#Sunday Stills: Theme Yellow
Exploring Sunny California
Meeting up with my blogging friend, Terri W. Schrandt made my week. We had such a great time hiking through the foothills in the Sierra Nevadas as we drove a short way into the Sequoia National Park.
What a joy it was to finally meet my blogger friend Terri. We don’t live too far apart now, but we are both moving in opposite directions, so I was super happy to spend a few hours with her.
The overwhelming impression you get from this picture is not yellow, but the golden hour sun warmed our skin and made our hair sparkle with yellow and strawberry highlights.
You can see the double/quadruple double yellow line in this shot, so you know that I stopped in the middle of the highway as the bear lumbered across. The car behind me didn’t honk and probably had his camera out and ready to go faster than I could find my phone and snap the picture.
The bear headed into the grass that nearly matched the color of the yellow lines. You can see a much better shot of the bear on Terri’s Sunday Stills post today.
Scouting the Housing Market in Prescott, Arizona
A mere two or three days before my friend Terri came to visit, I was gallivanting around Arizona, a mere nine hours and forty-one minutes away from home. My husband sent me on a house hunting trip, and my friend Patty Decker agreed to go with me.
Yellow must be the newest color in new housing. My friend Patti and I saw this stunning home called the Marigold in Prescott Valley in a development called Proghorn Ranch. We both wanted to unpack our bags and stay. The skies were clear and blue instead of dusty and the bathroom was golden.
In monsoon season it rains and cools off twenty or more degrees in the Arizona Desert. After a brief downpour, we enjoyed a relaxing yellow walk around the most artistic shopping mall in the country.
I thought these Javelinas on Parade display were cute, brightly painted pig statues, but no, they are not even related to the pig family. The Javelina (Tayassu tajacu) or collared peccary, are medium-sized animals that have short coarse salt and pepper colored hair, short legs, and a pig-like nose.
They look cute in the statues, but so do raccoons. So even though they are classified as herbivores, I don’t think I’d want to run into one in the middle of the night.
Back Home in Safe, Sunny California
As these two yellow squash grew together, Terri slept peacefully in the cabana in the back yard. I had no clue that our tiny dog would incite the wrath of a mother raccoon when she went out at 3:30 in the morning. Terri woke and thought a band of coyotes were howling in the nearby foothills surrounding our house, but it was me screaming at the raccoon.
I overcame my yellow-squashy tendencies and rescued my dog with my coyote yelps and a swift kick to the raccoon’s mid-section. She then got off the top of my dog and stood up and started to lunge at me. I jumped back but not quite fast enough. She snagged me once with either teeth or claws, I couldn’t tell which. There was a yellow stripe going up my back. I was sure she was going to attack me again as we faced off, but she scurried away
My husband woke up when my poor dog screeched her way to the bedroom telling him how scared she had been. I zipped off to the hospital to get the necessary rabies and tetanus shots.
Thanks for reading my yellow stories, both the yellow stills and me still being yellow. Please check out more stories on Terri’s Sunday Stills, and enjoy Becky B’s July square photo challenge.
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
39 responses to “Yellow Stills or Still Yellow?”
Wow, I didn’t know racoons could be so aggressive! I’m so pleased you were able to rescue your dog from its clutches!
Meeting up with Terri must have been fun 🙂 It reminds me of my regular meets (until this past year, obviously) with my Virtual Tourist friends. We all met online via that website but have been meeting up in person, in groups large (100+) and small (2) for years. Since last March a group of us have established weekly Zoom chats but it’s not the same. I should have been hosting a big meet, around 50-60, in the UK last May which had to be postponed – firstly to this May, now to this September, and potentially again to next May 😦 But we’ll make it eventually 😀
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Raccoons aren’t usually aggressive, Sarah, unless they have rabies or babies. I think, in this case she had babies. Apparently rebid raccoons come out during the day, which is not their norm. But I got the series of rabies and tetanus shots anyway. You all seem to have a lot more going for bloggers in the UK than I’m aware of in either CA or AZ. The US is so huge that even meeting state by state involves a lot of travel. I’ve met three bloggers from CA, I think and two from Australia. Not many, so I’m jealous. I hope your May meeting works out. Where do you host so many people?
