Desert Heat and Boating Feat

The family left us with very beautiful weather all week! I loved it. But I guess everyone did tell me that Seattle’s summer happens in August. Well, it’s about time. Friday was a coworkers birthday so naturally we went to the nearby Mexican restaurant to have lunchtime margaritas, Mexican food, sit on the patio in the sun, overlooking the what-just-so-happened-to-be Carribbean music at the live outdoor concert series below. Yup, heaven!

I tried to recover because Saturday morning I left for a big and exciting camping and boating trip to Eastern Washington. My first trip over the mountains to the unknown. A group of 16 of us went to Banks Lake near Grand Coulee Dam to camp out in the desert and rent a Bayliner for four hours Saturday to get our fill of skiing, wakeboarding and tubing for the summer. Exactly half were UM alums and the other half were miscellaneous. It all worked out perfectly which I was so relieved about since I ended up reserving everything myself. And the weather forecast for both Saturday and Sunday was a stifling 97 degrees out, perfect for a weekend at the lake. What what!!


So the weekend went a little like this: Work a concert at the QCafe Friday night, go to bed very late, wake up very early Saturday morning, get in car, stop for McD’s breakfast on the way, get to campsite, throw stuff down, say hi to those already there, go to Banks Lake, pick up boat, drive first 6 on boat, get to ski and tube behind friend Ashley, still alive (and sore!) today, pick up 2nd group at dock, get two first timers up on skis, get last group, mostly try to knock people off the tube as it is now 7pm and still above 85 degrees and shocked that we are the only boat still on the lake and the water is like glass, get off boat in 7th heaven and in shock we only used half the tank in 4 hours, actually dissapointed in this fact, race back to the campsite to make chili dogs and Seattle dogs (with cream cheese and sauteed peppers and onions), finally drink a Corona, devour an entire watermelon with an entire fifth of Skyy vodka saturated in (best idea ever), roast smores, get scolded by the Park Ranger for noise violation (my music player), challenge bachelorette party to two games of flip cup (we won both easily), go to sleep without the rain cover on so it was the first time I camped where I could look up at the awesome stars all night, wake up to pancakes and eggs, clean up camp, go to swim lake in walking distance from campsite, float on rafts and on shallowly submerged rocks in the awesomely warm lake water, make sandwiches before heading out, demand that we stop at Dairy Queen for the nutter butter blizzard of the month (no Dairy Queens in Seattle but annoyingly many commercials for them), get home at 9pm, asleep on the couch by 10pm.