Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
The scoop on the best lakes you can jump into
Saturday columnist Bill Rettew Jr. offers this advice: Go jump in a lake - literally. He runs down the best.
Call me a water baby. I love to get wet. Whether it’s water skiing, sailing, snorkeling, lazing around in a tube, canoeing, rowing or swimming, I can’t get enough.
I spent several summers on Lake Wallenpaupack where my love of lakes and H2O developed.
What follows are some of my favorite lakes and why:
• Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana: The 23.8 mile-Causeway is the longest bridge in the world running fully across water. From the halfway point of this bridge, you might as well be looking from a boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean. You can’t see land in any direction. This is no Golden Gate Bridge. It is level and runs just feet above the water line.
• Crater Lake Oregon: At 1,946 feet, the deepest lake in the United States and ninth deepest in the world. This volcanic caldera is surrounded by pumice fields. Pumice is so cool. When it was launched into the air during an eruption, the rock was filled with hollow spaces. The rock floats! An ingredient in Lava Soap, it is used by auto
Whether it’s water skiing, sailing, snorkeling, lazing around in a tube, canoeing, rowing or swimming, I can’t get enough.
mechanics to wash their hands. And, you’ll never forget that one-of-a-kind blueish-purple water.
• Marsh Creek, Chester County: I always like visiting here while knowing that my grandmother, Leona Wynn Rettew, was born in a town under what is now the lake.
• Lake Tahoe, Nevada and California: Mark Twain said it’s the most beautiful place on Earth. Although I haven’t been everywhere, I can’t disagree.
• Bruce Lake, Promiseland, Pennsylvania: You can only get here by walking a couple of miles along a beautiful trail. Although the mosquitos were eating me alive I watched a beaver here putter around for an hour.
• Lake Istokpoga, Lake Placid, Florida: The sixth largest lake in the state typically floods in the spring. When the water rushes into the fields to the south a black soil becomes energized and makes for a perfect mix to grow colorful caladiums in the caladium capital of the world. During late summer, the multicolored fields look like afghans my grandmother knitted.
• Lake Okeechobee, Clewiston, Florida: Sugar producers have sucked so much water from the lake, while harming the Everglades, that fires burn on the lake side of the dike where there once was water.
• Isa Lake, Yellowstone, Wyoming: This body of water sits on the Continental Divide at Craig Pass. Amazingly, some of this lake’s water drains to the Pacific Ocean and some to the Atlantic.
• Lake Morton, Lakeland, Florida: Watch where you step. It’s about a mile circumference around this downtown lake and hundreds of birds are drawn here, as they are to so many water sources in Florida. You’ll see huge swans, wood storks, anhinga’s and white pelicans, but no alligators. Perhaps they control the gators here. This is unusual since any spot with water in Florida, including all those golf courses, is a likely haven for the state’s one million alligators.
• Lake Eloise, Cypress Gardens, Winter Haven, Florida: Now Legoland, the gardens at Lake Eloise are still intact. Such a joy to watch the water skiers build human pyramids and ski barefoot at what was once Cypress Gardens. While we waited for the ski show to start, an announcer would read the temperature and weather conditions to the north. When it was announced that Philadelphia was 22 degrees F and cloudy, the whole family cheered from a bleacher seat in the Sunshine State.
• Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park, Maine: Some the purest water in the country. It’s forbidden to drink from the lake, and we didn’t, though we were tempted. A spectacular 3.6-mile trail skirts the edge of the glacial lake.
• Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts: Henry David Thoreau roughed it here (sort of, anyway). You can take a dip and read from Walden at the site of Thoreau’s home.
• The Great Lakes: Can’t decide if I’d rather spend a day at the beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Presque Isle State Park near Erie or along a pier in Milwaukee. All three are so pretty, while creating an illusion of infinity.
Water, water everywhere. With winter, we’re now limited to ice fishing or skating.
But we will soon be able to strip down to a bathing suit and frolic.
Thoughts and memories like these can get us through the dark days of winter.
Bill Rettew Jr. is a weekly columnist and Chester County resident. He’ll see you upside down this summer while floating in the pool. He may be contacted at brettew@dailylocal.com