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These meetings are a legacy of the now-defunct Virtual Tourist website and involve people from all over the world. We normally have an annual large meet in Europe, roughly every other year in Australia and from time to time in the US and Asia. Members organise these big meets, usually over a weekend. Attendees sort their own accommodation in the host town/city, often with advice from the host. Meanwhile the host plans some events and organises a dinner each evening in a local restaurant. You can read about these big Euromeets, as we call them on my blog: https://www.toonsarah-travels.blog/precious-moments-at-virtual-tourist-euromeets/
With the website closed we mostly use Facebook to stay in touch. And there are many small meets too – sometimes just a couple of people, sometimes a small group. I (normally) co-host a Treasure Hunt in London each year with a fellow member here, which is good fun, and usually about 12-20 people come to that. And there’s an annual small Christmas market get-together organised by members in Karlsruhe, Germany. And that’s just a taster!
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What fun, Sarah! It sounds like a fantastic organization and a great way to meet fellow travelers.
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Absolutely – it’s given me a network of friends all over the world!
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That is so awesome. That’s why I blog. What would you say is your ultimate purpose in blogging?
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I guess my purpose is a mix of wanting to share my travels and photos, and wanting to connect with other people who share my interests.
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Awesome, thanks for sharing that. There are lots of bloggers who love to travel. I know I love doing that when I can. 🙂
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[…] blogging friend Terri Webster Schrandt actually came to our home in the short interim in which the air conditioner worked, and the flood […]
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[…] Yellow Stills or Yellow Still? #3 Sunday Stills […]
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[…] I think meeting our blogging friends in person is part of the blogging dream. I know you know two of my favorite photo bloggers, Terri Webster Schrandt and Cee Neuner. I just met up with Terri in July when she stopped by and we took a short tour of the Sequoia National Park. […]
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Oh my goodness! Your visit with Terri sounds so wonderful, but the raccoon encounter is every dog owner’s greatest nightmare. Ours has had three run-ins with skunks, but not with raccoons, although we spot them in our yard. I’d love to join in if you set up a Zoom meeting. It’s a great idea!
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Great, when are you free? Just email me and I’ll set up a time. 🙂 Can’t wait!
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What a nasty encounter with the racoon, Marsha. I do hope you’re ok.
I saw the picture of the bear over on Terri’s blog. Such a great encounter. So glad you guys had a great few days. It’s terrific meeting up with other bloggers. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve met up with a fair few over the years I’ve been blogging. Good luck with the upcoming move when it happens.
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Thanks, Hugh. I think you and Colleen need to pair up on some training sessions. I just got onto a different mailing service because of her. I’m still working on filling it up with audiences.
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LOL. Good thing we slowed down. Our brand new air conditioner was improperly installed and condensation has been leaking into our roof above the spare bedroom for about two weeks. The water tore through the ceiling this morning explaining why the mattress (dripping on the underneath side and floor was soaked. I discovered that the mattress was wet two days ago when I was packing, but I thought maybe the cat had snuck into the room and peed. I smelled it – nothing. I should have reported it to Vince. He’s like an investigator.
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Omg woman, you need to stay home for awhile til the planets settle down, lol. Glad you got a tetnus shot! And lucky you, I love beautiful Arizona. I can’t wait to go back to Sedona some day. ❤
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The planets got us all flummoxed, I guess. We decided not to list our house and move, at least right now. I love Sedona, and I really liked the Prescott area, but as a good friend who travels there a lot said we need to try it out in more than one or two visits before we decide to move there. We need to get some buy in from Vince’s son, too. So for now, it’s okay to fall asleep after the next rabies shot, instead of packing and moving boxes to storage. 🙂
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Lol Marsh. Rome wasn’t built in a day ❤
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That was a fun post to read (although, maybe not the raccoon part)! How nice that you were able to spend some time with Terri before she moves away. I don’t know much about Prescott but it sounds like a change of scenery is in your future too. I would never think to paint a bathroom such a rich yellow, but that is really pretty!
