I think the weather has officially turned to winter now.  This pool with it’s green water won’t be seeing anyone for a few months.

This is the dam at lake Elkhorn, in Columbia.   This is the ususal flow there.  It just sort of trickles though the center there.

After the hurricane this dam and the recent floods this lake was rushing over the entire width of the damn.   A feature which is certainly intended by design.   So just like any one who runs a respecable photo website, rather than showing you a picture of this really neat site, I am shoing you a picture of a normal day at the dam becasue I didn’t have my camera when it was flooding.   Just believe me.. it was quite a sight.

Here’s a shot of Lake Elkhorn again, but with no lake in it.  This is a very deceptive picture as from all sides there is a lot of activity. Behind the shooter there’s even a highway. However, in this one sliver of land there was a very tranquil spot.

This quaint picture looks like it could be from some eastern shore town but the sign gives away that it comes from a lake in Columbia.   I was hoping to get away during lunch to go take some pictures of the setup for the Baltimore Grand Prix, but that will have to be next week.  I did get away to the lake to take a few of these shots.

Here’s a shot of the Carillon that sits in the middle of lake Kittamaqundi in Columbia.

From past posts, you should be able to notice the State flag, the flag of Howard county and the Columbia flag.

I went to Howard Community College (in Howard County) yesterday to take some pictures, but it began to rain almost as soon as I got there. So the only picture I could take was this.  I’m not sure if it’s some sort of late early 70′s collegiate sculpture or if it’s a clever  disguise for an hvac exhaust.

I really enjoyed last week’s boat shot, so here is another one.

Another picture from the fall: Boats out of the water at Centennial Lake

I hope everyone had an enjoyable President’s day and that the snow this morning was not too disruptive. (I’m sure that it wasn’t unless you are going through Howard county, where salt, based on the evidence found on the roads this morning, must be very hard to find.)    

I found this creek near some power lines on my way home from work last week.  Now that the sun sets a little later to coincide with afternoon rush hour, I’ve been able to get a few shots in here and there.  However, it’s tough to find an unobstructed sunset near my office so I was happy to find this area, which will never be considered photogenic at any time of the day when the sun isn’t setting.

This is the historic home, Mt. Ida, in Ellicott City.  It was build for the grandson of one of the founding Ellicotts.  Today it is the visitors center for the Patapsco Female Institute, pictured here.

Last night I was sitting at home dreading the inevitable drive to work in the middle of slush and snow, which made me think about this picture, which I took near my office in September.   I really wish it looked like this outside today. 

The subject of this picture is one of the many trails in Columbia, originally envisioned as one of the major means of transportation in the town.  Paths like these do connect the whole of Columbia, but just like the streets there, the paths can be confusing and they will undoubtedly take you on an indirect route to any destination.    

I don’t know many (any) people who use them, but I do have a coworker who claims to have used them to walk to elementary school.   Regardless of their utility, they do make for the occasional bit of nice scenery.

What’s downstream from yesterday’s shot?   This is.  It’s the Thomas Viaduct, which celebrated it’s 175th anniversary last July.   This stone viaduct was an engineering marvel in it’s time.  You can’t see it from this shot, but it actually curves ever so slightly in it’s path.

I’ve been talking about this for a long time and I’ve finally captured it.   This is the obnoxious Howard County, “Choose Civility,” bumper sticker.  

What’s the big deal?   Well I guess it’s not much of a big deal unless you live outside of Howard County, in which case it implies that where you live is less “civilized” than those in Howard County.  For those in the county it seems to be some sort of ego boost.  

I’ve been working in Howard county for a few years now and I have to say that I’m not as angry about this as I used to be.   I guess I’ve just adopted a live and let live attitude about it.  But…  it does make me feel better when I occasionally make fun of Howard County.

Sorry for the delay this morning, which means I don’t have time for much more than another post from the park.  Enjoy.

The closed concession stand, aided by its somewhat aged design, looks like a relic from a summer long past.  What happened to September.

Driving home the other day I was intrigued by the constructon scene near my office.  This particular area is going to be a new grocery store soon.    It is just across the street from a totally failed retail mall, but I guess that someone thinks that people want to buy more goods, its just that those goods are fruits and vegetables, not specialty retail.

Going back to yesterday’s mystery.  It was in fact a storm water runoff.  Of course, in the middle of a nice park area, they didn’t want it to be just an everyday stormwater drain, so they spruced it up a bit.  They added those nice stones and built a pleasant walkway next to it.

