Earth Day Clean-up at Potato Creek Waterfowl Area 22-April-2026

       I am still catching up on blog posts and will start to cover additional topics other than trash after I get through a few more clean-ups I have completed. Disappointingly, since I did this clean-up the area has already been trashed again. This past Earth Day I wasn't up for driving over to Hickory Top to continue the effort their, so I stayed close to home and worked on the DNR Potato Creek Waterfowl Area. This really just consists of two pull-off parking areas and a boat ramp accessing a blocked off portion of the lake designated for waterfowl hunting. It does get considerable use by fishermen and all too often the edge is just full of trash. If you are a fisherman or hunter, please help in keeping these areas a bit nicer for both other who use it and the wildlife that call this home. 


       This is what it looked like near the boat launch. A lot of discarded trash right off of where people park when taking boats out.


       I pulled a decent amount of trash out. I don't recall ever finding a steering wheel cover before, so that was a new trash item.  

         Single use bottles, plastic and glass are always seem to be the most abundant trash item in these spots. It isn't hard to take these items home and dispose of them properly. 

       Even grabbed all the flattened items I could find right in the parking/launch area. 

 









         After picking up around the launch I moved down the road a little bit. There is a short trail there that just runs along a canal that connects Potato Creek to the main lake. A lot of people like to fish there and it does end up getting really trashy. 


Trash at the trailhead. It was like this all along the road.


It didn't take long before I had this pile collected.


Bag filled. With this and what I collected by the boat launch I already had a little over a bag and a half.


Walking down the trail. Not as trashy as it is sometimes, but there were still items on the trailside. 


      Along the canal can be much worse than this. I just don't get if this is a place where you come to eat, fish and relax, why trash it?


Largest single pile along the canal. Most was spread out on the side.


      Handful after handful slowly filled up the bag.




With the bag full all that was left was to take the trail back out to the car.


       Two and a little over a half bags and a broken fishing pole and my car was filled up. There was some pretty disgusting trash in these, so unlike the Hickory Top clean-ups where I show what all was collected, this went strait to the dump. By the boat launch even a diaper was picked up.

       If you use these public spaces, please take out everything you brought with you and if you can pick up a few pieces of trash you see on your visit. If we all just try a little more, all of use could be living in a much nicer trash free place.

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