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. But anyway, the six thousand years it's
Speaker 1: been around, it's actually empty three different times, chuck like
Speaker 1: completely emptied. Yeah. So there's two guys that figure heavily
Speaker 1: and sort of why the uh Mountain Lake is like
Speaker 1: it is. There's this one guy, what's his named Chester
Speaker 1: Watts Chester Skip Watts Skip is derivative of Chester obviously,
Speaker 1: so he's a geologist and he knows a lot about it.
Speaker 1: And there's this other guy, John Collie c A. W. L. E.
Speaker 1: Y that wrote his doctoral thesis on Mountain Lake in
Speaker 1: and they have explained that Mountain Lake has holes that
Speaker 1: has little holes on the bottom, a lot of them
Speaker 1: that continually drain this water out. And they've done die test.
Speaker 1: I think Watts did the die test and found that
Speaker 1: this water is coming out about a mile from here
Speaker 1: and it's been doing this for six thousand years. They
Speaker 1: literally got to the bottom of it. So, um, that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the mystery holes. But the thing is
Speaker 1: is the people over at Mountain Lake Lodge want to
Speaker 1: know why is it getting worse? Like why would this
Speaker 1: if if these holes have been here for all six
Speaker 1: thousand years. First of all, why didn't we start to
Speaker 1: notice this until like two thousand two? And secondly, like,
Speaker 1: why isn't it filling back up? Why does it just
Speaker 1: keep going down and down and down? And so how
Speaker 1: I think was it Cowley who explained it as a
Speaker 1: water budget. Yeah, he said, if you think of it
Speaker 1: like a bank account, you got you got money coming in,
Speaker 1: you've got money coming out. You want more money coming in,
Speaker 1: so that bank account gets bigger. And it's the same
Speaker 1: with this lake. You have inflow and outflow, and at
Speaker 1: various times throughout the history of this lake, there's been
Speaker 1: more outflow than inflow, right, And so there was a
Speaker 1: drought that actually started in the nineties, um that that
Speaker 1: led to this this lower inflow and which meant that
Speaker 1: there was more outflow, which explains it partially, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't fully explain it. We'll get real really, like reveal
Speaker 1: what's going on with this mystery? After these messages just
Speaker 1: up starts so much. Okay, chuck. So there was a drought,
Speaker 1: which means that there's more water going out than this's
Speaker 1: coming in. That's great because the drought ended. But the
Speaker 1: people at Mountain Lake Lodge said, well, the drought ended everybody,
Speaker 1: and this lake is still not filling up. What is
Speaker 1: the deal? They actually were so upset about this they
Speaker 1: paid Jerry Seinfeld to come get on the phone and
Speaker 1: ask what the deal was about it. That was a
Speaker 1: lot of money too, but it got everyone's attention. So
Speaker 1: he said, there's a few reasons. Uh, he said, it's
Speaker 1: not just one thing. You can't say it's even these
Speaker 1: two things. It's sort of Multifaceted's three, it's only three.
Speaker 1: So you've got the drought, which did not help. You've
Speaker 1: got um when Mountain Lake Lodge was built, a conference
Speaker 1: center above the lake, and to comply with building this thing,
Speaker 1: they had to construct stormwater management basins. And they said,
Speaker 1: you know what will probably happen is I don't know
Speaker 1: if they said that, but what they assumed. I guess
Speaker 1: what happened was that water would still get to the
Speaker 1: lake as groundwater. But they found out that wasn't happening.
Speaker 1: It was going to a creek. Yeah, is that what
Speaker 1: you say? You call it a creek. It's a creek. Boy,
Speaker 1: you just threw me off. Some people say creek though,
Speaker 1: right sure. I think you know country country folk who
Speaker 1: say warsh exactly. So um, that was kind of a
Speaker 1: big surprise that that water wasn't going where they thought
Speaker 1: it would because it's I guess these things are fairly
Speaker 1: close to the lake, and since it's above it, they
Speaker 1: just assumed to trickle down. So that's a big problem, right,
Speaker 1: And so the geologists are saying, well, I guess one
Speaker 1: thing you could do is plug the holes if you want,
Speaker 1: and then hopefully uh rainfall will kind of raise the levels.
