The Fourth Weekend

We live in a beautiful area in Michigan that attracts many vacationing tourists. We actually have many seasons: the regular Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter seasons as well as Tourist Season, which includes seasons for hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, off-road vehicles, and color tours to enjoy the autumn colors. There are also a variety of festivals throughout the year, such as a film festival, a chocolate festival, a beer festival, a trout fest, a big foot festival, an ice man triathlon, a cherry festival–and several others that I’ve probably forgotten.

Each year our July 4th Independence Day weekend and the popular annual National Cherry Festival are held at the same time, which is occurring now. The number of tourists hugely increases at this tie to 50 times the normal population. EJ just checked the number so it’s not a guess.

EJ and I don’t want to deal with the huge crowds and traffic so we always just stay home at our beautiful Enchanted Forest and enjoy the peace and quiet. However, this morning we did dash out to our local library, which was having a used book sale. EJ found a lot of books by Patrick McManus, an author he enjoys. He has several books by McManus, but these are new ones for him.

I didn’t find any books by my favorite authors (I always look) but I found books by unfamiliar authors that I decided to try. I had a dilemma because I found a whole box of a series of historical novels by Patrick O’Brien, an author I had never heard of. I told EJ that if I just buy one and love it, I will have missed out on the chance to get all his other books–around 20 of them, give or take a few. But if I bought all of them and hated them, I would have a bunch of books that I don’t like. EJ said, “Buy them. We can always donate them back to the library if you don’t like them. That’s one of the reasons I love EJ. He understands and shares the love of books. I also bought a series of westerns by William Johnstone, another unfamiliar author. The good thing about used book sales is that I can take a risk on unfamiliar authors. Often I discover new authors that I enjoy.

As we were paying for our two boxes of books (no set price; it’s by donation), we had a wonderful long chat with the librarian in charge of the sale. We all really enjoyed ourselves. When I told her that I had never read any books by Patrick O’Brien, she said he’s a really good author. Tastes in books is subjective, but I still appreciate a good review and look forward to reading them.

Now we are staying home. On July 4th–this year it’s on Tuesday–there are always a lot of fireworks fired off by towns and campgrounds. We live on a hill surrounded by forest so we have always been able to hear the fireworks all around us, but haven’t been able to see any of them. However, over the last year our neighbor-across-the-road has periodically and randomly put on beautiful fireworks shows that are as good as municipal programs we’ve seen. We are able to see them from while sitting in our living room, which is very delightful. I’m hoping he does fireworks on the 4th.

EJ has to work Sunday and Monday, but he gets Tuesday off for the holiday and he took Friday off as a vacation day so with his weird schedule, he has Tuesday through Saturday off. We will putter around. EJ has some maintenance to do on the truck, we will work in our gardens, and we will probably continue to work on organizing the garage. We are making a great deal of progress in the garage.

Several days last week it was very hazy/smoky outside. Official reports were that it was smoke from the many wildfires burning in Canada. However, the smoke didn’t smell like wood fire. It had a plastic smell to it. People throughout the USA Midwest/Northeast were experiencing similar and even worse smoke. Many people on social media said meters indicated that it was very toxic. It made my eyes burn. We shut the windows and stayed inside through the worst of it. It mostly cleared up yesterday.