However, a lot of time has passed since Columbia was planned, and that runoff creek is clearly in need of some work, both due to its collapsing walls an its overgrowing shrubbery.  I had to follow it for a bit to see if there was something at the end of the runoff.  There was.

That storm water runs into the place pictured today: Lake Elkhorn.   I’ve pictured it’s interesting dam in an earlier post.  When I came upon it by following the path next to the drain, I was pleasantly surprised.

Then I was shocked by the green film that covered the entire lake.  The town has been dredging the lake for some time now and I cant say if that has anything to do with this film.  Perhaps because of the dredging they have slowed the flow of water through the lake and given time for this algae to build up.  Perhaps it’s always like this.  Either way, it was quite a scene to behold.

Part of the appeal of Columbia, as it was originally conceived, was the sense of small communities within the town.  The communities were accessible by walkways, which were to be the veins of activity in the planned community.

Driving through Columbia today, as with all things in Columbia, you have to look hard for the walkways. However, like the magic-eye of community building, you soon realize that they are everywhere.   The walkways really could connect almost the entire town.

Seeing as I frequently find myself looking for photo opportunities in Howard County, I thought it best to take advantage of the opportunity to explore some of these walkways.  I’m starting slowly, as this one is between the food store and the gas station, both of which I frequently use.

Of course, like a page out of a real estate guide, I ran into a rabbit within the first minute on the trail.   Then I found a clump of very pleasant long grasses.   After passing a elderly couple enjoying the scene on a park bench, I ran into this  mysterious waterway.

What is this?  Where is this Grotto?  Believe it or not, it’s in the middle of Howard county.  I’ve mentioned this place before but never shown a picture . This is the site of the quarry in Guilford that was formerly the reason for the existence of the truss bridge pictured here.   It looks amazingly welcoming.   You would never know that it was surrounded by office parks and by route 32.  In fact, it’s so inviting, I can see why someone would be tempted to go closer.  However, as with most abandoned quarries (although not all–as will be shown in later posts) it is best not to trespass or to swim.

Going back once more to Ilchester, these old trestles look like they would be a trespasser’s and a vandal’s dream.    Like everything that remains of Ilchester, it reminds you of a time when this place was busy and productive and relevant.

The last time we visited Ilchester, I mentioned that there was a pedestrian bridge that currently spans the space where the Patterson viaduct used to be.  (the Patterson viaduct was one of the bridges that carried the first railroad in America.  It’s  at the north end of what is today the main area of Patapsco Valley State Park)  I couldn’t show you the very cool bridge then because the pictures were trapped on my film camera.   Because of some mechanical issues with that camera, it took me a while to get this, but, finally, here it is.

We’re going to end our short stay in Columbia with its most beloved sculpture, The Tree of Life.   The sculpture, as you can see below, is placed prominently at the waterfront in the center of the town.    It really gives you a sense of the way that Columbia was portrayed in the late 60′s and early 70′s as a futuristic ideally planned community.  In fact, this same theme is shown on the town’s flag and the sculpture’s likeness is prominently featured on almost all of the community’s official buildings and publications.

The Rouse company building, which was built in 1974 was originally intended to be a show piece.  It was a symbol of the new modern idea that was Columbia.  The building was placed across the plaza from the exhibition space, a less regaled Gehry work from nearly a decade earlier where the concept of Columbia was pitched to perspective new residents.   Like the Exhibition space, a few other buildings with little popularity outside of the area were built by Gehry and his Baltimore based architecture firm in the late 60′s.  Of these, Merriweather post pavilion is probably the most notable.

The Rouse building stands out from the rest.   It keeps your interest as you try to understand its workings.  It’s obvious that it was built in the 70′s, but it’s not a carbon copy concrete building like the rest of the area.  The outside is stucco.  (don’t sigh, it’s not bad)  It’s many outdoor areas with wood overhangs and potted green plants all overlook the man-made lake which is the centerpiece (if you don’t call the mall the centerpiece) of downtown Columbia.

Outside of its coverage of Ellicott City, there have been times when this website has been pretty hard on Howard County, really just becasue of the poor job it does on snow removal and for their extremely snobby bumper stickers.  I should also mention that it’s extremely difficult to find a gas station there.   However, this building ranks up there with Centennial Park, with Merriweather, with the Indian food buffet to which I occasionally go for lunch, with the town of Savage, and with the more recent performance of  it’s adopted son Willis McGahee, as some of the really good things Howard county has to offer.

