RAGBRAI 2012

Just a few pics of the scene around small town Lake View when literally thousands of bikers came into town on Monday the 23rd to spend the night enroute to Webster City. With the temperature in the upper 90s and hitting 100 degrees our beautiful Black Hawk Lake was a welcome site to some.  One of the couples staying in my yard took a swim in the lake as did many others. Many food vendors were set up along the lake shore near the Information Center but I feel the church meals were the most favored if for no other reason than to get inside a somewhat cooler environment.

50 Class Reunion Banquet

Just enjoyed a wonderful two days of high school class reunion events.  Pictures here are just a few scenes from the Friday night alumni banquet.  As the class celebrating their BIG 50, we were in charge of the banquet that is open to all graduating classes from ESCO. Three of our living classmates were cheerleaders in HS and are pictured practicing and later performing from in front of the head table.  I was privileged to sit at the head table this one and only time and can say it was a real treat not only because it was cooler up there but you can see so much more!! One of our classmates got her husband to pose with her behind the special photo op frame depicting the dress of our younger days!

Black Hawk Lake fun

Had an enjoyable but way too short visit by my granddaughter recently.  She and a local friend were treated to some tubing fun as seen here.  The granddaughter, who lives in Miami Beach, Florida, is a high school cheerleader and being a teenager, was ready to return to  city life and her upcoming practices in preparation for the fall sport season. 

I have been overly busy this month (the reason for so few posts) with preparations for the super busy weekend coming up here in small town Iowa! Sounds like it will be a very hot weekend but hope people will still enjoy our annual carnival of events and that all the RAGBRAI bikers will arrive safely.  As for the other event, my 50th class reunion... that will be a once in a lifetime event!! 

Iowa State Capitol Bldg.

My granddaughter and I had the priviliege of being part of the large crowd of people who attended the annual 4th of a July Yankee Doodle Pops performance on the huge expanse of lawn of the Iowa state capitol. I aplogize that I used the wrong setting on my camera to get a better night shot of the unique gold dome at the top of the building but you can still get some of its beauty. Fortunately there was a fairly good breeze and less humidity than the day before to make the event more comfortable than we had expected.  It was still good though to finally get back into the cool comfort of my brother's Ankeny home. May our country's leaders earnestly seek to remember what made America the greatest nation on Earth when we first had a 4th of July to celebrate!