CROWDS GATHERING HITHER & YON

 

Shoppers & tourists in Stratford upon Avon, England

The crowd attending Market Day in Ludlow, Wales.

Tourists crowding the sidewalks of Llangollen, Wales

Bonzi the owl takes flight over the crowd attending a raptor bird show at Dunrobin Castle in Golspie, England.

Crowd aboard the ferry from Oban to Craignure on the Isle of Mull, Scotland

2014 Italy tour group gathered for a souvenir photo.

2015 Scotland tour group gets together for a picture.

 2017 Alaska tour group posing for a souvenir shot.

2700 bicycle riders with friends & family in San Francisco getting ready to ride to Los Angeles in a 2001 charity event.

Closer to home, a crowd sets off on “Luc’s Run” – a 2K/10K charity run event in Tuolumne City, CA.

Climbers navigating the chains as they hike to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite . . .

. . . unaware, as they reach the top of the granite dome, a wild fire has broken out on the trail behind them, cutting off their return route necessitating a rescue by helicopter!

A small crowd of Yosemite Park visitors gather at Glacier Point to see majestic Half Dome close up – this view giving a good idea of where those poor hikers had been stranded.

A troupe of firefighters heading into the Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees in Yosemite Nat’l Park during a wildfire threat.

Fourteen rescuers show up with 3 firetrucks, a fire dept. SUV, and an ambulance to rescue a hiker bitten by a rattlesnake – that hiker being our youngest daughter!

She was out for a short hike with a couple of friends the Thursday afternoon before Mother’s Day weekend when she encountered the snake with no warning!  She figures she must have startled it and it lashed out at her, THEN it coiled up and rattled its tail at her.  Too late by that time!  She was told, however, she was lucky she was bitten by an older snake rather than a young one as the older snakes control the amount of venom they deliver while the younger ones use all they’ve got.

Fortunately, one of the friends with her had a smart phone plus a good signal so was able to call 911 who sent a rescue team to the scene, and what a team!  My daughter thinks they were probably using the incident as a training exercise as well as a rescue operation.

Here she’s being carried down the trail in a litter to the waiting ambulance which whisked her to the nearest hospital where she was immediately given several units of anti-venom plus more, later, when her leg kept swelling.

The hospital kept her in the ICU for two nights and a day before releasing her with a Dr. appt. scheduled for two days later to make sure she was truly ‘out of the woods’.

Having happened just before Mother’s Day weekend all her kids were home when she was released from the hospital, so she had plenty of company to keep careful eyes on her.

She’s a fifth grade teacher, so when she was cleared to go back to work you can imagine her class had plenty of questions to ask her about the incident – some telling her they were glad she didn’t die to which she laughed saying “Me too!”  Yeah, her Mom and Dad too!!  Geez Louise, your kids never run out of ways to scare you!

Daughter said by the time the rescue team got there – and they were pretty quick having luckily had the exact coordinates of where she was through her friend’s smart phone – she was already beginning to feel the effects of the bite:  weakness in her extremities, her tongue and mouth tingling.  Yipes!   

The sneaky snake that bit her.  He (or she?) escaped. 

:->

La Nightingail