The Lake I Discovered by Accident

Bigfork Real Estate Video Blog with Scott Hollinger

Sometimes, you think you know an area well, but then you accidentally stumble upon something that surprises you. Here’s how I found Loon Lake. If you’ve been in my office, you know that we have a large mosaic of satellite images of Flathead Lake that I collected and assembled back in the ‘80s. We used it to tick off areas on the map where we have sold homes and to keep track of past experiences we’ve had on the lake. A few years ago, the Flathead Lake Bio Station came out with a new poster of the lake based on more current satellite images. I wondered whether I could make another 4’ by 8’ mosaic from these newer images, so I called them and asked for their permission. They were very gracious and sold me the right to reproduce their images on a larger scale. The nice thing about their map is that it includes a bathospheric layering of the lake so you can see how deep different areas of it are. I created our new mosaic and brought it into the office, but as I was hanging it on our wall, I noticed there was a strange blotch on the map. Starting at 3:00 in the video above, you can watch as I zoom in and the message reveals itself! It was just this white splotch that caused me to think that the printer didn’t work right or that something had been spilled on the map accidentally. That wasn’t the case though, so I started looking at a couple of other mapping programs like Google Earth to see if I could zoom in on this strange area to figure out what it was. Zooming in, I discovered that this blotch was a dry lake bed called Loon Lake (I’d never even heard of that name before). Zooming in further, I realized that someone had written on the lakebed itself, in incredibly massive letters, a message to (I’m assuming) a family member. Starting at 3:00 in the video above, you can watch as I zoom in and the message reveals itself! If anyone knows the backstory about this message written out in this dry lake bed, please share the info with me. It’d be a fun thing to hear about and pass on to others! I would like to thank once again the Flathead Lake Bio Station for allowing me to put together an updated mosaic. As always, if you have any questions about real estate, please feel free to contact me. I’m here to help in these strange times. Until then, enjoy my latest outro: A pretty phenomenal gathering of ducks ‘murmuring’ as they return for the spring.