Boating and tubing for the youngsters T hrills and spills on G eorGia lakes I t’s summer, y’all, and it’s prime lake time. Are you ready for some lake exhilaration? Are you daring? Are you clued-in on the extraordinary watersports available in the twenty-first century? Follow along, dear reader. Use your imagination and gird your loins for what’s to come on Georgia’s lakes this fine summer – if you dare. Counting natural and manmade lakes, and one or two lakes it shares with another state, Georgia has more than 20 major lakes, and many smaller ones. Many are in the northern quarter of the Peach State; more extend from the eastern state line to the western line across the midsection of the state. A few more can be found in the southeastern quadrant. So compelling a natural feature is a lake that one area of Middle Georgia including Greene, Baldwin, Morgan and Putnam Counties tags itself Georgia Lake Country. While that section of Georgia is home to much of Lakes Oconee and Sinclair, two of the most popular recreational lakes in the state, the area can’t claim a monopoly on lacustrine endowment. The largest lake in the state is the 71,100-acre reservoir called the J. Strom Thurmond Lake, also commonly known as Clarkes Hill Lake, sitting betwixt Georgia and South Carolina along the Savannah ~ Story by T. Wayne Waters Wakesurfing on Lake Oconee Summer 2018 www.GeorgiaConnector.com 21