You may have seen various Okoboji University shirts and wondered "Where is that University?" This is a purely fictitious University centered around Iowa's Lake Okoboji. Actually, Lake Okoboji is made up of several lakes http://vacationokoboji.com/2002/02_about/ that were carved by glaciers thousands of years ago.
I am not a beach person. I just never liked arriving home with sand everywhere. However, Lake Okoboji brings back sweet memories of my childhood. We would load up the pick-up and the boat and go to "The Lakes" for a day (or longer) and enjoy all the fun that was offered. This is where my first attempts at water-skiing were made, and just tooling around in the boat, whether we were fishing or just site-seeing were always fun.
Some times we would rent a unit at Triggs Resort and spend the week. http://www.vacationokoboji.com/2002/ads_new/Triggs.html Triggs had both a pool (for us non sand lovers) and a beach area to go to. In addition, out at the beach area they used to have a huge raft-type structure that you could swim out to and play on. The top-side had astroturf on it and the bottom side was tethered to the bottom of the lake. One year we had cousins join us at Triggs and somehow we managed to tip that raft over. When we went to tell management, we found out that never before in Triggs Bay Resort history has that raft been tipped over. Ooops!
In addition, the area had the Arnold's Park Amusement Park (you can see this from the lakes) as well as a local mini-golf course.
For this year's Father's day, my sister, her husband, my brother, and I, along with my two kids all headed "back home" and our dad and "the gang" packed up the pickup and the boat and spent a wonderful day at the lake. The infamous "raft" at Triggs was no longer there, but everything else was as I remembered. What a wonderful trip back in time for me...
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