In Ilchester, MD, a small town on the Patapsco river, you will find many traces of many things of historical interest. I was lured there by the ruins of a few old buildings sitting on the cliffs above the river that I found on some internet maps.  However I was too late a they were long since demolished.   In fact, going back to the internet, I found that it depended on which map service you used weather you saw the ruins still or not.  (actually on bing maps you can see them on certain angles of bird’s eye but not on others)

The town holds more intrigue though.  It is located at the end of the main area of Patapsco Valley State Park, in fact the main trail that extends through this park ends at a pedestrian bridge just south of this one.   That pedestrian bridge is built on the foundations of the original Patterson Viaduct, which carried the B&O main line, our country’s first 11 miles of railroad, from Mt. Claire to Ellicott City.  When that bridge washed out, the tracks were moved north about 100 yards, forcing them to travel through a tunnel and then crossing at the location of today’s picture.  I have pictures of that pedestrian bridge but they are trapped on my film camera right now.  We’ll get to it eventually.

I thought the patterns in this pile of rocks would make a good picture.  These are actually part of a retaining wall in Centennial Park in Howard county.   Originally I wanted to do another post today about Howard County.  I wanted to have a picture related to their declaration last week in praise of Willis McGahee.   The county executive had announced that last Friday was dedicated to the Raven’s running back and that in Howard County it would be referred to as  “McGahee Dayhee.”   Of course, there was no physical evidence left of this declaration and that made it very hard to photograph.  So I just thought I’d celebrate (though a few days late) with any sort of Ho Co picture and I’ll leave it up to you if you can find a clever metaphor between this picture and football.

The other day I was looking on google maps, as I do almost every day, for a faster way to get out of my office.   I noticed on one map that there was a tiny little grey area on the side of a highway offramp called Dorsey cemetery.  The Dorsey family was one of the most prominent families in Howard and county during the colonial period.  So it didn’t suprise me that they had a family cemetery in what seemed like an awkward place. 

What suprised me was the proximity of the cemetery to what I thought was an office complex.   I knew they were building nearby and I knew that this cemetery might have been in the way of that building.   

So I checked out the scene.  It turns out that the cemetery is today surrounded on three sides by parking lots and on one side by an offramp.    As you can see above, it is fairly well isolated from most lines of sight to the new construction around it.    However, as you can see below, it’s very close to a brand new building   

By yesterday morning, the snow had been done falling for about 24 hours.  Of course, I had to go to work, but I didn’t have any issues with it since the streets outside my house were fine.  The streets on major and minor roads in most places were fine.  That is, until I arrived in Howard County.   Many of my coworkers coming frome Anne Arundel and from Baltimore Counties also commented that the roads are just terrible in Howard.  

I’m not talking about side streets either. How could busy roads not have a final run with the plow after an entire day? 

Many appologists claim that the use of the roads compacts the snow and prevents its removal.  Which is not an argument, but rather an excuse.  More timely removal of snow and proper use of salt would have prevented this compacting.   How do these people think it’s done in neighboring counties?  It is not magic.

It would also appear as though sand was being used as a substitute for salt. Sand works great for traction on ice, but it won’t melt anything.  As a result, many of the busiest roads were just lined with compacted brown snow.   

I’ve lived in three counties in this state and worked in another two and this is the worst job of snow removal I’ve encountered anywhere.   It’s just poor.

Part of my job involves looking over the checks that my employer writes.  A short while ago I came across a mysterious vendor.  When I researched what this vendor did, I was shocked and amused. 

It turns out that there is a company out there that will chase geese off of your property.   When I found out about it, I thought it was very odd.  However, the very next day, I was driving to work and was stopped at an off-ramp by a family of geese crossing in front of my car.  Since then, my eyes have been opened. 

There are more geese than you would ever believe hanging out all over central Maryland.   These geese represent a threat to many of the finely manicured entrances to the generically designed office parks of the area.  As many of them are chased off of private property, they find homes in public spaces.  Centennial park is definitely home to many of Maryland’s displaced geese.   Here we see them enjoying a fall day with one of the human visitors to their home. 

As I promised back in July, when I first went there, I have returned to Centennial park to witness the leaves change color.  Sadly I didn’t get to take too many pictures of the fall leaves this year.  I took a trip in the middle of the fall, and I returned to four days of steady rain.   This past weekend I had earmarked time on both Saturday and Sunday for trips along the Potomac to take pictures of the leaves, but the cloudy skies and the rain stopped me.   So today’s picture is MDP’s official fall souvenir. 

