Favorite hot summer oases

When it is just too hot and you must be out anyway, due to cabin fever or whatever, what are your favorite oases of air-conditioning?

It doesn't get smokin' hot up here by your standards -- not more than 36*C -- but that's too darn hot for me.

I have a massive old spruce tree in the middle of the yard. We toss the picnic table under it and it's an oasis. It's well shaded, the ground is cooler, the evaporation from the tree no doubt helps, and the slightest breeze comes whistling under. Wonderful.

I also have an old hip-roof barn, the classic style; and with the big airy hayloft above, the concrete main floor stays nice and cool. I'm actually trenching in water and telephone this year (my wireless Internet reaches out that far). It'll be my summer office/workshop. Complete with a beer fridge.

(BTW, this'll make you laugh: We went to Hawaii a bunch of years ago in the summer. The heat and humidity just about killed me; it took ten days before I started to acclimatize. But the kicker is that a good portion of the tourists were from California, and they had come to escape the heat!)

Your last name say's it all-Go West young man, to The Great Pacific Ocean!

Locally or on the road it is Barnes & Noble, any fast food restaurant, and one of the movie multi-plexes. All keep it cool and most have backup generators.

Regionally it is either the Pacific Ocean or the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Temporally, it is night rather than day.

The neighborhood pool. No air conditioning but wonderfully cooling...and very nice scenery.

-Blast

If I can't get to the forest, our neighborhood pool and the local movie theatre are my two top choices. I was pregnant during a heat wave in the summer of 2003 and couldn't stand it anymore. DH and I took the afternoon off and went to the movies. We watched three movies back to back.

BTW - I don't recommend something like Terminator 3 for pregnant women but my water broke during the big damn scene in X-Men 2. Might have had something to do with all the jalapeno smoothered natchos.

How about in the field?

In the shade of large rocks, trees, or bushes, especially near flowing water or on the downwind side of still water.

on a hot day, soaking my head under a garden hose - anyone's.

some people never grow up. but it sure feels good.

There's nothing like taking off the boots at dipping your feet in a cold mountain burn on hot sunny day.

Off-shore on the west coast on my boat, fishing salmon, halibut and checking crab traps.

MPB do you have a trick to staying cool on the water? I love being in the boat and could fish all day but I find it gets pretty steamy, especially with the glare off the water and wearing a PFD. It's particularly bad when we're sitting still or trolling and even more so if there's no breeze.

Our fishing boat has a steel hull and if there's a little water in there can be cooling on bare feet but tender tootsies and hooks are not a good combo in my experience.

In the hot summer months, trips and hikes up onto the year round glaciers work for me.

We no longer have glaciers in Ariozna or the southwest, but I was always amazed at how cool one could become with about a forty-five minute drive into the Catalina mountains near Tucson, gaining about 5,000 feet and losing about thirty degrees. That country is heaven on earth.

I like to go to Sonic [no affiliation] and get a cherry cola.

Jeanette Isabelle

Strawberry/banana smoothie from Sonic is the way to go

Lets see here,120F degrees minus 30 = 90F degrees,Man! thats chilly weather for AZ in the Summer,lol!

Actually, I am not sure that Tucson has ever experienced 120 degrees official temperature - I certainly never saw it that hot when during the twenty or so years I was living there. During the hotter periods, temps would often reach 100 degrees, but rarely exceeded 105-106 - which is still plenty hot and requires that you pay attention to what you are doing and watch your internal state very carefully.

Tucson is cooler than Phoenix and the lower desert to the west because it is surprisingly high - about 2500 to 3000 above sea level (Phoenix is about 1000 to 1500 ASL). Altitude is everything in determining temperatures in Arizona.

Of course I was just being a smarta$$,but I recall a visit awhile back to a tad north of Yuma,where it was 119F at 5pm,at 3am it was 105F,It did this for a week I was there,Brutal stuff, but fairly common in them parts!

Been living in the arizona high country. Left Kaibab enroute to Prescott NF. Nice moderate temps at 7500ft. Temp on the valley between the mountains registered 117.

Islands in the sky.........

Nomad.

But its a dry heat isn't it? :-)

I had the hot humid weather we get in the midwest. Hate it.

If I'm out and about I just find some shade, my favorite camp chair, a wet bandanna, try to limit activity, and deal with it. I can't think of a time I've gone somewhere just for the cooling down.