We've been bombed...

Photobombed that is. One of the amazing things about traveling is finding that needle in a haystack moment or as we all like to call it "it's a small world" experience you get when you meet someone with a close connection. It happens more often than you might think and here is a great example. Read Gail's blog below, one of the best examples of this I can remember in a long while.

Greg was out taking photos of the Rockhound campground last night and started up a conversation with a couple out for a walk. The conversation soon noted commonalities — we both have Monaco coaches and Gary and Delys hail from Minnesota, the state Greg and I have lived in the longest. Like other full-time RVers, and cruising boaters, we are geographic mutts — the usually simple question “where are you from?” often turns into a convoluted pedigree. It didn’t take long before our travels on the boat were mentioned and Gary and Delys fondly recalled having taken a vacation in the Bahamas aboard their friend’s cruising sailboat. Since the cruising community is small, Greg pressed for details and, six degrees later, the boat was revealed as Vespera and the crew, mutual friends Stan and Kathy. Marveling over the coincidences, they relayed that it was February of 2009 when they’d been aboard Vespera in the Exumas. Back in February of 2009, we were anchored in the Bahamas aboard our sailboat when someone dinghying by knocked on the hull and inquired whether we were really from Anoka, MN, the hailing port on our stern. This was how we met Stan and Kathy. For the previous five years we’d been very familiar with their boat as it was parked at a house on a major highway not five miles from our house. We’d eyed that boat every week as we commuted, wondering who owned it and where they were headed. And here we were in the Bahamas years later anchored within a few hundred feet. After meeting Gary and Delys, Greg came in the RV to relay the small world news. In telling the story to me it dawned on us that Gary and Delys had visited the Bahamas right after we met Stan and Kathy. We’d both had guests flying in to visit us and later discovered the guests had flown in to Georgetown on the same small plane. Something in the story naggled at my brain all night long and by morning surfaced — I was pretty sure we had a photo of Gary from 2009. Keep in mind that I had only seen Gary, who is quite tall, from a distance as I was not outside when Greg met them.

Gary and Stan on s/v Vespera in 2009

We dragged out the hard drive with the 2009 photos and Ouila! there was the photo of Gary and Stan standing on the deck of Vespera, taken as Greg dinghyied by their boat. A photobomb with a five-and-a-half year long fuse!