dulcetly...notes on a bookish life

We're hitting Mid-June now, and the weather has been alternating cool and hot but seemingly muggy either way.   It's chilly outside, but very greenhouse-like inside everywhere I go.  I spent last weekend at a bbq in Iowa and then a couple nights under the stars up in Wisconsin, briefly wandering through some old stomping grounds that exist mostly in childhood memory--the beach near the campground where my grandmother's camper resided all summer every summer.  Now recognizeable only by the hilly horizon, the sand having given way to boat docks and a bar.  But I'd know it anywhere, having spent a good part of my early summer floating on intertubes and rafts staring up at it.  We didn't visit the old campground this time around  (which actually hasn't changed all that much--the same worn covered playground, the same dingy showers, the same, narrow sandy gravel paths.)  But did take a brief drive down surrounding roads and into tiny towns, and for a second, with my cousins in the car and the Eagles on the radio, I was 5 years old again, in that murky area of remembering/not remembering.

Because my grandmother parked her old Jayco up there, we spent a good part of my summer weekends up there until she died, my parents and I first in a truck camper and later in our old blue ford van, where me and my sister would spend hours with candy and coloring books and magic slates while my parents played cards underneath the awnings colored plastic lights.  This time, we were in another campground and slept in a tent, but that sky is still so blue and clear and the nights so amazingly starlit.  I did have a couple of Friday the 13th flashes when I went to take a shower up at the bathrooms alone, but it was a good trip and hopefully not the only one this summer (we have our eyes on some cabin rentals).  I'm hardly the outdoorsy type, but as long as I have access to a shower and a reasonable comfy place to sleep, I'm good, and it was actually refreshing to be rather cut off from technology for a couple days (there was reportedly wi-fi available, but only in certain hot spots.)  There was a swim beach and ice cream, a campfire and s'mores and good times with extended family (my Dad's) I don't get to see very often.