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What's up everybody, it's Simon from Lake Up, and today we are in northeastern Oklahoma
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exploring Grand Lake of the Cherokee, aka Grand Lake, not the Grand Lake that's in Colorado
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not Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio, but Grand Lake in Oklahoma. Grand Lake is over 46,000 acres
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It's a huge lake. It has over 1,300 miles of shoreline to
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explore and it sits pretty much right in between Tulsa Oklahoma and Joplin
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Missouri about an hour hour and a half from each a grand lake was made from the
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Neosho River aka the Grand River in the 1930s and 40s lake was created in
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order to generate power for the Cherokee Nation in northeastern Oklahoma now in order to do that it took three dams two small ones and one big one
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the Pensacola Dam which is a 5,000 feet. That's nearly a mile long and it is the longest multi-arched bridge in the world
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As far as fishing goes fishing is not just fantastic here It next level It is legendary Besides being known as the croppy fishing capital of the world Grand Lake is often host to huge huge bass tournaments
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Besides all the frequent regional and kind of regular tournaments, recently we've had stops on the MLF tour, Major League Fishing
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including Red Crest, which is like the Super Bowl of MLF, as well as used to open qualifiers
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It has all the fish that you expect in the southern lake, largemouth bass that are just fantastic, croppy white bass, catfish, all the good stuff
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As far as camping, there is a ton of camping around Grand Lake
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I'm at Bernie State Park right now, kind of the northwestern side of the lake, boat ramp, lots of camping
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In fact, it's wide open right now because it's a little bit of a heat wave
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We've got a summer heat wave going on. Not a lot of folks camping don blame them There are some shady spots but still there a place to swim right over here behind me but still it darn hot It 102 Heat index must be 100 and 6 or 7 maybe more It hot It does cool off most of the year We are in the foothills of the Ozarks We kind of getting out of the hilly area So I wouldn call these mountains I call these hills A little along the elevation
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This isn't western Oklahoma, you know, plateau, plains. You know, so it's going to get colder in the wintertime
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than it does in other parts of Oklahoma. But it's not going to get super-duper cold
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It's not usually going to get super-duper hot either. Besides the state park
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I mean, there are well over a dozen places to camp around this lake between, you know, private campgrounds and RV parks, public, places like this
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Great place to camp. As far as boating goes, I mean, there's over a dozen very well-improved boat ramps as well
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And there's a dozen marinas. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on here. There's a lot to love about Grand Lake
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There's a lot of amenities. It's a big place. but there are towns in and around
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It's very akin to Cedar Creek Lake down in Texas. For you birders, you will see bald eagles here in the wintertime, which is pretty cool
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Some eagles will winter up here, and there are plenty of other birds too
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If you like wheeling or mudden four by four rock crawling all that kind of stuff you have to check out the big meat run The big meat run is below the dam
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There's this whole, you know, kind of off road, off highway vehicle, OHV mess around area with trails and all kinds of stuff down below the dam along the river
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And the big meat run usually happens in the springtime. And it's massive
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Thousands. I want to say thousands, thousands of people for sure, hundreds of vehicles, everything from
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four-wheelers side-by-sides, you know, to just crazy, you know, backyard-made rigs and all the way up
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to monster trucks going through massive huge mud pits and all kinds of craziness
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It's a whole weekend of just mud. That's Grand Lake. I hope you come up and visit because eastern Oklahoma is this whole chain of lakes and it is just
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awesome country. There's everything from prairie to pines and all kinds of cool stuff in
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between. Lots of history in this area. And if you need some help planning your trip, go to
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grandlake.com. I'll put a link down below. You'll have a map of all the boat ramps
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of all the marinas, of all the campgrounds and everything else. I'm Simon from Lake Up and we'll see you
