Summer's Here - The Lake, Le Tour and the 4th of July

It's hot and the town is empty. Well ... that's over-exaggerated, but it seems as if everyone has left the Cities and gone to "the lake". It doesn't matter which of our more than 10,000 lakes the population has dispersed to, but the traffic is sparse, the outside pool gave me a lane to myself on Saturday (!?!), and I suspect the locker room for the next week will be echoing. With a mid-week national holiday (July 4th - Independence Day for my non-USA friends), people throughout the area have taken advantage, added their vacation days, and a lot of people have taken the week off. Add in two weekends, and that provides a lot of "at the lake" time. 

Minnesota is peppered with lakeside resorts featuring fine dining,
fishing, swimming and golf. This is Madden's Resort on Gull
Lake. I was here for a short conference many years ago and it
was beautiful. I'm sure it's a wonderful place to spend a few days. 

Quite obviously I'm not at the lake. I don't own a lake cabin, I didn't make reservations at a lakeside resort or a camping site in the Boundary Waters, I am staying home. I'll get my Wednesday off, which is my usual day off, and I'll get to spend my laundry, housecleaning, 'day for myself day' sharing it with DH. In fact, I'm not even sure I'll sleep in. I won't have to open the store up in the morning, but except for that, it will be a semi-normal Wednesday. 

The summer heat wave started last week and is continuing into
July. I'm in the upper part of the "H" circle, and a lot of my
friends around the nation are included in it as well. It's
going to be a hot week, y'all. 

It's hot. We cooled off a bit on Sunday with some rain for much of the day, but it's July and it's hot and there's nothing unexpected about that. I'll survive, and I can wear light-weight skirts and swim every morning. There are worse things. But with the exception of shoveling the snow, I think I prefer the colder temps of spring and late fall and even the winter. I can always put on another layer, but there's a limit to how much can be removed when it's hot out. 

DH has decided on hamburgers and bratwurst on the Weber
for our 4th of July. He even mentioned that it would be
a great time to assemble the new grill (the old one is
seriously rusted and burned out and is scattering ash all
over my new patio). I'm totally in favor of assembly! 

Still, it's a week of celebration and I'm going to enjoy it. We'll fire up the grill and make good stuff for dinner, we'll revel in cold desserts - ice cream and chilled fruit - and we'll enjoy drinks on the patio. At least we'll enjoy the patio as much as possible until the mosquitoes get too bad. 

Le Tour, with or without Froome, will be interesting this year.
We get Alpe d'Huez and the Roubaix Cobbles as well
as some stellar mountains, and we finish with the
Pyrenees. I'm already excited. 

I know that soccer picks up again today, so enjoy the games, and Le Tour de France 2018 starts on Saturday. I need to find the stage maps and get everything ready to watch. Of course, the big news this morning is that Chris Froome has been banned from this year's Tour. He's appealing, of course, but with only a few days until the start ... this could be dicey. 

Have a wonderful Monday and try to stay comfortable, whatever your weather. I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully a bit cooler.