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Thanks for visiting, Janis and leaving such a kind comment. Terri and I had a great time. I’m so glad she came. I agree with you 100% that yellow would not have been my choice of color. Now we are waffling on the change of scenery after all the events here. The treatment for the bite is much worse than the bite, and since I haven’t been up to par we are taking our time and may not move at all. “Can do” is a lot different than “should do” when it comes to selling and moving hundreds of miles from family and friends. 🙂
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I lived in Granville II in Prescott Valley, Marsha. Sounds like there have been some improvements since I lived there. ❤
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Lots of new housing developments. We like the clean air. But we are waffling some because it is so far from his son and it’s hard to part from our friends here. Decisions!!! 🤪
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Here’s where we are in Arizona: https://www.pulte.com/homes/arizona/phoenix/buckeye/festival-foothills-209176. Great prices and the foothills are all around us. We’re 5 hours from my hubby’s brother in Seal Beach!
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Wow! Those are beautiful and at a fabulous price. I will share that with my husband. How’s the weather?
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Hot as hell, but it’s perfect from October through June. LOL! They don’t have any houses available except to build though. I’m not aware of any spec homes sitting around. They are building like crazy!
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That’s like it is here, but from June to October I want to die.
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Yeah. I just stay in and write. No big deal. When we lived in Montana, it was cold for 7 months out of the year. Now it’s hot. Same, same. LOL! 😀
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True that. I stay in most of the time from July to October except in the early morning and a little while at dusk. The rest of the time is inside. For two months, May through mid-July, we had no air conditioning due to COVID and the fact that the repair company ordered the wrong type of air conditioner replacement. So I experimented with alternatives to air con. After Vince put a window air conditioner in one window, our lives perked up with the addition of many fans and lots of popsicles. 🙂
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Oh my goodness! I can’t even imagine being without air conditioning in 113 degrees! Yikes. It seems the supply lines are interrupted everywhere. People moving into the new builds here are saying they can’t get refrigerators for 3 months. Blinds, curtains, etc. everything is hard to come by! ❤
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LOL, it was only 106 here. Wow! no refrigerators! There are so many new builds right now. I don’t know what’s going on. Yesterday, when I was feeling so badly from all my rabies shots – they make me sleepy, we decided not to put the house on the market and to just stay put. Today we noticed that the ceiling in the spare bedroom was swollen and the drywall had broken through, the carpet was damp, and the mattress dripped underneath, saturated from an improperly vented condensation pipe on the AC. So, that may be a sign but I’m getting mixed messages that I can’t read. 🙂
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What an awesome hike and meet up!
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It was amazing!
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Ouch! I’m impressed with your bravery in standing up to a raccoon and also having the necessary injections afterwards. Much more fun sharing your beautiful area with a special friend.
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Blogging friends are very special as you know! Your life makes a huge impact on both mine and Vince’s. You would love Terri. She’s smart and positive and fun.
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Oh my gosh. Marsha, you are anything but yellow. A mama bear would have been proud of your lion-heart protecting Puppy Girl!! Gorgeous shots of the yellow shades of the Arizona area. And a lens capture of the butt-end of a bear during daylight hours is pretty good while driving! Despite the raccoon incident, wasn’t that the most fun ever had in a blogger meet-up? This was a great story to read even if I hadn’t been there to see it all myself!
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It was a fabulous meet-up. Some of my blogger friends do zoom meetings just to keep in touch. We might consider getting a group of people together to do that once in a while. It’s not as good as being there, but it’s fun to see faces. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by so fast!
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That would be fun, I will have a microphone and webcam on my desktop installed soon. Hope you’re having fun packing. I’m starting this week. Our realtor suggested quite a few things to do 😑
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Yes, don’t get overwhelmed. That’s where I am right now.
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