I drove to my dad's house near Barstow, CA to pick him up. We usually drive my truck, Godzilla, and tow his Toyota truck behind mine. We use the Toyota to run around in the hills, as it is much better suited for this than a heavy, full sized diesel truck. Some of the logging roads in heavily timbered hunting country are too narrow and too twisty for a full sized truck to maneuver through. Also, the first time we hunted this same area, in 1982, we got my dad's 1974 Ford F250 with a Perkins I-6 diesel engine stuck so badly with the front axle sunk into a bog, that it literally took 2 other trucks an entire day to pull us out! Don't wanna do that again anytime in this life.
So, we pack both trucks full of gear, put on the tow bar and lights for the Toyota, and off we go, east to Colorado. Now in all my years hunting with my dad, he always has tons of maps of the local area where we are going to hunt. Not this year... But we had hunted in this same area in 1982 and 1983, so he naturally figures we can find the same exact camp site again. I'm sure you can hear the train beginning to blow it's whistle right before the impending wreck, right???
We get into the small Colorado town of La Jara (seen here identified by the red star).
Elevation at our camp, according to my Magellan SportTrak GPS was 9700 feet.
We were planning to hunt near the town's resevoir, about 35 miles up into the mountains from town. But, it had been so long since we'd hunted there, we had forgotten exactly how to get there (no maps this trip, remember?) So my dad suggested we stop at a car parts store in town and ask. Yes, a man decided to stop and ask for directions. Repent now, for the end of the world as we know it is at hand me thinks...
So as my dad is talking to the counter person asking for directions to the resevoir, another customer walks in the store and asks if those are our trucks, from California. I said yes. He asked where in California we're from. I explained that my dad lives down south, near Barstow, and I live up north, near Sacramento. I usually say Sacramento to someone I don't know, because most everyone has some idea where that is, and few non-locals know where my small town is. So this guy says "I lived in Elk Grove for years, but I moved here 15 years ago to take care of my parents." So now I figure this guy knows Sacramento area, so I say "Well, actually, I live near Placerville." Then he says "Oh, I have an aunt and cousin that live near there, in a town called Diamond Springs. I was just there this summer visiting them."
...
Can you feel the coincidence factor increase to maximum???
So I say "Actually, I live in Diamond Springs myself, but I say Placerville, because even locals to this area may not know where Diamond Springs is." Can you say 'small world' boys and girls? I knew you could...
Alright, so we get our directions, and off we go. We get up to the resevoir, and begin the ominous search for The Camping Spot. We drive around for an hour looking for the same spot we had 20+ years earlier. Nothing looks quite right, though. We happened to meet a Forest Service ranger and he happens to have detailed maps of the area (imagine that!). We look at them, and it says we should be right at the same spot we had years ago, but nothing looks the same. So, we finally pick a good looking spot and begin setting up camp.
This is a picture of the local scenery right in front of our camp.
After we get everything all set up, my dad notices that one of the tires on the Toyota is flat as a pancake. You remember that train we heard in the distance a little while ago? Well, it's getting nearer, and louder now. So we put the spare tire on, but now my dad is afraid to go driving it off on the extremely rocky roads around this area, for fear of getting another flat tire, since we now have no spare tire any longer. So, we decided to just walk out of camp in the mornings to hunt until we can get back to town in a couple days in my truck, to get it fixed. See, opening day is always on a Saturday, and you have your best chance to see animals on opening day, since they are not yet totally scared by all the hunters. So we don't want to waste time on opening day be going back to town. We waited until Monday, to make sure we could find a tire shop that would be open.
Opening day comes and goes without any Elk sightings. However, that night as we were watching a large meadow, we did see 5 Antelope walk past us, only about 20 yards away. Monday we went into town and got the tire patched. Turns out, we hit a nail, which caused the tire to go flat. Of all things to run over, in that rocky, remote country. A nail...
The next thing of note that happened was the comical highlight of the trip. One night in the middle of the 9 day hunt, my dad went to brush his teeth. He had been using a tube of tooth paste that was so old, it had hardened almost to the consistency of concrete. It had probably been in his hunting gear for years, and was only used for 2 weeks a year, so it had just hardened over time, and was barely useable. So this particular night, my dad decided he was going to use another tube of toothpaste he had brought along. You haven't forgotten about that train that's still approaching, have you???
Well, mid way through brushing, dad uttered a few choice words of colorful description, and said his mouth was on fire and his tongue was burning up. I thought maybe he might be having some type of allergic reaction to a brand of paste he maybe had never used before, when I looked at the table in the tent and saw a strange tube of some sort and picked it up for closer examination. I knew it wasn't my tube of paste... I picked it up and asked him of that was what he had used for toothpaste. When he said "yes", I almost chocked from laughing so hard.
