Fire, bunnies, cars, connections

My sisters and I spent most of last week cleaning out my mother's house, which was damaged during the Eaton fire. 

We had a lot to do in a short amount of time, and we didn't take a lot of breaks. However, we did make time to visit the past and future site of the Bunny Museum, which was destroyed in that same fire.

We all wanted to get out and look the bunnies that have started gathering on that corner.

Especially this one.

Colleen steered the car into the old RiteAid parking lot, which, we quickly discovered, had been completely taken over by the weekly Altadena Cars and Coffee show.

Altadena Cars and Coffee was founded by local photographer and car lover, Dave Stone. After the fire, he started taking photos of the charred remains of Altadena's cars and posting them to his instagram page, not_ev_altadena. This grew into a weekly meet-up for Altadena car lovers and fire survivors.

I'm not particularly interested in cars, but there were plenty of interesting things to photograph.

Heh.

Then my eyes landed on this.

Tom Sawyers Camps where both my sister, Erin, and I worked for many summers when we were in high school!

Dave saw us taking these pictures. We told him about our history with Tom Sawyer and he said, "The camp owner is here. Let me find her for you." And then he did.

This particular owner was the daughter of the owners when we worked there. She is just a few years older than us and was part of the counselor staff the same years we were. In fact, Erin spent one year paired with her as part of junior/senior counselor pair. We didn't know, if she would remember us, but she did!

We had the nicest conversation, during which I confessed I could probably sit down and write a complete list of all the Tom Sawyer horses from the mid 1980's. She said, "Please do." So the next day, I did.

but I forgot Cisco, Taffy, Oki and Scout

Somewhere along the way, Sarah invited Erin and I to come out and ride with her. I don't know if that was serious - and there certainly wasn't time on this trip - but just the possibility of riding those horses in that Arroyo makes me really happy. 

Boy, am I glad we decided to go see the bunnies.

It's funny. Even though I have not lived there for almost forty years, I feel more connected to my hometown than ever. Altadena strong! Altadena forever!