At Lake of the Pines, California, 4th of July is the best, most fun day of the year.  Houses are decorated.  The population doubles.  It’s bigger than Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween all rolled up in one ball of total happiness.

1.  Everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, shows up.  It lifts your patriotic spirit to see so many people having so much fun.

2.  The Best Decorated Boat Regatta is right off the Main Beach, also known as Party Central at Lake of the Pines.  All you have to do is walk down to the shore.  You can take your flip flops off and wade in.  Coooooool.  Ahhhhhh.

3.  The Best Decorated Golf Cart Parade comes right down the street to the Clubhouse.  Folks have been working on the decorations for many, many weeks. Well, many minutes.  A few have spent a couple of hours on the stupendous display of Patriotic Kitsch.

4.  The Cake Walk is World Famous.  OK, it’s famous at Lake of the Pines. 

5.  The Craft Fair.  Great stuff.  Cheap.

6.  WWII Fighter Planes Fly-Over.  Don’t pretend it doesn’t give you a thrill.

7.  Model Plane Acrobatic Demonstration.  Models?  These babies are BIG! 

8.  Raffle.  Hugely mediochre prizes.  I bought 30 tickets and forgot them at home.

9.  Booths and Games Galore.  Old fashioned stuff like dunk tanks and that strong man thing where you smack a sledge hammer down and this weighted thing zooms up a pole and maybe rings a bell if you’re strong enough.

10.  Snow cones, nachos, beer, burgers, hot dogs.  So cheap they might as well give it away.

11.  The Century 21 Foothill Real Estate American Quiz Booth.  Win a Prize!  Just answer a question about American History, Geography, or Government (or be a cute kid with decent manners and get something for free).  The prizes are red, white, and blue balloons for the little ‘uns and re-usable water bottles filled with cold water for the grown ups. The bottles do have the Century 21 Foothill logo on them.  (You expected something else?) 

Say, do you think you could win a prize at our booth?  See a sample of the questions by clicking on the link below.  N0 Choogling (cheating + googling).

Go on click it.  Do it!  Don’t worry. You can come right back here for the astonishing number 12 on the list of Reasons Why 4th of July is the Best Day of the Year at Lake of the Pines. 

Here’s the Place to Click

12.  Fireworks.  The big blow-off is, of course, the Fireworks Extravaganza.  A community men’s group, the Pinesmen, pay for it to the tune of a cool $10,000.  They hire a professional company to launch the pyrotechnics over the water.   Everybody hunkers down on the beach at the Clubhouse, or finds a place on a boat out on the lake itself.

The stars come out.  A woman sings “America the Beautiful,”  and that gal can SING!

This year we were so BAD.  The security patrol boat was out of commission, so there was no one out on the lake to keep us buccaneers away from the launch point.  Dozens of boats cruised up close to the dam, directly under the fireworks.  We lay down on our backs and looked straight up at the GLORY.  Oh, sure a few burning cinders fell on us, but I didn’t hear anyone complain.

Like I said.  We were BAD . . . and TOUGH!  What a blast!

It was FANTABULOUS!