My dad and I went on our first hunting trip since 2005. We missed 2006 and 2007 due to various medical issues between he and I. We returned to the same location, and indeed almost the very same camp site where we last hunted, in 2005, just outside the small south-central Colorado town of La Jara. We had actually hunted in the same general area in 1982 and 1983.
You can also see the trip report and pictures from the 2005 Elk hunt to this same area
This trip started out the same as all our trips have, since I graduated from High school and left home. I drive to my dad's house down in the Mojave desert area of southern California. We load all the gear into my truck and his, then tow his Toyota pickup behind my truck to the camp site. We use his Toyota to run around and hunt in, because realistically, in hunting country as you can see from some of the pictures here, the roads are pretty terrible, and a huge full sized, very heavy diesel truck is not the best way to get around up here.
Since my dad's current Toyota is an automatic transmission, you can't just hook onto it and tow away. A mechanic friend of my dad told him you have to remove the main drive shaft that goes to the rear wheels, then put both the transmission and 4 wheel drive transfer case in Nuetral, then you can safely tow it. So that's what we do. Now, if you've read any of my previous hunting trip reports, you are no doubt familiar with my narration style of getting very specific and detail oriented in parts of the story that lead up to a moment of "Oh, !@#$%^!!!!". And this is no exception.
So, we easily remove the drive shaft, neatly pack it away in the Toyota, and go on with the rest of our gear loading. We finish the loading of gear into both trucks, put a tarp over the back of my truck, secure it down and head off east on highway 40 for Flagstaff, Arizona where we will leave 40 and head off through various Indian reservations for north-western New Mexico and ultimately south-central Colorado. Somewhere about 5 hours east from dad's house, he looks over at me and asks.... (are you ready for it???) - "did we put the bolts for the drive shart in the truck with the drive shaft?"
... silence ...
... much thinking ...
"uhhhh......I don't know?????"
And there you have it, the first "Oh, !@#$%^!!!!" moment of the trip. But hey, at least now the pressure is off, right? We had our first problem materialize, so at least we don't have to wait any longer in fear and suspense for Mr. Murphy to make his appearance.
So, I start thinking of how we are going to solve this. We obviously aren't going to turn around and drive those 5 hours back to my dad's house to get them. Fortunately they are a standard size bolt, just hardened steel, so I decide to call my girlfriend back home and ask her to get on the internet and lookup a Home Depot or True Value hardware store in Flagstaff, call them, ask how late they are open on a Wednesday evening, and get directions for us to stop by. We still had about an hour to drive before Flagstaff, so I figured this was our best bet, as there would be nothing but rather small towns after we passed Flagstaff. My dad suggested we could find a hardware store the next morning in some town along the way, or at the least we knew from past experience that there is a good sized auto parts store in the town we were heading for (La Jara). Fortunately, as we drove into Shiprock, New Mexico the next morning, there was a True Value hardware store that was open. We got replacements bolts, and drove off towards Colorado.
We managed to arrive in La Jara with no further problems. We fueled up both trucks, filled our several 5 gallon water bottles, stopped at a local grocery store for perishable food items, and headed up into the hills beyond town. Through some good guess work and not too shabby memories of exactly where we had camped 3 years previously, we soon arrived at our exact campsite from 2005. Only this time, it was already occupied. So we drove another 1/4 mile and found another good site to set up our tents.
This is what our camp looks like. The large orange tent is our main tent, where we sleep, cook and keep our various gear that we need every day. The blue tent is for occasional items that we don't want to leave outside, as it often snows a good bit in hunting country at this time of year. The main tent is a WWII era US Army surplus tent that my dad bought in 1948. Yes, it is indeed that old... and it has been used almost every single year since then all over the western US by my dad and whomever else was in his hunting party in any given year. See any of my other hunting trip reports, and you can see more pictures of it.
Here you can see what it looks like inside the tent. Our cots and sleeping bags are in the rear of the tent, along the sides. In the front area is the small wood burning stove that heats the tent, and on the other side is the propane stove that we cook our meals on. And yes, even though the wood stove is small (about 12" x 12" x 12") it can, and does do a very good job of heating the tent on even the coldest mornings and nights. It just isn't much fun getting out of bed at 5:30 AM to be the one who has the joyous task of lighting the fire inside it!
The country around the town of La Jara is open rolling hills, with plenty of pine and Aspen trees, as well as large open meadows.
Oh, and I almost forgot... PLENTY of rocks! Rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Oh, and I almost forgot...... Plenty of rocks!!!!!!! The roads are particularly bad, and almost nothing but rocks. This is probably the worst section of the roads, just to show what they were like, but usually you would have 30 - 50 feet of this type of road followed by a hundred yards or so of deeply rutted mud holes. Makes for miles of fun, let me tell you!!
In one of the valleys, is an old cattleman's cabin. No idea how old it is, but it has been long abandoned. There are a few of these around the country up there, but at least some of them have "Condemned - Hanta Virus WARNING" signs posted on them, so not an appealing place to drop in for a visit.
Our typical routine is to wake at 5:30 AM, walk out of our camp for the first part of the day, usually coming back to the camp at around 1:00 - 3:00 PM. We then eat lunch, and then drive around for the afternoon and look for a place or places where we can park and watch large open areas until dark. You see, Elk prefer to come out into the open areas at around dusk, and graze in the moonlight hours in the meadows. They go back into the deep forest around dawn, and then spend the daylight hours sleeping among the dark timber areas, where they are hidden from view, and can also very easily hear any approaching danger and can make an escape long before you ever get close enough to see them.
