It's the 4th of July! Or maybe the 7th of April

Welcome, fiercely independent reader, as this weekend we were treated to our American cousins celebrating their continuing independence over us. Based on the available evidence, I'm happy to let this little experiment run a bit longer.

This was perhaps our first "proper" 4th of July, as last year we were very much in the depth of COVID lockdowns and didn't see a lot of celebrating going on. This time around, the country is starting to open up whether we like it or not, and where we live, the vaccination rates are very high anyway.

Firstly, we entered into the spirit of this ourselves, by decorating our front garden with appropriate amounts of stars-and-stripes themed tat:

There's frankly not a lot of this kind of thing about in Palo Alto, where folks like to see themselves as... well... a bit less Trump-ish. Local parents love to use Sean and Ermintrude as a way to distract their bored children when out for a walk anyway, so this just gave them even more of an excuse to stop and point.

On July 3rd we wandered down to the Palo Alto Creamery for our now-traditional annual American breakfast on Independence Day weekend. Well, we've done it twice now, so that's a tradition, isn't it?

We love the Creamery: it's straightforward and staunchly American food, served with a healthy slice of Bay Area irony. It's not cheap - nothing here is - but you're guaranteed something you'll enjoy eating, with great service, in fun surroundings.

On the 4th, we went to an event at one of our local parks, which turned out to be a live band and some food trucks, pretty much. But not enough food trucks. What do you do on an American holiday? You eat fish and chips, that's what!

Well, we queued for a total of an hour to get these (like I said, there weren't enough food trucks), and I'm disappointed to say that... they were actually pretty good. But there wasn't much to do at the event, other than Helen bringing out the funky chicken dance to accompany the live band (apparently the "bass was prominent"), so we soon repaired home.

At home we partook of two classically American activities: we played the game of cornhole, and then we barbecued a chicken:

Now obviously, this holiday is very much about setting light to things, whether that be to barbecue food (which is more or less the law on the 4th), or setting off fireworks. Fireworks are of course illegal in California, and indeed much of the US, the excuse being that they pose a wildfire danger (which is probably right). This is the US, so the news networks mounted a propaganda campaign against illegal fireworks (for example, with stories about fireworks getting stuck in a house's gutter and burning it down). But frankly, it didn't matter, because as soon as it got dark on the 4th there were plenty of fireworks going off, continuing until late. Regular readers will recall that in this country, celebratory gunfire is legal (if somewhat frowned upon), but fireworks are just illegal. It all makes sense.

Anyway, the Americans seemed to enjoy it: as well as the illegal fireworks, the Macy's fireworks extravaganza in NYC was in full flight this year, although the entertainment on offer there included... Coldplay, who, the last time I checked, were kinda British. Perhaps they were there to claim all those back-taxes that have been missed or something.

With the 4th out of the way, we're now off for a quick break in Lake Tahoe, a place dignified by the fact that most of California goes there on holiday at some point - it's a large lake up in the Sierras, so as well as offering summer-themed fun, there's also plenty of snow sports in the winter. And bears! If this is the last blog post, dear reader, I'm sure Yogi and his chums enjoyed eating me. I'll try to stay Bear Aware!