Hey everyone, I know you've been reading Mikes blog on our Colorado trip but I figured I better give you my side of the story too. (Just in case you think Mike is full of it...lol). Anyways, here it goes....
Day 1 - Saturday, September 13, 2008
After running around for a week trying to remember everything I/we would need for the trip and what I was forgetting.....it was time to leave. I had packed up my Bronco the night before with everything, and I mean everything, so I was ready to just start up and go. The girls made sure they got up at 5:30 to kiss daddy goodbye and the wife added her kisses too. 6:00 am and I'm on the road! "Anticipation", what a word undervalued to what I was feeling! Colorado, Muleys, Elk and my best buddy Mike...
It took me about 40 minutes to get up to Mikes house. I backed up the Bronco to his trailer and we started the process of loading up all our gear. You would have thought we were moving to Colorado to live by the look in the trailer. One note: we were hoping that our new Bowtech Guardians would arrive before we left so we could play with them during the week...unfortunately, while they were mailed on Monday they did not arrive in time... Ok, we're packed, Mike's kissed his wife and kids, we look at each other.....Lets GO!
It's about 7:40 and we start our trip with a drive to the gas station (first of MANY) and then a stop to pick up some items that need to be dropped off were we're picking up Mikes Quad...Curran...about 180 miles north. Did I mention it's raining...? We get up to Mike's hunting club to get his Quad at about 11:30 ...and what a good omen....deer, watching us drive in and back out again. 
It did stop raining just long enough for us to load Mikes Quad.
It did stop raining just long enough for us to load Mikes Quad.We head out and aim towards the West Branch area were we need to pick up the quad I'll be using thanks to my nephew Paul (Thanks Paul!). The only thing that has me a little concerned is that while Mikes quad is a nice 4x4 400cc work horse with nice tractor style tires, my nephews is a 400cc 2 wheel drive sport quad with small aggresive dirt/sand style tires...it don't go slow! We're not sure if we'll need them both but better safe than sorry...(what words of wisdom...!). On the way to Paul's cabin to pick up the quad, we passed an accident that looked like 
some guy lost control of his truck in the rain and rolled it....ouch! Funny thing, it stopped raining just long enough for us to load my quad into the back of Mikes truck, then it started again....hmmmm. Maybe it'll wash the mud off of it...since I'm fairly sure that it's white but you can't see any white through all the mud dried and "welded" to everything... I'm sure that's a story for another day if I know Paul (I've been on a couple outings with him...Quads, 4x4's, mud, sand and beer....yup, sounds right). Anyways, we've now got both quads, it's about 1 pm, we head accross the state and pickup 27 south. We need to stop at Jay's in Clare to pick up a couple of Elk decoys and get my new Carbon Express Aramid KV's cut down to size. While we're there, we bump into John Eberhard from Scent Lok and get a couple copies of his book, Precision Bowhunting, signed (thanks John! http://www.deer-john.net). Finally! it's about 2:30 pm, we've got our decoys, my arrows cut and some candy (what? it was right there by the register begging to be bought!). We grab some lunch and hit the road for (hopefully) the last leg of our trip out of Michigan. Did I mention that it's still raining?
some guy lost control of his truck in the rain and rolled it....ouch! Funny thing, it stopped raining just long enough for us to load my quad into the back of Mikes truck, then it started again....hmmmm. Maybe it'll wash the mud off of it...since I'm fairly sure that it's white but you can't see any white through all the mud dried and "welded" to everything... I'm sure that's a story for another day if I know Paul (I've been on a couple outings with him...Quads, 4x4's, mud, sand and beer....yup, sounds right). Anyways, we've now got both quads, it's about 1 pm, we head accross the state and pickup 27 south. We need to stop at Jay's in Clare to pick up a couple of Elk decoys and get my new Carbon Express Aramid KV's cut down to size. While we're there, we bump into John Eberhard from Scent Lok and get a couple copies of his book, Precision Bowhunting, signed (thanks John! http://www.deer-john.net). Finally! it's about 2:30 pm, we've got our decoys, my arrows cut and some candy (what? it was right there by the register begging to be bought!). We grab some lunch and hit the road for (hopefully) the last leg of our trip out of Michigan. Did I mention that it's still raining? By now I think I've asked Mike at least a dozen times if he wants me to take over driving for awhile...still no. Either he's having flashbacks to my driving during our college days or he's just to geeked up to let go of the wheel.... By the time we get near Holland he finaly relents and lets me start driving...just in time for the rain to start getting heavier... We hit the Michigan boarder around 6:30. It's like leaving the country (at least in our minds it was...). Just past Michigan City we have to detour off the highway because the highway has flooded from the storms! It sure is nice having the GPS on board. We finally make it to higway 80, the long stretch, 1000 miles of driving ahead and it's night time now. We've finally worked out the driving schedule too, every time we get gas, we switch. That's about every 220 miles or so. (I think Mike finaly trusts me driving. either that or he's not getting enough sleep). After about 12 hours, the rain finally stopped. I then got to deal with high winds for my 3 hours of driving...oh joy... gotta love Iowa and Nebraska. Lots of flat and Corn. BTW, we passed the Cabelas in Hammond Indiana...looked nice but we didn't stop...no stopping us now...it was tempting though... we know there is another one in Kerney Nebraska and Sydny Nebraska (#2 and #1 store) so we'll probably be stopping there to pick up another elk call.
NEXT: Day 2 (Sunday)
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