Recurring place

The last couple of months, I have had a recurring place show up in my dreams.  This is not the same type of dream happening (like falling, your clothes suddenly being gone, etc.) but rather there has been a location that shows up in my dreams which, to my knowledge, does not actually exist.

I want to say it was 2-3 months ago that I first had a dream that I was in a car going from Corvallis to Philomath, but not following Hwy 20.  It was some scenic route that was south of that route, but it was heavily wooded and very hilly.  Plus, along the way, there was a large lake with a long shoreline and a huge dock to jump off of.  Every time this lake has come up in my dream since, it has been suddenly sunny and a nice day for hanging out at the lake.

The first time the lake has shown up, and every time thereafter, I have been on my way to somewhere important and haven't been able to stop and enjoy the lake.  However, a few nights ago I had the dream again, and this time I insisted to the person I was driving with (who typically morphs from one person to another during the course of these dreams) that we MUST stop at the lake. So we pulled over, and I RAN out toward the shoreline.

The sky became suddenly dark and clouded, and there was a sudden chill in the air.  I noticed that there were some people hanging out there on the shoreline whom I normally never would have spent time with (to be frank, they seemed to be tweaking, and they were smoking really fowl-smelling cigarettes).  The shoreline was suddenly littered with cigarette butts and empty cans of (gross, watery) beer.  I ran out to the dock and suddenly it was rickety and without railing, as well as much less steady and much smaller than it had been before.

So it seems like my dreams are trying to tell me that all the things I want so badly aren't as cool as I think they are?