Saturday, September 22, 2012

The best laid plans are interrupted by metal thieves…


Yesterday, both of my kids were available for an outing.  We planned to go to Hadley, Massachusetts to the Skinner State Park because I had heard that on the top of Skinner Mountain there are excellent views of the Connecticut River Valley.  That sounded like a nice photographic opportunity to me.

So Evan and I went to Northampton to pick up Carrie and off we went.  When we got to the turn to go up the hill to the park, there was a Ranger waiting out in the road.  He told us that there had been “an incident”, the park was closed and we should come back in an hour.  Of course, that got our imaginations working.   Was it a car accident?  A UFO landing?  Carrie was sure someone had been mauled by a bear.  What else could it be?? 

We took the Rangers word for it and found an ice cream stand and enjoyed a soft serve, sat around and talked and then we went back.  There was a different Ranger standing there at that point who said it would probably be another 30 to 45 minutes and to come back then.  Well, unfortunately, we couldn’t wait around all day and we decided to go up the mountain on another day.

We headed back to Northampton, dropped Carrie off and headed for home.  We were informed later that evening by Carrie that it wasn’t a car accident or a bear mauling but a couple of metal thieves who got caught stealing copper tubing and such out of a guy’s house.  The homeowner caught the robbers in mid-thievery and being caught, the robbers did what any reasonable robber would do.  They ran over to the state park to mess up our plans. 

They eventually caught these guys but it wasn’t until another couple of hours after we decided to call it a day.  Well, looking at the bright side, I got to spend an absolutely beautiful day with my kids and got a nice soft serve ice cream cone to boot.  Skinner Mountain will still be there next week.




11 comments:

Juliana said...

The last picture is very beautiful...

xoxo, Juliana
[pjhappies.blogspot.com]

Anonymous said...

Many migrants over here roam the streets in order to find metal and copper, that people put in trash. In my opinion, it is not the fault of the 'thieves', but of those who are later buying it from them.

Please have a good Sunday.

barbara l. hale said...

I think you are right, Robert. If there were no market, people wouldn't bother.

TexWisGirl said...

and you still got some lovely photos, no matter where you are. :)

Debbie said...

"in these parts" it's very difficult to sell metal because of all the thievery!!

you still got some awesome pictures and ice cream....it's always a good day when ice cream is involved!!

Elizabeth Edwards said...

love the last view. very pretty umbrella. (:

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Too bad the park outing was messed up, but spending time together and having ice cream was a great substitute. And some great images you shared here.

Love for Food and Photography said...

Beautiful, coloured images!!! third one looks like an HDR :-)
have a great Sunday!!!!

Nicki said...

Bummers about the criminals, but it does sound like you had a good day all-in-all.

Betty Manousos said...

oh my, that first photo is a gem-like image.

i LOVE it!
and that bottom one looks great too.

hope you're having a wonderful weekend.

MEcoy said...

love the vibrancy of colors