A SURPRISE Visitor "Drops In"!

TIME: Sunday, 2/28/2010, approx 5:45 PM, almost sunset.

Karen looks out our Motorhome window and sees THIS ...

She calls out, “Ed! Look! There’s a big hot air balloon coming down!”

Putting on jackets, we run out to a spot several hundred yards into the field west of us--- Below is Ed, running towards it----

Balloonist: “What land are we on?”
Ed: “County park land.”
B: “Do we have permission to land here?”
Ed: “Well, seems to me you’ve already landed.”

It was a Hot-Air Balloon Tour that had taken off from the County Fairgrounds eight miles away.

Balloonist: “We almost came down in the woods over there."
Ed: “Coming down in those woods would’ve created problems. That's city open-space preserve-- no roads.”
B- “I don’t want to be on city land ...is this city land?”
Ed- “No, like I said, this is county land.”
B- “Good, I don’t want to go on city land.”

Here is the Gondola with happy Balloon Tourists. The Balloonist is the one concentrating on his equipment---

Soon, a melodrama unfolds! ---

-The Ranger from the neighboring CITY Open Space Preserve shows up to issue them a Citation for landing on city land…
-The Balloonist strenuously objects (“...we're on county land!”)
-The City Ranger’s face hardens (“...you landed first on city land.”)
-The Balloonist even more strenuously objects...
-The City Ranger grimly threatens to impound the balloon (by now collapsed & rolled-up).

The Balloonist calls his boss...
...His boss calls their lawyers....
[By then, we’d called our own COUNTY Ranger, who's now also involved.]

...Needless to say, we’re staying clear of further involvement...

WOW! ...What a "neighborhood"!
We wonder who (or what) will be our NEXT Visitor to "Drop In"?

A “Neighbor” Comes to Visit!

Upon returning home from church today (see previous post), we saw that our Neighborhood Egret had come by for a visit!


Karen quickly grabbed the camera, but she needn’t have rushed...

Our Egret calmly walked around our motorhome

(in the background) for about 5-7 min.

Eventually it walked out our front gate,

then took flight over the green field by our place.

We say 'our' Egret because we’ve been spotting her/him around here for the past several days.

At first, we thought it was a Snowy Egret.

...However, we saw that it was too tall and (as you can see yourself) has a yellow bill instead of black...

We know now it’s really a Great White Egret.

It stands three feet high --that's half the height of a man.

It is magnificent to watch as it serenely takes flight!



As you can see from these photos, we truly enjoyed its visit to us today....

Indeed, we love it when our neighbors here come to visit us!

...and how many people do you know who can make that statement with such confidence?

---Ed & Karen