On the way home from Minneapolis, I stopped off at the 35W Bridge, as I have in the past on Sept 23rd, Nov 25th, and May 4th.
The bridge is certainly coming along and looks like it's just about complete.
With one disaster zone coming to a close, I stopped off at another disaster that occurred on June 9th at Lake Delton, WI. You may have heard of that day when it stormed and stormed and stormed so much that the dam holding back all the water in the man-made lake burst and completely drained the lake. Here's a clip.
A month and a half has past as the bottom of the lake has been completely exposed to the July heat.
It took me a little while to find somewhere I could park and take a closer look at. Eventually I found a book landing and was able to walk along the bottom of the lake.
You can't even drive to the edge of the water anymore.
It was incredibly eerie to walk along the bottom knowing that the water level is supposed to be one or two feet above my head.
The bottom of Lake Delton was mostly a sandy surface. It was just like walking on a beach. There was a bit of a stream running through the sand. I took off my sandals, rolled up my pant legs and walked around in the water a little bit to get some close up pictures. The water was cool compared to the warmed up sands.
However, I was incredibly careful... The entire time I was thinking about this youtube video and another video of a guy sinking in mud or quicksand really fast and completely vanished. I thought of these when I was slowing sinking in the sand while walking in the water, but it hadn't happened the entire time out there. Until, I stopped thinking about it... and sunk down past my knees.
I wasn't running or anything, so I was right near the edge of the solid sandy surface and the mud pit, so pulling myself out was pretty easy. The whole time I kept slowing sinking down and kept saying to myself, "stop stop stop stop stop... holy crap." Luckily I had already taken my sandals off or I probably would've had to buy new ones. Though my sandals probably kept my "afloat" longer having a larger area to step on rather than the thin area my feet cover.
I didn't stray too far from shore after that. ^_^
Anyways, Lake Delton is pretty screwed.. It probably looked like hell after it initially drained with all the dead fish corpses and more perilous mud pits. There's a new article today that said crews are beginning to repair the dam this week, so it might be fixed by next year. I wonder what it'll look like in winter.