The Turner Family

If for no other reason but to stimulate blog submissions, enclosed is our second weekend activity, a trip up to the St. Johns Mint Festival with just Tiffani and Sophia. Even hotter than the previous day at the air show, we walked around the craft (crap) show, attempted to buy some mint ice cream -- inexplicably, they were out! It's the primary reason for attending?! Sophia refused an elephant ear (heat? or the chance that they were actually derived from elephant's ears?), and we paid a buck to wander through a packed little trailer with exotic and sometimes poisonous reptiles. Here's Sophia with an oversized bunny and a tortoise... And now with an unfortunately-penned junior crocodile... And again with the tortoise and stew-ready rabbits -- that white one could feed a small village, eh Jason? -- complete with Tiffani and the hind-end of a male kangaroo. Incidentally, why are people currently insisting on taking their dogs everywhere? Just as the bottom picture was taken

Noting in the previous Sunday's Lansing State Journal that there would be an air show at Mason's Jewett Field , the little kids and Tiffani and I piled in Dolores for a hot afternoon at the airport. The highlight of the show was to be a B-17 bomber, the Yankee Lady , part of the Yankee Air Museum organization. The event drew a bit of a crowd , and folks were lined up to pay $425 apiece to ride the giant, mature, historic aircraft, one of only twelve still flying. Because of the weather, we parked ourselves in the shade of a hangar, just adjacent to the plane, wondering what the expectant crowd was all doing watching this beast too. But, we learned it was about to takeoff, so with the approaching start of the engines, Tiff and the kids left to a distance safer for eardrums. It's interesting how long of a process it is to start these engines, each motor taking quite a bit of spinning and warming up before full combustion, one engine at a time. Inside motors first, right t