A Silverado Canyon family was rocked on Thanksgiving morning by an overnight intrusion.
A large boulder careened down a nearby slope, crashed onto the paved road below, bounced off a recently installed fire hydrant and broke its way through the fence into Maria Arechaederra's side yard sometime either Wednesday night or Thursday morning, she said.
The large boulder landed within feet of vehicles and a guest house, which was occupied by her sister, who was in town for the holiday, she said.
Luckily, no one was hurt.
On Thanksgiving morning, her sister, Christina Arechaederra, alerted Maria to the home's damaged fence and said she believed a motorist may have crashed into it overnight.
That's when Arechaederra saw the boulder.
"Frankly, there were a lot of expletives," she said Saturday. "We could not believe what we were looking at. Had it picked up more velocity, I'm confident it would have hit the guest house where my sister was staying."
The boulder came within feet of hitting the vehicles of the couples' adult children, who were also in town visiting on break from school.
Arechaederra and her husband, David Mains, moved into the home three years ago from Orange. Their children, Michael and Jacqueline Mains, attend school in Seattle and Laguna Beach, respectively.
The boulder came down a slope just west of their property and left a dent in the roadway, she said. It then hit a fire hydrant, which had not yet been hooked up to a water main, as officials have been working to expand water into the area, she said.
Arechaederra believes the hydrant splintered the boulder and slowed its movement. Still, no one heard a sound overnight.
"We're used to fires and things like that, but this is a new one," she said. "It's pretty awe-inspiring and terrifying to see something like that can happen."
But how the boulder ended up in Arechaederra's yard wasn't the only question on the mind of family members.
"There are actually sea shells in it," Arechaederra said. "We're trying to find someone to do an analysis of it because it's just fascinating."
A post of the photos on Facebook has elicited plenty of responses from friends, who are tagging others with geological interests in hopes of finding answers.
But for now, the family is just happy no one was injured.
Less than two miles away, a boulder crashed through a home above the Shadybrook Country Store on Silverado Canyon Road in 2005 and killed a 16-year-old girl in her bedroom.
With another storm approaching, Arechaederra said, there's some concern.
"I'm not a geologist, but I think to myself, 'What did it loosen on the way down?'" she said.
For now, the boulder remains in the yard as interest in its backstory has grown. As of Saturday morning, the family had yet to contact authorities about the incident.