Near yesterday’s gas station is Merriweather Post Pavillion.  It is an open air music venue with seating close to the stage under cover and open field areas behind.   For people from central and western and possibly all of Maryland, this venue is the closest one for them to see many big name acts.  However, it’s just a little bit tinier than its counterpart in Virginia, and as thus Marylanders are too often forced to see musical acts on the other side of the Potomac.   

I think it’s one of the nicer places to see a show, especially becasue the seating area is fairly large.  However, there’s another catch.  It’s in Columbia, so there are restrictions on the time of night that you can still play loud music.  In fact I once went to see a band, which was the last of three playing that day.  After sitting through two long sets of other bands, the main act only had 50 minutes on the stage before the show had to end. 

We are looking at the pavilion from the very back of the venue.   I’ve never been too sure where these sculptures came from. 

A little history for readers from out of state:   The town of Columbia is a planned community, which takes up a good chunk of Howard County, MD, located in the central area of the state.   It was planned to keep residences and buisinesses in clusters, or villages. 

Much of the planning was geared towards the point of view of the residents, in that they shouldn’t have to deal with the commercial parts of town in their drives through the neighborhood.  When they are home, they should feel like they are in a town-like setting.  The asthetic of Columbia calls for most of its retail areas to be grouped together and to be effectively not seen from the road and certainly not seen from residential areas.  (Though not relevant to my story, you should know that much of the planning included adding pleasing asthetic features to the landscape.  There were lakes that were built and many new varieties off trees were introduced to a landscape that was formerly agricultural.) 

What has always frustrated visitors from out of town is the difficulty in finding a gas station.  Gas stations,  retail enterprises with the odor of industry, were the ultimate things to hide in Columbia.  Nobody wants to see them, right?  

For residents it’s generally not too much of a problem becasue they know where the gas stations are, but for outsiders it is an annoyance and it is one of the first things that many outsiders will talk about if asked about Columbia. 

As an example, I have always mentioned the one pictured today.  It’s located in a very busy part of town, next to the mall and right on the main road.  However, it’s about 10 feet below grade, it’s not accessible without turning onto a side street, and it has an odd skylight covering so that if you could see the area from the road you are still prevented from seeing the pumps and thus figuring out that it’s a gas station.    

Desipite all of those things, and its higher than average prices, this station hung on for decades.   It couldn’t have done that anywhere else.

Just before I had snapped yesterday’s picture, I was at Centennial Park, where this picture was taken and where I had previously captured these geese.  This time I went back at just the perfect time before sunset.   I am looking forward to going during the daytime either this week or next week to catch the leaves as they turn.  

Earlier in the week, I showed a picture of a railroad bridge and this is another.  This is from a Pratt Truss Bridge spanning the Little Patuxent River in an area formerly known as the town of Guilford.   The bridge’s primary purpose was to carry the railroad to the granite quarry just north of the river.    When the quarry shut down, so did the town and then the railroad had no use for the bridge, so it fell into disarry.  However, within the last 10 years the bridge has been restored and made into part of a nature trail. 

I’ve included a full picture of the bridge from the trail below.

 I wasn’t there in the best weather for pictures, so I saved the quarry for another time. 

Here’s a shot of the reservior from the opposite side of the boat ramp.  In the distance is the Brighton Dam, which you may remember from this post.  

On the way to Brookeville, I passed by the Triadelphia reservior.  I found an entrance to a parking lot for the reservior boat ramp and I went straight in. Luckily I found these boats ready to make a pretty cool picture for me.

Thought I was done with pictures of dilapidated buildings?  Think again. 

 Actually thise ruins have been reinforced or “stablilized” so that people can walk around them. This is the reason why I was in Ellicott City for Friday’s picture.  This is the Patapsco Female Institute ruins.    Unlike the National Park Seminary or Glenn Dale Hospital, these structures are in Howard county, which means that their stabilized ruins are protected by a barbed wire fence (barely visible in the bottom left corner) and are only accessible on the weekends. I was a little upset to find that out after I had travelled to Ellicott City on a weekday just to see this place.  However, I guess I have no choice but to return on a weekend. 

