(I had to say it.) We went to the "Dried Plum" Festival in Yuba City today. (They've been "dried plums" instead of "prunes" for maybe two years.) Yuba City was also hosting a "Fly-In" so we could see small airplanes doing stunts not too far away.

There were some freebies, food booths, food (we had hamburgers with dried plum sauce), displays (Emu eggs look like big avocados!), music (the California Cowboys worked in Beach Boys songs, which was fun), and a general good time. I enjoyed it. I saw a t-shirt that said "Caution Attitude out of Alignment." On a teenager! Go figure. We got lots of samples of prunes and dried apricots. In the picture history, I see that the main office of the California Prune and Apricot Association (Sunsweet) was at San Antonio and Market in San Jose, built in 1918. That's long gone! We left with a dish of prune ice cream. Tasty.

We thought we'd find out where Gray Lodge is. When we arrived, we discovered the nature reserve was still open, so we drove in and explored. There's a nature trail, and a couple of drive-arounds. We have decided we need to come back here every couple of months and see what the seasonal changes are. We saw a blue heron, egrets, stilts, a dowitcher, a tanager(?), cottontail bunnies, ground squirrel, lizards, and a LOT of frogs. On one of the drives, we passed a guy with a strange device. We had decided when we came back to ask him what it is. However, we saw this dripping dog come racing out from the pond, tail awag and throwing water like a garden hose. The light dawned... the strange device is a catapult to throw dead ducks into the water to train this happy dog. We talked to the hunter, and sure enough. They have competitions, and they're preparing this two-year-old to retrieve.

Rich has been interested in how the mind works, how he can spot pennies or softballs or carnelians. He was trying to figure out how we both knew what the catapult was once we'd seen the dog, since we'd never seen such a machine before nor did we know they used them.

A nice day!