Deflated

Saddest faces ever. And please note my $7 thrift store coat. Thanks.

On Sunday morning I woke up at 5:00 am to go on my very first (and likely only) hot air balloon ride. It was a special outing in celebration of my friend Kelly's Life List.

We met her mom and aunt, piled into the car, coffee in hand and excitedly chatted on our way to launch site.

When we arrived there was another couple waiting. We giggled over how young they were (they were really young, our guess was eighteen. Impressive that they were doing a hot air balloon ride) and settled in the car to wait for our fearless captain.

Who never showed.

The poor guy called and said that he had seriously injured himself and was on his way to the emergency room! It was hard to be too disappointed, seeing as we had all our digits in tact.  We said a little prayer for him, sighed over the balloon trip that might have been and remembered we were starving.


We are a group that is quite good at rallying when the chips are down. Kelly is a cancer survivor, after all. She knows how to make Plan B work. Plan B was to drive up to Sutter Creek for breakfast and some window shopping.

The only problem to this plan was that it was 7:30 am by this time and sleepy little Gold Rush towns are still, well...sleepy at 7:30 in the morning. There were three old men sitting on a bench in front of the coffee shop , coffee cups in hand watching us drive up and down the street looking for something open.

We pulled up and asked them where to go for an early breakfast. They gave us a few leads which proved t be dead ends  and we found ourselves driving further up the hill towards Jackson and on to Plan C!
 
The foothills of California are littered with mining towns lined with brick buildings, cute shops and  farm stands. To say I love it would be a major understatement. Whole towns full of historical markers and Gold Rush era graveyards? Sign me up!

After a few false starts we landed at Rosebud's Cafe, a farm-to-fork restaurant in Jackson, Ca. Kelly and I split two of the weekend specials, the omelete and Monte Cristo. I should be ashamed to admit that I was the only one to finish everything on her plate. But I'm not. It was all that good.

Farm fresh eggs, tomatoes, fruit, flowers adorning our plates! Spicy ham, creamy cheese and sweet berries on my Monte Cristo! Water that tasted like honey (but I now know was infused with peaches. Peaches!)and coffee fresh from Old Soul here in Sacramento helped make this breakfast a pretty decent substitute to our original plans. I mean, it was no balloon ride, but no one left unhappy.

On the way home we stopped at Davis Ranch for produce. We had no idea we were walking into the Annual Harvest Festival complete with Corn Maze, dozens of crafters and free hayrides. Before we knew it we had spent two hours there and met some new friends. They had the friendliest vendors I have ever met at an event. It was a perfect end to a great day. It is hard to believe that it was not the day we intended to have!

God is so good at redeeming disappointment for good - if we let him!

Raise your hand if you can't believe this girl was in the throes of chemo 6 mos ago!