The one and only time we actually saw any Elk on this particular trip, was about 30 minutes before sunset, in just such a wide open meadow area, about 500 yards in front of our truck. Unfortunately for us, they were all cow (female) Elk, and we had bull (male) licenses. But at least we did see live Elk on this trip!! On too many trips, we don't see anything live besides each other.
Our hunt was 9 days long. As you can imagine, the first few days we had many, many hunters in our area. Most of them spent the days riding up and down every "road" in the hills on quads - the small personal 4 wheeled all terrain vehicles that have become increasingly popular over the last 15 years. My dad and I were almost the only hunters without such luxuries. After about 4 days, most of the hunters had packed up and left the area, as there seemed to be no animals anywhere. I am fairly certain that my dad and I were literally the last hunters in our area when we finally left on the afternoon of the last day of the hunt.
The weather was amazingly summer like for almost the entire hunt. Only one or two days had any clouds at all, and only one afternoon had any rain or snow at all, and then for less than 30 minutes. As we were sitting in the truck, watching a meadow, some extremely black and menacing clouds came blowing over the mountains from the West, and dropped immediately down to the valley floor and headed right for us. We could see the snow starting as soon as they hit the valley floor. We headed back to camp to put up a sheet of plastic over the tent roof, to keep it from leaking. That canvas is 60+ years old, afterall... remember?? Fortunately, by the time we had the plastic sheet securely tied down, the snow stopped and the clouds had blown past. We never saw another cloud during the rest of the entire hunt.
The rest of the hunt was quite uneventful. Beautiful weather, peaceful, but no Elk. We did see a small group of Antelope one morning, and on another evening we had a group of doe (female) Deer walk out of the forest within 50 yards of our truck while we sat inside and were watching a meadow for Elk to appear. I managed to get this picture before this doe decided to wander back into the trees and leave us all alone again.
So, on the last day of our hunt, after we had walked back to camp for lunch, my dad and I decided we were very unlikely to see any Elk in the afternoon, so we decided to pack up camp and head home a little early. We ended up driving away just at sundown. We drove for about 4 hours, then stopped for the night, somewhere in north-western New Mexico. Our usual routine is to look for a very wide and flat space on the side of the road, pull safely off the road, and put our cots down on the opposite side of the trucks from the road, so we are somewhat sheletered from traffic. This we did, about 10:30 PM, and proceeded to try to sleep.
About midnight, Officer Murphy (I mean, Mr. Murphy, who just happened to appear dressed as a Tribal Police Officer) came by to pay us a visit.
"Good evening Gentlemen. Do you have a Camping Permit?"
"Camping permit?? Uh... no...??? We need such a thing to sleep on the side of the road?"
"You do on the Reservation."
"....Reservation??"
I think I had mentioned somewhere above in this report that much of Arizona and New Mexico is occupied by many, many American Indian Reservations? Well, guess what?
"Welcome to the Jicarilla Navajo Indian Reservation. My name is Officer "Murphy" and you do indeed need a camping permit to sleep anywhere on the reservation. Now, if you had only driven another 1/4 mile further down the road, you would have reached the end of our Reservation, and you could have stopped to sleep anywhere."
Ok, it was time for "Oh, !@#$%^!!!!" moment #2 of the trip. Not bad, considering we had made it all the way through the entire actual hunt and were now on our way home.
"So, we have to move, don't we?"
"Yes, Sir. I can't let you stay without a camping permit, and I can't leave until you move."
"However, just past the end of the Reservation, is a National Forest campground, and I would be happy to drive ahead and show you were the entrance is. There will be plenty of places you can sleep, and get your vehicles turned around."
Ok, so at least Officer... I mean Mr. Murphy was going to let us off easily on this one.
So the Officer did indeed drive ahead of us and show us the entrance to the National Park campground. We did find a good spot to park our trucks where we could easily turn around (remember, when towing something, you need a LOT of room to turn around in), and we again set out our cots to try to get some sleep. Afterall, I estimated we only had about 12 more hours of driving to do, to get back to my dad's house.
You can hear it, right? That rumbling sound... reminds you of a train that's coming just a little too fast as it approaches a sharp turn... you just know it's gonna either run you over or derail, right? You wanna watch, but yet you don't? Well, that was a metephor for impending "Oh, !@#$%^!!!!" moment #3 of the trip, but I thought it quite appropriate in relation to what was actually about to happen.
So, we got back in bed at about 1:00 AM. At around 5:00 AM, that train showed up. Actually, it wasn't a train per se... it was actually a fleet of never ending logging trucks. And I do mean never ending. They came into the campground, 30 feet from our trucks and cots every 30 seconds for over an hour. After at least 30 minutes, I decided I wasn't gonna get any more sleep, so why the heck not just get up and continue on our way home?
Thankfully, I guess Mr. Murphy decided to go off to log the forest with the lumberjacks, as we never encountered him again on this trip. Thank goodness!!
Thus ends the latest hunting trip for my dad and I. Unsuccessful once again, but another bunch of great memories and pictures for the time capsule I keep between my ears (which is why I have no room for many brain cells I guess).
Hope you enjoyed reading about this one. You can see all the other reports with pictures I have on my main web page
Last modified: Fri October 31 09:05 PDT 2008
tom@tomgolden.org