Kingsley Lake – Part 1

If you read yesterday’s post, you might think that today’s headline has to do with the ongoing investigation into why the emails don’t always get delivered to subscribers.

You’re wrong!

Today, I’m talking about a different sort of time travel.  Because, today, I am traveling backwards through time to visit a lake I used to go to as a child.

This is a dangerous thing to do.  Often, such a journey is destined to disappoint.  Things are rarely as good–or as bad–as you remember them.  They are, certainly, never as big!  I remember how astonished I was at the smallness of the  New Orleans school I had attended for kindergarten when I saw it again in my twenties.

Kingsley Lake, however, is unlikely to disappoint.  For one thing, it can’t be much smaller.  Wikipedia lists it as 2,000 acres.  That’s pretty big by any standards.  The lake’s own website says it is 2 miles in diameter and a very stable lake, so it will not have shrunk as I have grown.

Then, too, I don’t know that I remember it all too clearly.  We used to go to Goldhead Lake, as well, so it is entirely possible that I have the two lakes mixed in my mind.  I’m fully prepared not to recognize anything.

I am interested to see it, though.

It’s almost perfectly round which seems unusual to me in a naturally occurring body of water.  Apparently, pilots call it Silver Dollar Lake because of the roundness.  Nobody knows, but it may have been formed by an ancient sinkhole.

What does surprise me is the discovery that there is no longer any public access to the lake.  I’m absolutely sure I remember being able to drive right to it.  Apparently, however, when the surrounding land was sold for housing, nobody realized or thought it important enough to do anything about the fact that the public access disappeared.

The only way you can get to Kingsley Lake now is a) know one of the homeowners or b) be a member of the military (Camp Blanding, the primary base for the Florida National Guard sits on the east and south sides of the lake).

Fortunately, I got connections!

My cousin-in-law is a retired Master Chief.  He and his wife go RV camping there, and he is going to put us on the list so that the guards will let us onto the base.

I’ll let you know how it goes and what the lake is like now.

In the meantime, I suppose the take-away from this post in terms of career is connections are important–and you never know who can get you where you want to go.