[jdviole2]

One of the places we visited was Sea World in California. This was in the mid 1970's before it gained the bad reputation it has today. Helena loved seeing the dolphins and the killer whales. She loved the penguins and almost everything else there. The only thing she really hated were all the seagulls that were flying around. At many of the exhibits they had vending machines that dispensed cups of sardines (raw) or other small fish (dead). You could feed many of the different animals by hand. One exhibit was some smaller walrus. She had been feeding them for a while and then decided to see if she could make them sit up by holding the fish up out of their reach. She did that and was very surprised when a one legged seagull swooped down and took the fish right out of her fingers. She wanted to scream out loud, but of course we were in public so she didn't. But that pretty much ended the animal feeding for the day. We went to a tank with a couple of dolphins. They would come up to the edge of the tank and you could reach out and pet them. They did some tricks too like standing on their tails and scooting backwards across the tank. The would attract quite a crowd. Little did we know they were planning a trick of their own. Helena was in the front row right next to the tank wall. They did their tricks and then swam right up to the edge of the tank. One dipped its nose into the water and splashed water all over the front row, Helena included. Now I have a big problem. I need to laugh, big time. Come on it was funny. Unfortunately Helena did not see the humor in the situation. I was being expected to show great compassion for her. I handled it pretty well, I thought. When we go her somewhat dried off she turned, looked at me, and said "well go ahead. Laugh. You know you want to". Guess I didn't handle it as well as I thought. Sea World was not the only place we had problems with birds either. When we would hike in the Rocky Mountains and stop for lunch we would be assulted by mountain Jays. They are very agressive birds, fairly large, and not afraid of humans at all. We would be eating crackers and peanutbutter and I would hold a piece of cracker over my head and let a jay fly down and take out of my fingers on the wing. I would also put a piece of cracker on top of my head and let the Jay swoop down and take it off my head on the fly. She hated every minute when I did that. She was afraid I was going to get bit or scratched. Never happened. I would also lay back and put a cracker on my chest and let the chipmunks come up and sit on me stomach and eat. Helena was somewhat afraid of any wild animals we encountered. (though most of them were pretty used to humans). The only really "wild animal" encounter she had was close to where we live. We were hiking around a lake just outside of town. At the far end of the trail where it bordered on a big stand of trees we saw a "teenage" deer. I don't know if it had been someones pet or not but when we stopped to watch, it walked over to us and let us both pet it. When we walked off it didn't follow us but it was a pretty neat thing to see. We came close to what could have been a bad encounter once in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We were in Custer State Park where they had suffered a bad prairie fire the year before. We hiked over to see the damage and were on the other side of a large hill, on the trail, out of sight of anyone when we heard something coming down the trail after us. When we looked back behind us we were really shocked to see a full grown bull Bison walking down the trail. Bison are not friendly animals and you are not supposed to get near them. Nobody mentioned them getting near us. I told Helena to move uphill off the trail about 10 meters and squat down. We both sat unmoving as the very large mammal moved past us. I would guess it was about 2 meters tall and probably 650 kilos or more. It was scary but basically he ignored us though he kept his eye on us as he passed. That same trip to Custer SP we ran into a herd of wild Donkeys. In fact they got between me and the car and settled down for lunch. I had to walk through the herd to get back to the car. Helena was worried for me but all they did was grab at my coat looking for goodies, apparently they get fed a lot of junk food by visitors. We also got to see a herd of wild Elk in Colorado once but were able to do that while eating breakfast in our motel room. They had come down out of the mountains and invaded the parking lot. By the time we were ready to leave for the day they had gone. We had lots of run ins with wild animals on our vacations but thankfully none of them ever turned out really bad. So for our pictures today. First off another "eating lunch on the trail" shot from Colorado probably in the early 80's. Note Helena is once more eating a pudding cup. In the next picture she is standing under a large variety of cactus in San Diego's Balboa Park. This was on the "skinny dip" trip. The third shot is Helena in her parents kitchen with the lamb cake she and her mom made for Easter. This was in 1974. Next another of her father's pictures. This one with her in a fluffy robe (I doubt she is nude under the robe, but if you want to imagine that go ahead, I am). The next picture is Helena at our friends time share condo in Arkansas. This was in the 80's. She had just finished telling me to put the camera away and stop taking pictures. That might explain her expression. The last picture for today is another with the hat. From 1975.