Lava lamp crop circle appears near Soap Lake

Resident estimates object 999 feet long

SOAP LAKE — They're talking about Soap Lake's idea for a giant lava lamp across the universe now.

Soap Lake resident Brent Blake, who originated the idea to locate a giant lava lamp in Soap Lake and attract tourists into the area, said a farmer friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, alerted him to a strange object on one of his fields near Soap Lake.

The object was a crop circle in the shape of a lava lamp.

"I investigated, found this and was just was absolutely blown away," Blake said, the twinkle in his eye apparent even during a telephone interview. "It's clearly an alien object; how else could you describe something like that?"

A sign structure is in the shape of a lava lamp, the Lava Lite, currently sitting in pieces. The city of Soap Lake is working to put it up.

The crop circle takes the concept of the project into another world, Blake believes.

"It's already spread itself across this earth, now it's in outer space," he said. "So it's quite astounding and it took a lot of effort for this to be done."

Blake believes the work could have been done by "a couple" beings with a certain amount of equipment.

"But I don't know, you know, I mean, they could have been hundreds working simultaneously on this project," he said. "But they clearly were doing it with a big smile on their face or faces and clearly, basically illustrating support for a local project which is quite astounding."

Blake believes the lamp-shaped object, which was only in existence for about two days because the field had to be worked immediately, was about 999 feet long.

"That's just beyond three football field lengths, which allows people to sort of grasp the scale of this thing," he said. "It's very difficult to see something at ground level that big and grasp the nature of what really happened there."