Christmas in July

I think it was summer, last year that Erin and I decided to go on this particular outing. We spent about an hour picking out an outfit that was not plain, but not too outrageous that it was something you looked at and thought "Now, who would wear that?"

After choosing an outfit and teasing, spraying and pinning Erin's hear within an inch of it's life, we were off to find some desolate place in Brandon where we could take pictures without people staring at us like we were crazy.

We were driving down one of the many dirt roads in Somewhere, Plant City (I'm not telling where, this place is sacred. Also, one might get shot if there were to try to venture there.) Erin says...

"Hey! Back up! I just saw a really cool, old, broken down bus!"

So I threw my car into reverse, excited about the prospect of the rusting, decrepit vehicle. My, how little it takes to excite the two of us.

I had to pull into a grass field that was a parking lot for a quaint little church and saw the bus that Erin had seen, hidden behind chain link fences and a house. A fence? Psh. There was no way a fence was going to stop us from getting to that bus.

We drove through some streets, and eventually into a neighborhood, drove through and parked in the back.

I strapped on my cameras (I had three that day) and got ready for the trek. We had to march around a massive retention pond that hadn't been mowed in a few weeks and I was scared of snakes and other creatures. Erin, always becoming what I'm not at the moment (fearless) went ahead of my like she always does when we encounter tall grass, which is a lot more often than you'd think.

We finally reached the wooden fence that we were sure blocked us from our goal of a broken down bus and attempted to climb, in true Floridian fashion, in our flip flops. Erin pulled herself up to the top of the fence before I did and audibly gasped at what was on the other side of the fence.

"Jessica, this is better than Christmas morning...Come on! Quick!"

This:

is what she saw. This picture is only about one third of the yard, so you can imagine how awesome this was for the both of us.

There was a heard of goats that would jump from rusted hood to rusted hood, clomping loudly and scaring Erin and I half to death. There was a motor home in the back, and although it too seemed very old and abandoned, we were pretty positive that it was occupied by people who were trigger happy and would probably not forgive trespassing.

At one point in our grand adventure, we walked towards the front of the yard, near a couple of yellow, forgotten construction tools. We turned a corner of a row of cars and were suddenly met by two emus. Emus? Ostriches? I'm not sure. Either way, they were big winged birds with long necks and even longer, fast looking legs.

I'm no large bird expert, clearly, I didn't even know what kind of birds they were, but I did know that emus/ostriches were NOT supposed to be friendly.

Erin and I backed away very, very, very slowly towards the back of the yard. Thank the Lord, the birds were not interested in us in the least bit. As we were walking towards the back, Erin spotted this massive bull. Massive.

This is not the brahma that we saw, this is just a brahma bull, for reference. This particular bull is 6 feet tall, and is only three years old. Going along with the "really old" theme that the occupants of the property clearly had going on for their backyard, I'm assuming that the bull that Erin and I saw was much older.

We didn't have a run in with the bull like the one with the emu/ostriches and although it would have been a great story, I'm guessing that it's for the better. These pictures look kind of crappy on here, I swear I'm better than what you're seeing.