Wendy & Skip's RV Adventures

We leave in a couple weeks for this year’s trip out west (more on that below), but prior to the trip it was time for our “traditional” pre-trip campout with the with Little Darlings. I say “traditional” because we did a pre-trip campout once, and the way our family works, once is enough to create a tradition. And once a tradition is established, we can never not do it because, well, it’s a tradition. All of which leads to a geometrically expanding list of spontaneously generated random obligations. And I put “we” in quotes because Wendy is out in Seattle with the other Little Darlings, spending Easter with Laura while Robert is deployed, and wasn’t here for the campout.

This year’s campout was a great success, although not for the reason I expected. Cliff selected the location (FD Roosevelt State Park), which is only 30 miles from the LaGrange house, so I went over early to snag the best sites, Cliff showed up around noon, and Jennifer showed up mid-afternoon. We all assumed that we would occupy ourselves with an excess of activities at the campground and nearby Callaway Gardens. Some that turned out to be true, and in fact we did ride bikes at Callaway, go to the butterfly house, have a picnic lunch, and watch the birds of prey show.

And, at the campground, we skipped the park-provided hot dog supper, Eggstravaganza Easter egg hunt, archery, reptile encounter, and night hike and picnic, limiting our in-park activities to Saturday night’s bluegrass concert.

But what most occupied us was the girls’ fanatical commitment to geocaching. For those not familiar with the activity, geocaching involves using a GPS (or a GPS-enabled app on a smart phone) to find various “caches” that others have hidden in the woods, often containing little dime-store trinkets that one can exchange for other dime-store trinkets brought along for just that purpose. An good description of geocaching and all that it entails can be found on the Geocaching 101 website.

What an experience!! Four little girls, racing around the woods with smart phones in hand, clambering over each other in a frenetic drive to find the cache and exchange trinkets. For three days, the geocaching frenzy ran unabated. “Please, please can we go geocaching? Please, Grandpa, please, please…” First it was two caches near the campsite, then seven caches along a loop trail, then I’m not sure how many on another hike. And we also logged the “official” FDR State Park cache. Most of the state parks have official caches and I got each of the kids a “Georgia State Park Geocaching Passport” book. After getting a certain number of state park official caches, the kids are eligible for souvenir coins. (As you might expect, adding a reward like earning coins to the process only made them more fanatical.)

The kids had a total blast and the experience gave me grounds for optimism as well. Except for the usual risks of running around in the woods, which are numerous (ticks, rattlesnakes, slippery rocks, cuts, bruises, poison ivy, etc.) but usually not totally fatal, geocaching is a completely fun activity for kids, and the grownups can turn the kids loose and let them have as much UNSUPERVIZED fun as they want. I read an article once that noted it wasn’t that many years ago, certainly during my lifetime, that except for the time when they were actually in school, kids were basically free of adult supervision by the time they were eight years old. Heck, we used to jump on our bikes and ride to school at that age, and to the park, and to the “wash” (a dry river bed), and the ball fields, and the local 7-11, and the parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing. The only requirement is that we had to be home “by the time the street lights come on.” Living that way not only required parents willing to let their kids loose at what appears nowadays to be an early age, it required children willing to venture out without someone at hand to protect them. On both counts, those days are gone. Good grief, it sometimes seems like even college students nowadays can’t survive on their own without adults providing them with safe rooms and pacifiers. So, I’ve wondered whether the biological/psychological/emotional capabilities that allow parents to leave their kids alone and kids to thrive on their own have been lost. Nope. A campground is the perfect place to turn the LDs loose and let them do whatever they want, and adding geocaching to the mix and letting the kids run around in the woods, on their own, unsupervised, makes it even better.

So, with the pre-trip campout in the books, it’s now it’s time to get ready for the trip out west. This year’s trip will take us to San Antonio, Big Bend National Park, up to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, then to Tucson to visit Wendy’s sister, then up to Petrified Forest National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Blanding (Utah), all five Utah national parks, and then down to the Grand Canyon. With the exception of Mesa Verde, I’ve never been to any of these places. Forty-seven days and 5300 miles. Further updates to start in late April.