Speaker 1: But you want to plug these holes one at a time,
Speaker 1: and Mountain Lake Live said too late, and they plugged
Speaker 1: them all at once, and he stared to scared the
Speaker 1: Jesus out of the geologists. Well, and the reason they
Speaker 1: did this was because they knew that one of the
Speaker 1: other facets of why it was draining was the sediment cycle.
Speaker 1: And it's just like something gets stuck in your sink, drain,
Speaker 1: it's gonna drain slower. And at various times throughout the
Speaker 1: history of this lake there might be things either stuck
Speaker 1: in or not stuck in. So it just happened that
Speaker 1: after dirty dancing that was not much stuck and so
Speaker 1: it was draining out a lot quicker than it normally
Speaker 1: might have. Yeah, Jennifer Gray was like, thank god, Patrick
Speaker 1: Swayzy wasn't alive to see this shameful thing. So how
Speaker 1: did they plug these holes? M While at first and
Speaker 1: the first apparently they were aware, I don't know if
Speaker 1: they lost memory of it or thought it was an
Speaker 1: anomaly or thought it would just go away. But in
Speaker 1: the first half of the twentie entry, at some point
Speaker 1: the Mountain Lake Lodge used mattresses to stuff into the holes.
Speaker 1: How big are these I tried to find it. I
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, I'm not sure how big they are,
Speaker 1: but from what I understand, there's more there than they thought.
Speaker 1: So one few mattresses isn't going to help. But also,
Speaker 1: like what poor bell Hop did they send down there
Speaker 1: to drag a mattress down to the bottom of a
Speaker 1: lake and try to stuff it in a hole, because
Speaker 1: you know, you know, that's who did it, of course,
Speaker 1: So that was it. That was their first attempt, um,
Speaker 1: and the second attempt was much more technologically advanced. They
Speaker 1: stuffed dirt and clay into it. Yeah dirt, Uh clay?
Speaker 1: Is that what what the bent tonight is? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like expanding clay. Yeah, that makes sense. They should have
Speaker 1: got some of that foam stuff that you spray in mouseholes.
Speaker 1: They basically just sped up the great stuff. They basically
Speaker 1: just sped up the sentiment cycle. But they they overdid
Speaker 1: it because the lake said nature will find a way
Speaker 1: and just started popping new holes. Yeah, it's crazy. This
Speaker 1: reminds me of the Exploding Lakes episode way back when.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the water level never got to full pond
Speaker 1: or for a full pool is what you can call it.
Speaker 1: That full pool, and they there is water there. There's
Speaker 1: more than there was in two thousand eight. Like if
Speaker 1: you look at pictures from two thousand and eight, that's
Speaker 1: when it was literally a field. Uh there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of water, but you can't canue or anything. You
Speaker 1: can't swim. It's kind of sad, to be honest, to
Speaker 1: look at it. But there's something to be said for
Speaker 1: archery and horseback riding. Sure, yeah, especially orchery. Archery on horseback.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, you get some you can level up
Speaker 1: if you do that stuff. Yeah, they comp your room
Speaker 1: for the night. But what said that, You know what,
Speaker 1: they could redirect water from another local watershed just gravity
Speaker 1: feed it down in there. He said that would probably
Speaker 1: do it. But you've got to be really careful because
Speaker 1: like we've seen, like the domino effect when you start
Speaker 1: messing with nature like that. But he said that would
Speaker 1: probably work if they want to explore that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they are or not, but we'll see. I
Speaker 1: don't know. The Mountain Lake Lodge board clearly does not
Speaker 1: bow before nature. It does not know. Well, that's it.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll have to revisit this in a few
Speaker 1: years to see what happens to Mountain Lake. Hopefully it'll
Speaker 1: come back, not just for Mountain Lake Lodge, but for
Speaker 1: the culture as a whole, the culture that loves dirty dancing.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, that means everybody that short stuff is out.
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