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Short Stuff: Disappearing Dirty Dancing Lake · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Jerry's over there. This is short stuff. Getty up now,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I've and the time of our lives. That's pretty good.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I can't even sing that without thinking of the great
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Simpsons jokes. Same here the halftime of Our Life with
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Dolly Parton and Snoopy. Oh that's right, yeah, so the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: good one. So we're talking about Dirty Dancing and specifically
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: uh Mountain Lake outside of Blacksburg, Virginia, where that was
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the location of Kellerman's lodge. Mountain Lake Lodge doubled as
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Kellerman's for the eighty seven classic film Dirty Dancing. It
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: did um and that lake actually was a character in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the film because they practiced. In a little bit of foreshadowing,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Johnny Castle and Baby practice their dance move where he
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: lifts her up over his head, which is basically the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: thing that brings the whole house down in the movie.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It's like the climax of the movie is this dance
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: move and they practice it in the lake. That's right,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: quick shout out. Jennifer Gray is still around in great
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: She was in that TV show that I've binged, red Oaks.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: That is so fantastic that our buddy John Hodgman is
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and she's she plays the mom and she's wonderful. That's great.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I gotta check that show out. Patrick Swayzy has leftist R.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I P Yeah, he was wonderful man. Hell of a dancer,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: great fighter. It's pretty good actor, great singer, She's like
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the wind. Okay, I thought it was a good so
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I get chills every time I hear it. Still, well,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I say, I know this is a short stuff, but
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I'll rank it as dancer, fighter, actor, singer in order
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of his best you know, his talents. I won't do
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: spute that order. But it's just a spectrum of greatness. Okay.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I loved him in He's great, So that's what I say.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So the actual name of that lake, like you said,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: is Mountain Lake. Um. And the actual name of the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: resort that's that was supposedly Kellerman's resort, which I think
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to be in like the Poconos, wasn't
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: it not Virginia? But um there's the resort is actually
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: in reality called Mountain Lake Lodge. And the people who
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: own Mountain Lake Lodge and the people who are investors
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: in Mountain Lake Lodge. They're not very happy about things
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: these days because Mountain Lake keeps draining, and it keeps draining,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and what was once a lodge and a resort that
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: was based on fun and the sun on this lake
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: in Virginia is now turning to things like archery and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: horseback rides and telling guests exactly why the lake is
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: about at thirty five pc of its normal capacity. Yeah.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: If you just google dirty dan Sing Lake today or
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: gazebo or boardwalk and you will see that that gazebo
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and doc boardwalk um or then in the middle of
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the field. Yeah, it's really creepy. Yeah, it's very weird.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna tell you why right now. Uh. Mountain
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Lake is one of two only two natural lakes in Virginia.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Georgia has zero. They have to in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And over the years, and we're talking every few hundred years,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: this lake empties and fills back up again naturally. Yeah,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: which is kind of weird. And over the course of
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the six thousand years that this lake has been around,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: which I just find that so fascinating, don't you that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a lake has only been around for six thousand years. Yeah, yeah,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I love that. But anyway, the six thousand years it's
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: been around, it's actually empty three different times, chuck like
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: completely emptied. Yeah. So there's two guys that figure heavily
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and sort of why the uh Mountain Lake is like
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: it is. There's this one guy, what's his named Chester
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Watts Chester Skip Watts Skip is derivative of Chester obviously,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: so he's a geologist and he knows a lot about it.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And there's this other guy, John Collie c A. W. L. E.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Y that wrote his doctoral thesis on Mountain Lake in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and they have explained that Mountain Lake has holes that
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: has little holes on the bottom, a lot of them
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: that continually drain this water out. And they've done die test.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I think Watts did the die test and found that
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: this water is coming out about a mile from here
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and it's been doing this for six thousand years. They
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: literally got to the bottom of it. So, um, that's it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the mystery holes. But the thing is
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: is the people over at Mountain Lake Lodge want to
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: know why is it getting worse? Like why would this
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: if if these holes have been here for all six
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: thousand years. First of all, why didn't we start to
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: notice this until like two thousand two? And secondly, like,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: why isn't it filling back up? Why does it just
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: keep going down and down and down? And so how
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I think was it Cowley who explained it as a
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: water budget. Yeah, he said, if you think of it
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: like a bank account, you got you got money coming in,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: you've got money coming out. You want more money coming in,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: so that bank account gets bigger. And it's the same
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: with this lake. You have inflow and outflow, and at
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: various times throughout the history of this lake, there's been
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: more outflow than inflow, right, And so there was a
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: drought that actually started in the nineties, um that that
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: led to this this lower inflow and which meant that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: there was more outflow, which explains it partially, but it
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't fully explain it. We'll get real really, like reveal
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: what's going on with this mystery? After these messages just
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: up starts so much. Okay, chuck. So there was a drought,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: which means that there's more water going out than this's
