BY: RACHEL SMITH

 

You know… I had grand plans for what to post this week on the blog.  I thought maybe a RAGBRAI recap, or the fact that there is live music EVERYWHERE this weekend.  As usual, it’ll be another weekend of fun events with the Evening Lions hamburger and sweetcorn feed, picnics and performances at Central Gardens, and Farmer’s Market.

Seriously… so many things!!!!

But my brain is just fried.  It’s like writers block mixed with a thorough lack of ability to form complete sentences.

And I blame summer.

As July slowly slips away, I can’t help but wonder what happened?  I mean, I blinked and June was gone.  And now July has passed me by in a blur of summer fun.  Next week we change the calendar to August and then BOOM.  School will start and summer’s over.

It kind of makes me sad, really.  I’ve come to realize that summer in Clear Lake is pretty much the best thing ever.  I didn’t grow up here, but I’m so glad my children get to.  I just think of them being adults someday, looking back on all the time spent at the pool, the beach, Thursdays on Main, at all the events in City Park, the concerts, the carnival.  I could go on and on.

Hence, the title of this post….

Not much of a comprehensive, cohesive thought here, but I hope you take this away from my random array of word vomit:  Clear Lake is amazing.

My cheeks literally hurt at the end of the day on Tuesday.  Every biker I came across had the same thing to say, “This town is amazing!”  I think I said, ‘Thank you, make sure you come back to visit us,’ five hundred times. Because in my opinion, the more tourists and vacationers at Clear Lake, the merrier!

Yes, it’s easy to get frustrated with all the extra bodies and traffic at times, but these people live somewhere else and choose to spend their free time and weekends in our town.

They eat here.  They drink here.  They buy merchandise in our local stores and give our economy a boost that a lot of Iowa towns could only dream of.

So as we roll over the last hill of summer on the down slide to fall, I hope you take the time to savor these last few weeks.  The dog days of summer are upon us.  It’s our last chance until next year to appreciate the summer beauty all around.  One day soon the temperature will drop, the tourists will close up their homes for the summer and go back to wherever they’re from.

But we get to stay.

Because we live in paradise.