Warm Breeze, Cool Water

I'm aching for Summertime. I am a Summertime kind of girl. I like the weather hot and dry with a swimming hole nearby. I'll take a nice pool, but heaven to me is a nature made pool. About this time of year I start yearning for the feeling of jumping from the hot arid air into a cool flowing river or ocean and feeling the fresh cold water envelope me. Is it weird to say I feel it in my throat? It's true though, this aching in my throat and chest, like I just NEED to have it be Summer. I need an ice chest filled with fruit and chips and beer and water and I need to just sit and enjoy the breeze as it dries my skin after a long swim. I need to get a big black inner tube from the gas station, plop my behind in it and float all day.

In honor of my jonesing, I'm posting some pictures of places I've been that have scratched this itch for me, my little slices of heaven on earth. In my 33 years there have been more, but these places stand out in memory. Probably for reasons involving the company I kept in these places and other whims of circumstance, but I'd venture to guess that anybody could visit these places and find their own little slice of bliss awaiting them.

Please enjoy my little tour. Here's to summer breezes and cool, cool water....

My hometown heaven, swimming the Navarro River in northern CA.

Fiji - can't really go wrong here, the snorkeling was mind blowing

Piedra Escondida Hotel in Tulum, Mexico, http://www.piedraescondida.com/tulum-gallery.php handsdown the most romantic place Rowdy and I have ever been:

Yuba River near Nevada City, CA. This water is AMAZING and the rocks - its hard to believe they weren't placed just so by somebody designing the most perfect swimming holes ever. Well, I suppose nature is the best designer of all. It's a swimming hole junkie's Nirvana:

And it's all just a few short months away...