For several years I have seen pictures I could not take. Two weekends ago, I found myself with the right combination of motivation, means and opportunity to invest in a new lens. This is the story of how I grew acquainted with a fine piece of veteran glass, now on its third owner. It begins after an unnamed shipping company nearly got my goat by storing my package, for more than a full weekend, within range of an afternoon's drive....three business days can last a long time!

Day 1: I saw the truck coming down our stretch of road, and ran outside! — but had to chuckle at my luck as it pulled to a stop at the neighbors' drive first. I was pretty giddy by the time my turn came. But when the friendly driver finally delivered the package, Hannah still hadn't noticed. I started to slice through the packing tape before I got inside. I sat down on the floor behind Hannah's desk and started snipping through all the bubble wrap, still unbeknowst to my wife. When I was all ready, I called her name. This is both the first moment she saw the lens and the first picture I took with it.

I stepped back outside to see what the lens could do. On the right is a view of Hannah's school as seen from our house with my longest lens previous zoomed all the way in. Above left is the result with the new lens, completely uncropped (as all the following pictures are unless noted) and also taken from about the same spot on our driveway.

An unsuspecting passerby. While comparing deals on an online auction site, I saw this lens introduced as "unleash the paparazzi inside yourself!" Hopefully the neighbors won't think I'm spying on them....

Well, we were in a much better mood than to just stand in the driveway taking pictures of people as they craned to see what on earth I was pointing at them. So we started walking to the end of the road where we could see more hills.

The first critter we saw on our walk was our neighbor's dog Tony. While he has been known to follow us home on occasion, this evening he was pretty timid. Something had him pretty worried — maybe he didn't like the large camera appendage I was pointing at him.

Here are some friendlier critters we came across a little further down the road! Some placid cows and their frolicking calves!

While I was planning to get some pictures of the hills from the end of our road, that didn't stop me from taking plenty along the way!

This is Mt. Adams, which we can also see pretty well from right on our little driveway!

This bottle was down in the ditch (along with too much other trash) but I was able to get this shot of it from up on the road, standing normally, if my memory isn't exaggerating.

Hannah and I finally made it to the end of the road, but by then the hills didn't really have enough light on them to get any good shots. I was already finding out by this point that long shutter speeds don't work with a long handheld lens.

I grabbed a few more shots on the way home, but it was getting pretty dark. At last I could fill the frame with those orchard fans that have been summoning me since we moved to the area!

So here we are near the end of the first evening with my new lens. Can you guess which lens it is?