Taste Of Summer Adrift On Breeze Hot Dogs, Snow Cones, Sunshine Lure Cda Residents To Beach

It was still a little chilly, still a little windy.

The sea gulls kept getting blown off course. Driftwood was strewn across the beach.

But the sun was trying its best Sunday, shining brightly over the Lake City and luring its hardier worshippers outside. After last week’s tornados, a breeze didn’t seem like a big deal.

“It’s days like this I’m glad I moved up here,” said Ed Broberg, taking a hot dog break from a day of cab driving in Coeur d’Alene. He stared jealously at the sails heading for the horizon. “It’s like the lake is open for play again.”

It was. In the distance, a cluster of sailboats. Just off shore, a windsurfer wrestled with the ebbing gale, finally collapsing into the lake atop his lime sail. A sailplane buzzed gawkers.

But the most summer-thinking person for miles had to be 9-year-old Nick Romans in the water fountain. He just jumped right in, stretched out the hem of his T-shirt, and tried to capture the froth.

Some people laughed. Others were bewildered. Nick didn’t think it at all peculiar.

“No, it’s not cold,” he said, wet hair stuck to his head. “You get used to it after awhile.”

Other kids sat on the sand, fencing off the lapping water with a line of driftwood pickets.

And that new playground that opened last month in Coeur d’Alene Park? The volunteer Kiwanis project was under a non-stop siege of giggles.

“He likes the boat pretty well,” said Shawn Patterson’s mom, Lynda. The 2-year-old decided that the wooden rocking toy was the best part of the whole place.

The wind did hurt the snow cone and hot dog stand a little Sunday, but the owner promised that’s just because it was early yet. “Come back later,” Dawna Andrea said hopefully.

The wind sure didn’t bother little Shawn’s mom. Lynda Patterson just sat on a concrete wall and stared as the muddy waves broke, a big smile on her face.

“I’m from Montana, originally,” she said. “It feels warm.”

, DataTimes