Icy Carpenter Lake

Yesterday I showed you my new play area, and today I'm going to show you why it is there. I know I promised to shake your soul with today's post. So I'm a liar. I can't help it. Maybe if you keep reading you might shake a little bit. Probably with anger at my deception.

I'm just kidding. But you did get a little angry, didn't you? Maybe you won't shake, you'll just shiver with cold when you see what I'm about to show you. It's a lake, but not just any lake. It's Carpenter Lake, and it is frozen almost solid.

This lake is where the walkway that I talked about yesterday leads to. It looked like yesterday that it was only built for fun, but it has a good purpose. Most of this walkway is hovering over the top of this lake. It's main purpose is to be a viewing area and a fishing spot.

I took this photo while I was looking directly across the lake. You can see a house in the very back. Across the lake is a suburban neighborhood. The road that goes down the other side of those houses is a busy one. I've traveled that road many times.

All of those houses are the main reason that I didn't know that Carpenter Lake, and this nature park existed. I've been driving around here for years, but I never saw this place. I thought it was just another part of that neighborhood. I knew that the woods were here, but I didn't know they made this place.

Towards the front of the picture, there on the ice is what used to be a skating rink that somebody made. You can see some very shiny areas on the ice there. There are also footprints crisscrossing the ice. Those shiny spots are a good indication that it's not safe to walk across this ice anymore.

Here is what it looks like upriver from this little viewing area that I'm standing on. That's the direction I came from. Where I am now is about halfway to the back of the nature preserve. I do seem to remember driving over a bridge when I came here, but it was only a small river back there.

I really don't know what the trail running through the snow is from. I am guessing it is from a snow shovel. It leads right up to the skating rink. I don't know why they cleared a path in this direction. I was assuming that it was people from the houses that made the rink. Maybe not.

This last photo is downstream from my viewing area, and there is something very interesting in that direction. That's what I was actually talking about when I said I'd steal, uh, shake your soul and stir your imagination. I meant to show it to you today, but I remembered that I wanted to show this to you first.

Here at the end of today's slightly obnoxious little story, I'd just like to mention that I still had Alice with me. I haven't forgotten about her, but showing this lake to you didn't really involve her that much. She did have something to say at the time, but that is another story completely.

I promise to tell that one on Friday, because I'm going to put my own little fictional twist on the strange thing she came up with while we were here. I was going to use that one today, but it's a little too strange to be considered anything less than fiction.

Lastly, this lake isn't very big, and it looks like it might be man made. There are several indications of that. One of which I'll be showing you tomorrow. See you then.


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