It was a Wal-Mart brand generic equivilant to BenGay - arhtiris ointment, and it was capcaicin based. Now, since I am a chile pepper/hot sauce freak, I instantly recognized the word "capcaicin" - which is the chemical in peppers that gives them their heat, so I knew right away why his mouth and tongue were on fire. I suggested he rinse his mouth out, and eat a couple spoonfulls of peanut butter to alieviate the burning from the capcaicin, and he'd be ok in a little while.
I suggested peanut butter, because when over dosing on hot sauces, to relieve the burn, if you drink water, it doesn't really do anything, since the oils in the sauce that are burning your mouth and tongue are not washed away by water. Peanut butter, since it is also "oily", will do a much better job of cleansing the hot sauce oils out of your mouth. Milk can also be of some small help.
Well, by the end of the hunt, we had seen several animals, but none that we were after. We had seen Antelope, a few Deer, even a few big horn mountain sheep, and even 2 cow (female) Elk, but no bulls, which we were licensed to hunt. We even saw a small "town" of prairie dogs one afternoon. So, we ended our hunt with nothing but memories to bring home.
The weather had been beautiful all week. Mid to low 20's at night, and in the mid to high 50's for daytime temperatures. The night before the last day of the hunt started to turn snowy on us, and here are a few pictures I took at lunch on the last day of the hunt.
These are some pictures I took of the clouds. The last one is of the sunset glowing orange in one section of particularly dark clouds.
It only snowed about 2 inches that night before the last hunting day, but I was afraid it was going to snow a lot more that night, which would have made breaking camp a real pain in the neck. Fortunately for us, that day dawned with no clouds in the sky at all, and no new snow on the ground.
We got camp all broken down and loaded into the trucks in a little over 2 1/2 hours. Due to the really bad road back down off the mountain to town, my dad decided to drive his truck to town, and then we'd hook it back onto mine for the tow home. So he took off, got about a mile from camp, and then stopped the truck, got out and opened the hood.
That train is really getting close now, ain't it???
I pulled up behind him, got out of my truck and went to see what was wrong. He said the Check Engine light had come on, and he was looking to see what the problem might be. He checked the engine oil, and the dipstick was dry. That's usually not what you want to see... especially since he had just changed the oil right before we left his house. He did have extra oil, but it was packed under several hundred pounds of camping gear. So, we just decided to hook it up to my truck right there, instead of driving it all the way down to town.
Now once we got closer to town, and got onto the "good" section of the dirt road that didn't have rocks the size of beach balls everywhere on it, we managed to get up to over 20 MPH. Mind you, we had spent the last 9 days crawling along the various logging and ranch roads at less than 10 MPH. My dad piped up with the comment "better get out the parachute and anchor, we're hitting warp speed."
So, we left camp at around 10AM. It was a little over 800 miles from my dad's house to the camp site. I decided to just keep going, and make it all the way back to his place and not stop anywhere for the night along the way. So about 11PM we stopped in Kingman, Arizona to fuel up my truck and get something to eat for dinner. We stopped at a Flying J truck stop and I started to fill the fuel tank. I heard a loud hissing and walked around both trucks to try to determine if it was in any way related to our trucks.
No, it wasn't a whistle, like a train whistle, but that train that had been getting steadily closer to us this whole trip was about to catch up to us....
Now from a hunting trip a few years ago, where we blew a tire on my truck on another very rocky road, in New Mexico, and I had heard a similar hissing sound, the tires on both trucks were the first thing I checked. All 8 were solid as rocks. But, I did isolate the sounds as definitely coming from the rear half of my truck. I figured one of the propane tanks we used for cooking or for our Coleman lanterns must have gotten it's valve opened somehow and was leaking out. Oh joy... That's all we need, a propane explosion. Thankfully, that wasn't the train that was heading straight for us. By the time I finished fueling my truck, the hissing was down to a barely audible sound, so I figured whatever it was, it wasn't going to cause us any real problems, and we'd figure it out when we got back to my dad's place and unloaded the trucks.
So I moved the trucks to the parking area of the truck stop so dad and I could go inside and get something to eat. After that, dad was tired and said we should take a nap in the cab of my truck for a while before the last 3 hours of driving back to his house. So we walk back outside to the trucks, when he noticed my right rear tire was as flat as flat gets. As it happened, I had parked such that right top dead center of that tire, we clearly saw the culprit. A very large diameter bolt, from some other vehicle, had somehow punctured my tire, perfectly straight into the center of the tread, and had not just fallen over as my tire rolled over it. @#$%^& My turn to utter a few choice words of colorful description.
So, at midnight, we unloaded my spare tire and got the jack and lug wrench out of the tool box, and changed the tire. I have 2 spare tires for my truck, and whenever I go on a long journey, especially when I know I will be doing any off road driving, I always bring both of them. Thankfully, we only needed the one spare.
Well, that's it. That train never did actually wreck, but it sure did come close. You never know what sort of fun and excitement may happen on these hunting trips. As always, I hope you have enjoyed reading my story.
Last modified: Tue November 8 09:01 PST 2005
tom@tomgolden.org