Neighbor friends (who just moved into their newly built home!!) Pat and Karin bought a pontoon boat! And invited me to join them for an outing on the lake! Woohoo! What fun!! And was a beautiful day for it too. So come see our lakeshore, from the water!
One of the nicer homes, just past where we live (on land, you go past a lot of "less nice" homes to get to these lakefront properties...).
Love their trees and lawn.
And no boat ride with P&K would be complete without their sweet baby, Topo! Here, Topo serves as tour boat navigator, helping to direct his dad who's at the helm.
See the two downed trees? We may not have had a tornado with a recent storm, but we definitely had strong winds!!
This lake is not a very busy waterway, but numerous covered boat docks dot the shores. I love the parti-colors!
And speaking of parties... Nice hanging-out upper deck and slide!
Topo gives Mom some love (and vice-versa).
As well as really pretty homes and regular places, there are a few trashy yards and houses along the lake's edge. This is not one of them...!! I prefer photographing the pretty stuff, so you're going to see a lot more of that here!
Nice, huh?
Dad does a great job of guiding this craft, but everything goes just a little bit better when the pooch is also on patrol! Topo is starting to get a bit big for a lap dog, but us dog lovers don't seem to notice irrelevant details like that...! : )
Some boat houses are just covered structures to park and protect a boat. Others are boat palaces!
Another extravagant home and boat home!
No, it's not a shopping center... It's somebody's cute little home!?!
This sad sight obviously started out as a deluxe house! Not sure what caused the collapse, but it looks like a bad case of erosion might be the culprit...?
OK, real time update: I think I found the right house using a Google search (a little hard to tell for sure because the intact home and surroundings looked so different!!). If it's the same house, just a few years ago, it was someone's million dollar dream home. But after standing tall for a decade, it fell victim to the ground giving way. Arguably, because of rain saturating the ground, etc. But I think it may be like the southern California coastline: a set-up for failure. I have certainly seen equally nice homes dangling over the bluffs there, ultimately succumbing to the combination of weak substrate and the ocean's constant pull. To me, this shows ignorance/denial of the usually inevitable laws of physics, gravity, and geology! Some areas are prone to erosion (they have been eroding for millenia!), and there are often obvious signs - if one looks carefully enough! But humans are notorious for not seeing the obvious, if it's not something they want to see...!!!
It looks like the retaining walls, driveways, etc. have all caved in too...
And on to happier scenes...
Another lakeside playground!
Pat and Topo bring us back to shore...
Topo's mom Karin unloads the "little guy."
Well, maybe he's not so little anymore!?! To be fair, sizes are relative! Topo's not a giant dog, just a growing puppy! But Karin is a pretty (strong!) Tiny Mom! : )
