Up North Journal Pro Staff Kevin: Colorado Trip

Day Three - Monday September 15

Monday morning, the "real" start of our hunting trip. Time to get up and showered, make a final trip to the grocery store for supplies and then meet up with Bill Riley. It's a different world while you're on a trip. There is construction going in the lot next to our room but it realy doesn't bother us. It's like a background noise in our grand adventure. The sky is blue and the air clean (if a little thinner than we're used to) and the truck is re-packed and ready to go. After we grab our final supplies (food), we grab a bite to eat at the local Wendy's to await Bill. He shows up before we finish eating. He's not what I had invisioned for our elderly sponser of our great hunt.... He's gotta be close to 6'3", fairly trim and in shape with a head of white hair and an inability to either slow down or relaxe...I haven't decided which yet. We hop in the trucks and head to the Colorado DOW (Department of Wildlife) to get our licenses. Following Bill up the ramp to the building, we barely have time to look at each other in bewilderment as we almost have to run to keep up with Bill's walking... Now, the DOW has a few surprises for us as well... Bill provides the DOW with his landowner licenses to sign over to us and we supply the DOW officer with our drivers licenses and hunters safety certificates (another tidbit to make sure you don't forget!). The license system decides it doesn't want to find our information even though the DOW officer just entered it into the database....go figure... While we're waiting on the DOW system to burp up our stats, I ask the officer about the muzzleloader licenses and about the inability to purches them after the hunt starts. She looks at me and says "You can buy them, you just have to buy them from a DOW office only..." ......Mike and I look at each other...feeling distincly like the guy in the V8 comercials who gets wacked in the head... duh....WHAT? Gee, sure glad we didn't buy that muzzleloader at dealer cost to hunt Elk with..... hehehe...smack! Well, we finaly get our licenses after the system decides we realy do exist...(we heard them talking about how it issued 2007 licenses the other day....ouch) and pile back into the trucks to follow Bill to his place about an hour or so away..... and thus starts the begining of one of the most nerve racking drives of my life... It appears that Bills inability to walk slow is in no way hinderd by sitting inside of a Truck (a rental truck at that...which might have gave us a clue to what was ahead...). Nor do I think that Bill was under the impression that a truck towing a trailer should in anyway be any slower than his truck....wow, drivers ed in Colorado is just a bit different than Michigan...

We soon figured out that in Colorado, the driver must add a minimum of 20 mph to any speed limit sign, even if it's on curves... slow traffic ahead is only cause for exhuberant celebration by out of state hunters praising fate that provided such a short relief from "concentrated" driving... (it's a good thing it's Mikes truck and he's got such a ..... "sturdy" trailer....yikes)... Some place in Wild Bills (we started out calling him that...) thinking, paved roads are just too slow....and smooth... Hey Look! it's a 2 track with a gate and ...speed limit signs?...(add 20) ....oh yeah! It must be the physical properties of high elevation cause I didn't realize that driving 50 - 65 mph on a 2 track with a drop off cliffson one side and hair pin turns on the other side, would not cause our vehicle to simply fall off the face of the earth... oh, lucky us...

Since Insane Willy (as we're now calling him) has found such a nice drivable road, he realy decides to show us how good a driver he is at high speeds..... look, no brakes on the tight curves (in case we were looking for brake lights to warn us of dangerous curves....) ...see, I can get at least a mile in front of you and you can't catch me....hehehe.... I'd look at Mike to make conversation but doing so would require more than 1/10 of a secound's distraction from the road, something we deemed might be fatal...

Mike started off with his video camera in his hand, someplace soon it was returned to the seat because it interfered with Mikes ability to keep both hands locked on the dash at all times... Shortly after I mentioned..." hope we don't run into oncoming traffic around one of these blind curves"... that I realized I should have kept my mouth shut. It is interesting to note all the things that go through ones mind when you come around a hair pin turn, down hill, in sand, on a one lane road.... and run into a gravel train heading up the hill towards you. Yup, even though you could realy smell our brakes over heating for the last half hour, we were able to stop (after sliding in the sand almost to the big truck aiming at us...)

After the stare down (his looking preturbed and ours like we've seen our lives flash before us) he decided to back his rig up enough that we could drag the trailer around him.... and the next 4 rigs just like his...and the road grader.... and onto the huge pile of gravel they had just dropped in the middle of the road.... Did I mention that during this there was no sign of *^#%?! Bill (as we now started to call him). After dragging the trailer down the huge pile, litterly off it's wheels, we had to stop and dig the gravel out of the brake rotors before they melted the GRANITE chunks embedded there! We finish and guess what....that MAN shows up to see what's taking us so long...did he stop, nope, just saw us getting in the truck and turned around and started driving again (if you can call it that!). The drive does get easier, it's just turns and hills now, gee if we go 65 we might catch a glimps of the other truck....might... At least I can now take a look around, quickly!, and see the beautiful landscape....wow! BTW - I think I owe Mike a new steering wheel as his now seems to be deformed from my death grip on it...

Did I forget to mention the free range cows....

Oh look...there's.....Mr. Bill.....now... see that speck in the picture....?

At long last.....we're leveling out for landing.... hey look! it's a $1200 a day lodge/spa...in the middle of nowhere! ...

A real road: .... soon we're back on a paved road (at least for 1/2 a mile...). Mr. Bill lives off of County highway 1 .... we find out that County Highway 1 is a nice loose gravel dirt road....with Mile Markers! WOW.