Weekend at Crystal Lake

So, a weekend ago, we had originally planned a camping trip. That trip did not happen for various and sundry reasons. 

Since we had already boarded Juno "the beast", we thought it would be a perfect weekend to head up North, pick up one of my amplifiers that had been worked on, and visit Grandpa Jim at the same time. 

So that's precisely what we did!  We headed to Northwood Iowa where my cousin lives and her brother in law had fixed my amplifier and as such, I am overjoyed!

Turns out, the fella who fixed my amp was out of town but he had dropped it with my cousin.  Now they had a virtual reality machine connected to their PS4 that we had to try out.  It was pretty cool and, I'm not going to lie, a little bit freaky!

We played a bar fight game, a carnival game with rope/mountain climbing, ski ball and so on.  It was pretty cool but also did a number on yer noggin!  The boys loved it, I thought it was cool, and mama chaos got a bit sick from it.

That's why we went back to real reality!  Nature!

In all of the years that I've known about Crystal Lake, I have never been privy to the "upper lake" which may be a bi-product of when they dredged the main lake...  just not sure.  Anyway, someone had mowed a nice walking path around half of the upper lake, so we decided to walk it!

This shot and the one before it are standing up on the berm of the upper lake looking "mostly" South unto the main lake, with the town of Crystal Lake in the background.

This is the much smaller upper lake.

The lower/main Crystal Lake from the upper berm with the elevator and some wind turbines in the background.

When we were about as far West as we could go on these newly discovered paths, we turned back to admire some of the storm clouds that were still in the area.  You see, we were nearly trapped in a grocery store some hours earlier from a tornado that was passing by.  No matter, we were fine and got to photograph this beauty!

Selfie #1!

At this point we had hiked back to the parking area and headed down a different path towards the main lake at Crystal Lake. This is one of several shots, this one looking nearly due West (and a bit South).

Another from roughly that same shot, but twisting almost directly straight West.

Guessing that a few fishermen were here!

Selfie #2!

This is between the two lakes.  That upper ridge you can see is where we were hiking in the earlier pictures.

Some of the paths of the lower lake.

The sun was setting but everything else (other than the bugs) was beautiful!

More path...

This is essentially where the path ends.  The bridge to nowhere...  errrr... the bridge over the marsh, and from there to nowhere.

From the bridge...

Whoa, what is that!?!?

Why...  It's the handsome Calebber up on the bridge as he and Momma went for a hike that very next morning.