We met our tour group last night at dinner. There are about 50 of us and they seem like a nice lot. We spoke mostly with our table-mates that included two retired ministers and their wives. One from Kansas and the other from Texas, they were seminary classmates and friends since then and over the years since their first assignments that were within 30 miles of each other. Lots more to meet over the coming 5 days so we’re looking forward to that.
In the morning we got a Lyft ride to Balboa Island nearby and took the ferry across to Balboa Village on the peninsula. After quite a bit of walking and exploring it was time to take the ferry back and find a refreshing beverage and a light lunch. Balboa Island is a lovely spot to explore and we found several places to take care of our needs. The Shanghai Pine Gardens Restaurant was a wonderful choice for lunch and we thoroughly enjoyed the subtle flavors of our war wonton soup and almond chicken. Great choice and we’ll give them a great review!
We’re off today for an early breakfast and an early bus ride to the float construction site and our 8 hour shift of building floats. Not sure if we’ll get to work on the Lutheran Hour float at all, but we’ll get to see it tomorrow night when it’s done for the group picture. We also found out that our sweatshirts are dark gray (not purple), so don’t be looking for us in purple in the crowd during the parade (the pictures below show the front and the back – our float is depicted on the back). The Lutheran Hour float will be about 2/3 of the way through the parade, we found out (61st spot among 91 units) so that gives everyone a guess as to when it will appear on the telecast.
Oh, we also noticed a local psychic’s office – must not be very good as the sign says to call for an appointment – wouldn’t he/she just know you were coming in? Just sayin…
evertstouring 