Happy 4th of July!

Another hot and dry day. The corn and beans continue to struggle and everyone is really hoping that we’ll get some rain soon! Daryl is talking about contracting fall corn, but not sure what we’ll end up with. Pretty scary stuff for a lot of farmers in our area right now.

William ended up calling us a couple of times on his route to Europe. They had trouble with their flights, and finally after midnight on Tuesday night, they were hoping to fly out of New York. They rerouted their flight from Texas because of airplane troubles and flew them to New York to get a different plane. He had to have been tired because by now it was going on their second day without sleeping in a bed and had been in Chicago, Dallas, and now New York, airports. But I’m sure they fell asleep somewhere in all those airports or the 6 hour bus ride to Chicago. The funny thing about him in New York is that Kyle was less than an hour away from him on Tuesday. Kyle could have drove over and said hi!

We had some really good news today. My brother found someplace to stay when we are on our bike ride coming up in a couple of weeks. We’ve been looking and asking around now for over a month and he was able to get a camper that we can all use. FANTASTIC! There is about 8 to 10 of us riding, and for some reason we just were having the worst time finding any houses to stay at on the overnight towns. The ride is a week long and  I can’t help to think how far we’ve come from sleeping in hot and humid tents, to now sleeping in a camper with air conditioning. Yea for Jim!

Daryl and I didn’t really know what to do today, and with it being so hot we packed the car and headed west to Clear Lake, Iowa. They have a beach and fireworks and with our swimsuits in hand, off we went. First thing that we did when we got to town was to check out the Surf Ballroom. The ballroom was built in 1947 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Surf was one of the first ballrooms in Iowa to have Rock and Roll and in  February 2, 1959,  it featured  Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and Dion. It was this show that made the most lasting mark on the Surf Ballroom when the plane that these musicians were in went down in a snow storm just outside of town. They say it was The night that music died. You know the song and I’m betting your probably singing it in your head right now… right?

Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa

After that, we got to the beach and checked  it all out and set our chairs down for the fireworks later that night. We walked through the midway and saw that they had a lot of stuff to do for families and even though it was still really warm, there was quite a few people there. I thought it was a fair, but Daryl said that they bring in the midway just for the 4th as part of their celebration. It got really crowded as the day went on and you could hardly walk through the streets. Tons of kids playing games and everyone it seemed bought a corn dog for the night. Well everyone but Daryl and I. Down to the lake and we went in to cool off. It was fun and in the late afternoon and early evening we spent just hanging out at the water and the beach. The water really cooled us off and since it was later in the afternoon, we didn’t have to worry so much about getting sun burned.

Kids jumping off the docks, boats, and swimming

Until I loose over 500 lbs (OK, maybe not 500) but this is all you're going to see

The lines for the bathrooms were long for girls, so I decided that I would just change in the car. Yea, I haven’t done that for awhile! Seriously, I don’t know how I made it so hard, but I was just sweating by the time I was done. I guess it was because it was maybe 90 degrees in the car and everything was sticking to me. But it did eventually work with a big beach towel and tinted windows (don’t worry our car was on a side street).  We went on some rides and then we went back to see if our chairs were still there. They were, but with about a couple of thousand people waiting for the fireworks. Now I’m not the biggest fan of fireworks, but this town really had some different ones. I think the most unique one was this one that when it went off it had red,white, and blue notes coming out from it that just hung in the air. Cool huh? Then at the end they shot off so many that made noise or exploded in the air, it just shook your chairs. It was a really fun day!

These notes shot out of the fireworks and just hung in the air

Crazy ending to the firework display - it was awesome!