As I mentioned before, I have really warmed up to Ellicott city since I was a child and my parents would drag me there on weekends.   Now that I work in Howard county, Ellicott Citty seems like a bit of an oasis.   It’s one of the most picturesque locations within a lunch break’s drive of my office.  It has a great many hills, a valley, a railroad, a good amount of  meandering streets, a lot of old buildings, a unique historical intrigue, a charm, and an ability to constantly provide a new and more interesting site to picture. 

Today’s picture is just a way of seeing an old friend from a different angle.  In fact I’ve never ventured up the hills of Ellicott city, where the courthouse lies, to see what else was there.  From the eastern hill you can really get a view of the city as it was quite a while ago.  You see the mill that brought the town to being and the railroad that brought it into history.  You see the slopes of its hills and the expanse of its valley.  

I hope someone starts Ellicott City Daily Photo.  I would be a reader. 

I was looking for interesting photo opportunities near my office.  One site that I wanted to visit was Centennial Park.  The large Howard county park that surrounds a lake.  I had never been there before so I didn’t know exactly what to expect.  It was a nice park and the lake, while not huge, is large enough for a canoe or kayak trip. 

It’s also a very green park.  It’s green everywhere and even the mid-day water takes on a green hue.  Surely it would be a great place to go in the fall as I’m sure it looks amazing when the leaves change.  So while I promise you that will go back in October, in the mean time I have this picture of these geese.  

I like this photo for two reasons.  First, I like how the sky was so brilliantly blue that it makes the lighter blue water tower really look strange.  Second, I like the subject. 

This tower is located in Columbia.  Since I began working in Howard County I’ve been trying to understand how this tower fits into the Columbia asthetic.  Like the color of the tower against the sky, the dirty tower standing over a town where every public service is purposefully hidden from view, is just a little bit off.      Of course, I’m not against the town, but I’m not a 100% believer the concept of Columbia as the suburban utopia.  You could say that I haven’t drank the Howard County Kool Aid.  So I kind of like it when a reminder of normal life like this pops up.  

Sorry for the late post today.  This is the other side of the dam from yesterday’s picture.  Looking out over Triadelphia Reservoir, just before sunset.  I was ready to sit there and get the whole sunset, but they started to close the parking lot and I didn’t want to be stuck there.   So I’ll have to return again, perhaps in the winter when the sun sets earlier. 

I assume that the whimsical message found next to Brighton Dam is funnier when there is water rushing over the gates. Brighton Dam is located at the end of Triadelphia reservior, which is located on the border between Montgomery and Howard Counties.  It has a very nice park located around the dam from which this picture was taken.  Next to the reservoir is a five acre azalea garden.  Unfortunately my trip to Brighton brought me too late for the azaleas to be in bloom.  It had become five acres of wilted plants.  However, next spring MDP will be on the case. 

As I have mentioned before, I have a mindset that a library should be an old brick building,   similar to the Prince George’s library in Upper Marlboro.   However, there’s something about this library, The Glenwood Branch of the Howard Co. library system, which I find appealing.  The award winning branch, which was partially designed to mimic the lines of a barn, seems to be welcoming and interesting.

Saturday is National Train day.  Which is a relatively new Holiday conceived by Amtrak to celebrate an old event: the driving of the final spike in the transcontinental ralroad. (an event that did not take place in Maryland)  In the spririt of the holiday, it seemed only appropriate to post a picture of the destination of the first railroad trip ever made in America:  Ellicott City, or Ellicot’s Mills as the station sign reads.   Today the station serves as a museum; a sister site to the downtown Baltimore station. 

Sometimes Howard County really suprises me.  In general I’m a little put off by their “choose civility” bumper stickers. However, when I found this plot of land and other one like it, they really made me think that the county did something right.  

This is a community garden, located on a piece of land next to the high tension wires, where you couldn’t build, but where there can’t be trees either.   Someone came up with the ingenious idea of turning that space into a community garden.  There are plots available for $40 a year with water and compost included.   It’s a pretty neat way to spend your lunch break, if you work nearby, or to keep up a garden when you live in an apartment. 

This is a picture of the dam at Lake Elkhorn in Columbia.  I have passed by this place hundreds of times, but before yesterday I had never stopped to walk around.  Like every lake in Maryland, a state without any natural ones, Elkhorn is man-made. 

It’s one of the many lakes in the town of Columbia that were built by and owned by the Columbia association.  These lakes generally will have multiple neighborhoods built around them.  However, despite the densely populated neighborhoods in which these lakes can be found, it seems to me as though the planners made great efforts to keep the the lakes surrounded by trees, playgrounds, open grasslands and trails. 

