Memorial weekend started out on Saturday morning early, after getting home late from work. With 3 and a half hours of sleep under my belt I set off to Camp Creek area to meet up with Clyde, Dean, and Sue. When I got to camp, the guys were gone but Sue was there so we drank coffee and chatted for a few, then she gave me Clyde’s directions and map to where to find them. Okay. Yes – I said Clyde drew a map. So you know how the beginning of the story’s gonna go.

Well it turns out that where he told me to take a left – he took a right. I had been to the area before but stopped where the road turns into a footpath. So I’m muttering “Really Clyde? Really?” to myself and figured, it was Clyde, so I followed the footpath a ways then when I got to the dry creek bed I figured not even Clyde would do this and was about to turn around when I saw some wooden bins and what looked like a livestock care area — so I did the creek bed and found it a good hunch because that livestock area connected to the road he actually TOOK.

When I got to the rigs I parked and started walking up hill a bit, checking out the terrain. They were coming back down for lunch so we chattered and ate, then I grabbed my crowbar to go back up. They made jokes about the crowbar, and I just grinned. Then we started finding stuff.

Here’s the first thing of any significance that I found:

Then Clyde sees a chip of wood and starts digging it out. I saw he was really digging so went down to see what he had. He was talking about not knowing how to get it home. I took one look at it and said “oh, you’ve got to get that one home”. About that time Dean came up and looked at it and said “oh, you’ve got to get that one home”. So Clyde dug and dug. Then he started griping about “how am I gonna dig this out?” To which I just reminded them about laughing about the crowbar – stuck that thing down behind the wood and gave it a little tork and out it came. It took both to get it out of the ground. Clyde went back to get a wench rope and Dean and I walked around and picked up wood until he got back. They tied it up and started dragging it. I was no help. Being 100 pounds and on just a few hours of sleep, I figured I’d go find a clear path for them to drag it down. My idea was just get it to the road and they could drive to pick it up.

They had other ideas and took it uphill a tad to go the straightest route to the rigs. So I get to my jeep and am watching them take a whole different route. On top they stopped and were discussing how to get that thing down. They were really having a hard time of it. Of course, I’d already driven a footpath and I’ve never REALLY tested out the skit plates. Frankly, I was scared one of those guys was going to hurt themselves, so I figured that I’d better drive up there and haul the rock down. Sure easier than dealing with a guy with a back out or a heart attack in the middle of nowhere. So I looked for the clearest ground to go up and drove up.

When I got up the hill Clyde was walking in front of me so I’d let him take a few steps then I’d scoot forward a few steps. How those two did not see me, I’ll never know, but I followed Clyde quite some ways and neither knew I was there. My jeep is fawn color, but still, you’d think they’d heard something. So finally I just honked the horn and that took both of them off the ground a little bit. After startling the bejeebers out of them, though, they both broke out in grins that were priceless.

They loaded that wood into the back of my jeep and I smiled and told them that I didn’t want any more weight in the rig and made them walk back down. LMAO — I’m sorry guys. I had to do it. It was just too funny. Of course, by that time they were so glad to have that rock down the hill without any more sweat, they didn’t even haggle about it. Anyway – here’s the piece that they went through all the torment over – gotta admit, it’s an awesome rock.

Here’s a pic of what an afternoon out there looks like in general:

Back at camp we sat around a roaring fire, ate, and laughed until we hurt. It’s a fun group and we do a LOT of laughing when we meet up.

Here’s what the camp looked like. That fire pit was awesome. It was really COLD there those two nights and that fire made life pretty complete. That and the food. We seem to always get some good chow going when we get together, too – and we had lots of it.

The next day we checked out a few places but it rained here and again and Clyde’s rig wasn’t liking it any too well so we went back to camp, but I took off again to check around. Found a back road in to the area so went back to get Clyde and he and I took off to see where that road went. We came out on the road we were on earlier and stopped to hunt at one place that was bordering a deep canyon, and found the road into that canyon. We decided to do that the next day.

But the next day we were rained out – so the trip cut got cut a day short. That’s okay, though – we’ll meet up again this summer. We have too much fun together not to.