When You Can’t Beat the Heat

Editor’s Note: For those of you following our foreign travels, this post will be a break with the norm, covering some mundane vacationess and land-locked water sports.  Our Central America trip coverage will resume later this week.

It seems that when we can’t beat the heat, we end up going some place warmer.  I am beginning to suspect that we are closet masochists. As mentioned earlier, we flew from Nicaragua to the USA.  The irony in all this was that as we flew north, it actually got warmer.  Due to the Earth’s inclination on its axis, the northern latitudes receive substantially more hours of sunlight than the areas near the equator this time of year.  Thus we experienced daytime highs in the upper 90s.  Although, nighttime lows in the 70s were a welcome break from the 80 degrees and 90% humidity of Central America at sea level. Our final destination was Mountain Home, Arkansas, and Lake Norfork, where the Luth clan has been gathering during the summer for over a decade.  Our goal: to punish our bodies with surf and sun.  Well, as much surf as a passing cabin cruiser can make. 

Another goal of the Luth clan’s outing is to burn as many fossil fuels as possible.  To this end, 3 boats ranging from 18 to 27ft, 3 PWCs and a virtual armada of cars were employed.
 




The general battery of activities includes water skiing, tubing, wakeboarding, as well as general lounging and exaggerating tales of previous exploits.    

 
  






Evenings we generally spend doing as little as possible and nursing rashes from neoprene and sun alike.  This year almost everyone under the age of 35 brought their own laptop.  I made a terrible mistake and introduced everyone to the original Roller Coaster Tycoon.  So it was in this way many an evening were lost in silent contemplation of the deepest questions: How do I make this roller coaster faster? and, Why do my guests keep dying?





All in All a good vacation.  I only ended up having to repair a few minor issues totaling around 3 hours of time.  A new record I think.  As I finish writing this we are heading to another lake, although this one is in Honduras, and for different reasons.