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: coming in. That's great because the drought ended. But the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: people at Mountain Lake Lodge said, well, the drought ended everybody,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and this lake is still not filling up. What is
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the deal? They actually were so upset about this they
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: paid Jerry Seinfeld to come get on the phone and
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: ask what the deal was about it. That was a
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: lot of money too, but it got everyone's attention. So
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: he said, there's a few reasons. Uh, he said, it's
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: not just one thing. You can't say it's even these
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: two things. It's sort of Multifaceted's three, it's only three.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So you've got the drought, which did not help. You've
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: got um when Mountain Lake Lodge was built, a conference
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: center above the lake, and to comply with building this thing,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: they had to construct stormwater management basins. And they said,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: you know what will probably happen is I don't know
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: if they said that, but what they assumed. I guess
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: what happened was that water would still get to the
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: lake as groundwater. But they found out that wasn't happening.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: It was going to a creek. Yeah, is that what
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: you say? You call it a creek. It's a creek. Boy,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: you just threw me off. Some people say creek though,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: right sure. I think you know country country folk who
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: say warsh exactly. So um, that was kind of a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: big surprise that that water wasn't going where they thought
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: it would because it's I guess these things are fairly
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: close to the lake, and since it's above it, they
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: just assumed to trickle down. So that's a big problem, right,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And so the geologists are saying, well, I guess one
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: thing you could do is plug the holes if you want,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and then hopefully uh rainfall will kind of raise the levels.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: But you want to plug these holes one at a time,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and Mountain Lake Live said too late, and they plugged
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: them all at once, and he stared to scared the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Jesus out of the geologists. Well, and the reason they
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: did this was because they knew that one of the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: other facets of why it was draining was the sediment cycle.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And it's just like something gets stuck in your sink, drain,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: it's gonna drain slower. And at various times throughout the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: history of this lake there might be things either stuck
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: in or not stuck in. So it just happened that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: after dirty dancing that was not much stuck and so
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it was draining out a lot quicker than it normally
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: might have. Yeah, Jennifer Gray was like, thank god, Patrick
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Swayzy wasn't alive to see this shameful thing. So how
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: did they plug these holes? M While at first and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the first apparently they were aware, I don't know if
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: they lost memory of it or thought it was an
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: anomaly or thought it would just go away. But in
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the first half of the twentie entry, at some point
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the Mountain Lake Lodge used mattresses to stuff into the holes.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: How big are these I tried to find it. I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, I'm not sure how big they are,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: but from what I understand, there's more there than they thought.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So one few mattresses isn't going to help. But also,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: like what poor bell Hop did they send down there
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: to drag a mattress down to the bottom of a
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: lake and try to stuff it in a hole, because
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, that's who did it, of course,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So that was it. That was their first attempt, um,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and the second attempt was much more technologically advanced. They
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: stuffed dirt and clay into it. Yeah dirt, Uh clay?
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Is that what what the bent tonight is? Yeah, it's
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: like expanding clay. Yeah, that makes sense. They should have
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: got some of that foam stuff that you spray in mouseholes.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: They basically just sped up the great stuff. They basically
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: just sped up the sentiment cycle. But they they overdid
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it because the lake said nature will find a way
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: and just started popping new holes. Yeah, it's crazy. This
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: reminds me of the Exploding Lakes episode way back when.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: But yeah, the water level never got to full pond
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: or for a full pool is what you can call it.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: That full pool, and they there is water there. There's
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: more than there was in two thousand eight. Like if
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: you look at pictures from two thousand and eight, that's
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: when it was literally a field. Uh there's a little
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: bit of water, but you can't canue or anything. You
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: can't swim. It's kind of sad, to be honest, to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: look at it. But there's something to be said for
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: archery and horseback riding. Sure, yeah, especially orchery. Archery on horseback.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, you get some you can level up
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: if you do that stuff. Yeah, they comp your room
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: for the night. But what said that, You know what,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: they could redirect water from another local watershed just gravity
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: feed it down in there. He said that would probably
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: do it. But you've got to be really careful because
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: like we've seen, like the domino effect when you start
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: messing with nature like that. But he said that would
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: probably work if they want to explore that. I don't
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: know if they are or not, but we'll see. I
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: don't know. The Mountain Lake Lodge board clearly does not
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: bow before nature. It does not know. Well, that's it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I guess we'll have to revisit this in a few
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: years to see what happens to Mountain Lake. Hopefully it'll
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: come back, not just for Mountain Lake Lodge, but for
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the culture as a whole, the culture that loves dirty dancing.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, that means everybody that short stuff is out.
• 11:42
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• 11:44
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