Down at the Lake

I know that it is already the third day of my Fourth of July vacation, and this is the first time I am blogging, but the past two days were veerrrry long, and by the end of the day, I was too tired to do anything but sleep. For those not in the know, I am currently at my uncle's lakehouse on Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri, where we spend (almost) every 4th of July week. I know that southern Missouri is not France or Italy, as two of my friends have gone or are going to this summer, but we've been coming down here every year (with one or two exceptions) for as long as I can remember. Our vacation began on Wednesday, when my family drove down to St. Louis. The car we used, our ten year old Suburban, recently had its air conditioning fixed, and we were crossing our fingers that it would hold out - you do not want to be driving south for ten hours in a car that does not have air conditioning. That would make an already unpleasant experience more uncomfortable. Luckily, it worked, and the drive was relatively uneventful, if slightly boring.

Usually we drive straight through to my uncle's lakehouse or stopover in St. Louis, only to drive the extra five hours the next morning, but this trip was different. Before setting off from Michigan, there were quite a few plans that were made about the way down - at first we were going to visit a bunch of colleges before driving to St. Louis. Basically, every day, there was a different plan and it was so hard to keep track of what we were going to do that I stopped trying. Luckily for my family and my sanity, we decided to visit only one college: Washington University in St. Louis. But trust me, we made up for all that time that we didn't spend on on other colleges in this visit. First of all, we had to get up early for a campus tour - it was at 8:30 AM and we just made it. Then, we had meeting after meeting, we had to eat lunch, and while waiting for another meeting, we went into this weird modern art museum on campus. We didn't leave until 3:00 PM. It was a long day and super hot outside - 97 degrees out - so even though I really liked the campus and thought the school was nice, I kind of just wanted to go back to my aunt's house by the end of the visit.

When we finally returned to my aunt's house, we packed up and drove down to my uncle's lakehouse. Even though it is usually a 5 hour drive, it seemed to be super long. On the way there, we were on the lookout for this billboard on the way, that we didn't have time to take a picture last time we came down. All it says is "Jesus" in huge lettering, and for some reason, I just find that very amusing. Even though we were on the alert, we still didn't manage to get a picture. Maybe next time, but for the time being, I put a picture at the top that I found on the Internet. I don't know if it is the same billboard, but it looks the same. Anyway, we finally arrived there at about 10:00 PM or something like that. Now today, all the dogs, my dad, sister, Uncle "Frank", and I all went on a walk early in the morning. It is supposed to get hot today, so that was the only time where you wouldn't melt with the heat. Hopefully, today we will be able to go swimming and go out on the lake :)