Rain!

The last two afternoons have brought much needed rain, but it has been coupled with intense thunderstorms.  Lightning, thunder, and hail, and of course, the welcome torrential rain.  I don't know if the storms have started any more fires, but with as much precip as they contain, I doubt it.
We took off yesterday to ride up to Williams Creek Reservoir, one of our favorite spots.  Normally we do some kayaking there, but we don't have our kayaks with us this year.  Instead we packed a picnic and enjoyed it on the bank overlooking the lake.

  We had a regal guest that was, obviously, still in the area for the 4th of July:)

What a beautiful bird!  He was soaring around looking for lunch, I guess, and assuming as close as he got to us, maybe he was looking for ours!
I'm sure many of you have noticed that many large birds are harassed and attacked by smaller birds that are more maneuverable than the big bird.  It always amazes me that these small birds get away with it, as one slash of a talon or bite from the beak would end it all.  Nevertheless, a red winged black bird came to our rescue and beat the eagle away from our lunch.

There was a major fire not far from the lake, and we were surprised to not see any signs of it.  No smoke at all.  While we were eating a couple ranch hands came in with a horse trailer, led the horses out and mounted up to drive some cattle up away from the lake and into another pasture.  Much of the land is private, but many ranchers graze their cattle on public lands.  Roaming cattle are everywhere out here.  We thought it made an appropriate and idyllic view of the west.

Finding the cows

Rounding them up

Git along little doggies

Across the road

Up to the new pasture

It was cool to watch, the two girls knew what they were doing as it was totally low key, no yelling, no galloping around, just eased the cattle along.  It was very cool, Jan would have joined them in nanosecond!
We watched some folks catch a couple nice trout, chilled out enjoying the scenery, and the absolute peace of the area.

It was a nice laid back day.