However, along almost almost every lake, and as featured in this picture, there is a break in the tree line and there are usually a few homes that disturb the illusion of isolation with their placement on the water.  

I’ve found that, in this town, the most interesting feature of these small lakes are the dams.  This one has a group of cascading steps which are a bit unusual for a dam.  The water moves in a continuous flow through the center of the dam, though the entire area looks as though it was build for a flow of water 30 times as voluminous.  It makes an interesting distraction.   

I believe that that in Howard County, where I have recently been working, there are many interesting things being created or analyzed, or designed.  Surely, with all those government contractors, technology companies, and industrial concerns, there has to be some really interesting things happening there.  

The problem as I see it, is that most of these interesting things have been compartmentalized and kept secret inside the brains of contractors.  These folks are then placed in cubes and kept from the outside by polarized screen protectors and by firewalls, which are impenetrable to all but a boss, who breaches both virtual and real space on occasion to insure that information is being secured and that internet page counts are not too high.  Then the whole works is enclosed in a non-descript building with a large parking lot and multiple evergreens.    I’m upset becasue the only part I can usually see is the trees.  Trees, despite past posts to the contrary, don’t always make for good MDP material. 

When I look at a bank, I know what happens there.  I might even know what happens inside a hospital, or a police station.  However, for people like me, who are curious about what is happening inside any big building, it is sad to be kept so far out of the way from so much of what’s happening around you.  

Thus you can imagine my joy when I drove past the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.   Finnally I pased a building that gives a hint about what they do… Or so I thought.   Later I realized that all I really know is that apply physics to the world though the use of satellite dishes, and I still have no idea how to decipher that hint. 

In fact I’m sure that the screen protectors in there are extra polarized, that the cube walls are double thick, and that there are twice as many cinder blocks working to hold up their roofs.  However, I am totally satisfied with just seeing this piece of the puzzle.  I don’t need to know everything.  I’m just grateful for just this taste of what’s going on.   

Here’s a picture I took on Monday of the Rocky Gorge Reservioir on the Patuxent river from the bridge carrying US 29 on the Howard-Montgomery County border.  Those of you who travel frequently on I-95 have probably seen the other side of this reservioir as its dam is located right alongside 95 to the right when travelling southbound.  

On Monday at 6:00 there was snow left on the ground, but none in the trees. This was because of the very strong winds that were blowing snow around all morning and afternoon.

Here is the Oakland Carriage house, located somewhat down the hill from the house shown yesterday.   Today it has been rennovated and is used by a local church as a meeting hall.  

Also: sorry for the late post today.  I’m going to blame it on the snow this morning, not becasue the snow caused this delay, but just casue that’s what people like to do when it snows. 

This is Oakland, one of the oldest homes in Howard county and certainly one of the oldest in Columbia.   It is today home of one of the village centers for the town of Columbia, but its origins are complex.  It looks like a stately plantation house, but it was never built as such.  It has no history in agriculture at all.   (Note, Thanks to Evan for posting a correction to this statement.  You can read the comment below to see why.)  It is perched on top of a relativly high hill, where it would have commanded a good view.  Today it looks at an apartment complex. 

 It was orignally built as a country home for Charles Sterett Rigdely, then speaker of the house of delegates.  It changed hands multiple times, with many owners addding or removing from the house.  One owner even installed a horse track around the home and bred horses on the grounds.   

This is Wilde lake in Columbia.  Like all lakes in the state of Maryland, it is man made.  This one was built by the Columbia association, along with others, to add some scenery to the consistent landscape of Howard County.    

I set out at lunch the other day to take a picture before all of the snow melted away.   Unfortunately everywhere I went was free of snow. Until, I stumbled upon this like with its frozen surface and with snow still laying on top of that layer of ice.  

Columbia is a place where things stay hidden.  The biggest gripe of visitors to the area is that no one can find a gas station. There are plenty of them, but most of them are below the sightlines of a common traveller.   This lake is also hidden.  It’s right next to two major roads, but you’d never know it until you saw it on a map.  It’s also bordered by those apartments on the far side and by some absolutely huge homes on the side of lake where the picture was taken.     

In general I think it’s a bit odd that Columbia’s planners went out of their way to hide the pretty parts of town and the necessities like gas stations, and then they put industrial parks and retail strips within sight of every road.  However,  I never thought of it from the perspective of people who live there.   For example, I bet the people who live by this lake enjoy its lack of popularity.