Lake Champlain Sunset and Moon Walk

While walking on Lake Champlain under the afternoon sun, I knew I had to come back to watch the sun set.  As I watched, I just kept on a walking towards it even after it set.

I read a couple weeks ago about Lake Champlain freezing over and I asked a few people if one can walk across to New York.  The people I spoke to, seemed to think it would be Okay.  It was not long after the sun set that I realized I was the only one on the lake.  No real surprise here.

My previous venture out here made me quite comfortable, but still, at times I got a bit freaked out.  I continued to walk and slide across the ice.  It was quite fun.  It was also eerily quiet, except for the gulping sounds from the lake below and the occasional cracking sound.  I soon passed the island the looked quite far from Burlington.  Soon that appeared far away.  Unfortunately, New York still appeared quite far, though Burlington looked further.

The half moon provided quite a bit of light, but nothing like a full moon.  No question I had made it passed the midway point.  But it took more than an hour and a half.  I came to a section with some snow and a layer of ice that had water on top.  The water more than covered my foot.  I decided to turn around here, despite thinking it most certainly was safe.  I mostly turned around since I had clearly under estimated the distance across.  I assumed it to be about 2 miles, possibly a little more.  Looking at google maps, it appears it's six!  Not even close.

After turning around, I watched as the lights of Burlington got closer, but still seemed so far away.  I made it back to land around 9pm with a 2 hour drive home.  This easily made for one of my favorite walks of all time.  In the future, I will definitely scope out frozen lakes to walk on under a moon.
 

These spots freaked me out.  Probably the last place to freeze.