Floating new ideas for living.

When construction first began on the Tri-Lakes—Grenada, Enid and Sardis Lakes—the idea was initially greeted with some skepticism as valuable farmlands had to be flooded in order to make way for the projects’ completion. But today, the Tri-Lakes bring millions of visitors to the area every year, and function as peaceful havens for both man and nature alike. Thousands of acres of beautiful blue water, hundreds of miles of shoreline and acre upon acre of prime opportunity for hunting, camping, boating, skiing, swimming and picnicking.

Even Faulkner, with all his reservations about the encroachment of “progress,” appreciated the man-made wonder of Sardis Lake. On the houseboat that he and friends Hugh Evans and Ross Brown built for trawling Sardis, here is what the future Nobel laureate inscribed:

“Out of Confusion by Boundless Hope: Conceived in a Canadian Club bottle She was born A.D. 15th August 1947 by uproarious Caesarian Section in prone position with her bottom upward in Evan’s back yard…”

Faulkner once spent an afternoon with his friend Eudora Welty sailing Sardis in the sailboat he christened The Ring Dove. You may want to spend an afternoon sailing these lakes—or you may want to spend a few days or more. In any case, after you’ve had your fill of water fun, start north again, toward a place that has been a haven of a different sort, in Como, where a dying breed of blues artists made joyful noise before their departure.