"The Pond"

While I was in Idaho I accompanied Dad one day to "The Pond". It is the spot where he and his RC buddies meet every Thursday, purportedly to fly airplanes. The Pond is in the distant center of this picture.

Southern Idaho is categorized as high mountain desert so it is very dry, but also quite beautiful. Here, a few pictures taken at the pond:

The men have their own little section of the pond, where they set up their windsock.

They line up their vehicles...

and unload their gear.


They ready their planes.

And they talk. (A lot!)

The men want their wives to believe they go to The Pond to fly airplanes but, in fact, it is more of a social gathering.

Some of them don't even like the noise of the airplanes!

Once in awhile they actually fly airplanes.

(I'm kidding. They actually fly airplanes a lot. But they talk a lot too.)

The next 2 pictures surprised me because my Dad was actually smiling a bit. I didn't see much of that this visit.

Sometimes the men do goofy things, like use jack-in-the-box toys for pilots.

But overall they are pretty serious about their airplanes.

Quite often, someone crashes or stalls out somewhere in the pond. The men are prepared. They bring a boat along every week so that they can retrieve errant airplanes.

Sure enough, this week someone couldn't get his plane to lift off of the water soon enough. As a result he tried to climb too rapidly which stalled his engine, thereby causing it to nosedive into the water. I felt bad for the man for wrecking his plane, (it was a beautiful one!) but I was glad because it gave me a chance to photograph my 80 year old father in action. He likes to row the boat.

One friend helped him into the life vest. (Dad can't swim.)

They carried the boat down to shore.

While Dad placed the oars, the crash pilot gave him a push...

and off he went to retrieve the plane.

You cannot tell from the picture, but the wings were splintered pretty badly where they joined the fuselage. I felt bad for the man.

This was the only crash of the day.

Usually the men all bring a lunch and they eat together at The Pond. On this day Dad and I left a bit early and ate at Sonic.

I also took some flower pictures, but I will put them in another post so as not to junk this up, in case Dad ever reads it. He doesn't like all my flower pictures. He was surprised that I had found flowers at the pond, but I did! Another day...