July 4th, 2010

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Yesterday was Independance Day here in the States. We went over to Hope to enjoy the fireworks on the lake and have dinner at the Floating Restaurant.



It was all going so well. Good food, beautiful view and all that good stuff. Quite suddenly the sky darkened and it started to rain. How nice, considering we were sitting at an outdoor table and the indoors part of the restaurant was already quite full.

Many of the other patrons scurried indoors like rats fleeing from the rain and huddled in the overcrowded room like storm refo's. We were already wet and cold so getting a little wetter was not going to matter really.

We got pretty wet before one of the staff came and put a sun-shade umbrella over us. I may have had dripping wet cutlery but at least my tucker didn't drown. I did however manage to look like a drowned rat, the mascara running down my face really completed the look.

A barge on the lake put on a 40-minute fireworks show. The really fun part was the massive bolts of lightning mingling with the display. I sat there hoping I would not die from a lightning strike as we sat at our metal table, on our metal chairs, floating on the lake; at least not until I had finished my dinner and desert please!

As I sat there watching the colours bursting in the sky I realised that this place is now home.

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Independance Day Cake.

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Hope

.Sunday drives through the country were one of my favourite things to do as a child. My mother would load us kids into the car and set off, often on aimless wandering drives to no-where in particular while we gawped out of the windows at all the sights.

The Colonel and I went for such a drive yesterday and visited a town next to ours; situated on Lake Pend Oreille. It reminds me of Lake Como and of course I love that. It even has hillsides with quaint houses dotted all along.
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We had dinner at a floating restaurant which sits on the water at the marina. The food was so-so but the view was amazing. It was not exactly as grand as the Jumbo Floating Restaurant I went to in Hong Kong, actually, it was more like a pontoon out the back of the Jumbo, but around here it was pretty exiciting.

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Dragon detail from the Jumbo Restaurant.

On the way there we got up close and personal with a Moose and some deer. It's not quite the colourful scenery that Ms Patrice gets to see down Smith Street; if by colourful scenery you mean prostrate druggies, but it certainly was exciting.

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