Well, yesterday was little Sally’s last day. On our February trip to Florida, she developed a persistent cough, which was diagnosed several times as bronchitis, but which turned out to be a tumor above the palate. There was really nothing that could be done, and she was in pain, and we knew in our hearts that the inevitable course of events was too much for our little friend to bear. So, we elected to use a service somewhat akin to pet hospice: a vet came to the house and little Sally spent her last few moments here at home, in our laps, with her favorite toy (called “Purple Minky”). (It’s too complicated to explain unless you can recite most of Inspector Clouseau’s lines by heart).

So, with thirteen years of great memories, and a fondness for our little friend that will warm our hearts forever, we say goodbye.

In telling folks about our plans to conclude this year’s Florida trip at Lake Okeechobee, people kept saying things like, “I hope you like alligators…,” or “you’ll have some interesting experiences, that is, if you think snakes and alligators can be interesting…,” or, my favorite, “Lake Okeechobee is a great place to go fishing, well, except you really shouldn’t go near the water because it’s basically loaded up with alligators and besides that my dad was fishing there and found himself wading in a sea of water moccasins…” Oh good grief. The litany of dreadful, foreboding encounters was so extensive and constant, we seriously considered just canceling that portion of trip and going home.

It was fine. In fact, it was better than fine. It was wonderful.

And, once again, inspiring. Our first day at Lake Okeechobee was forecasted to be coolish and raining, so he drove over to Fort Pierce to see the Navy SEAL Museum.

A statue commemorating the rescue of Lieutenant Tommy Norris by Petty Officer Mike Norton. During a mission in Viet Nam, Norris was so severely wounded that he was presumed dead. Nevertheless, Norton braved a hailstorm of bullets, rescued Norris, and then, although badly wounded himself, put his own life jacket on Norris to swim Norris out to another SEAL vessel, acts of heroism and bravery so compelling that Norton received the Medal of Honor. Incredibly, though, after LT Norris recovered from his near-fatal wounds, he returned to duty and himself engaged in acts of heroism so compelling that HE won the Medal of Honor. Wendy and I are standing there, reading all this with tears in our eyes, and we’re not through the front door yet.

Inside, the museum was everything you’d expect. One inspiring display after another explaining the whole SEAL concept, from intensive BUDS training in San Diego (where two-thirds of the volunteers can’t take it and drop out), to specialization in various aspects of modern warfare, to samples of the equipment used, to the operations of SEAL teams. As you would expect, some of the most famous SEAL missions are illustrated, including the rescue of Captain Phillips from Somali pirates to, of course, the granddaddy of them all, the raid on the compound in Abbottabad and the elimination of Osama bin Laden.

Nearby the campground we found another interesting attraction. As we learned last year, one problem faced by the Everglades is nutrient-rich runoff from farms, which leads to overly dense plant growth that actually chokes the wetlands. To counter that problem, local governments have built a number of treatment impoundments upstream of the Everglades to remove nutrients, and one such facility is located just a few miles north of the campground. That facility diverts about ten percent of the flow of Taylor Creek, retains that flow in a series of basins where overly rich plant growth is acceptable and intended, and then returns the water, now reduced in nutrient levels, back to the creek. These basins are, as one would expect, wildly rich in plant and animal life, and the county has actually built paths around the basins where one can stroll and enjoy the rich diversity of life that flourishes there.

We saw birds of all stripes (herons, anhingas, egrets, ibises, ducks, cranes, songbirds), turtles, butterflies, and even an otter. (No snakes.) (At least none that I pointed out to Wendy.) (That was a joke.) It was particularly fun to watch the birds catching and eating fish, even if the fish did seem too large to ease down the gullet.

 

And yes, we did see alligators. Dozens of them. Mostly basking in the ponds, although a couple were sunning themselves along the path, something that Wendy found particularly disconcerting.

One last thought. We found ourselves parked next to a couple from Pennsylvania, Herb and Mary Ellen Truhe. It turns out he is a retired policeman (27 years on the force) who comes from a family of wide-ranging police experience. And we found him to be one of the most friendly, knowledgeable, and decent human beings it’s ever been my pleasure to meet. Just one example to illustrate the point. He once had to arrest a drug addict on a parole violation warrant. As he picked up the guy, he noted that the addict looked pretty bad, obviously strung out. “When did you last eat?” he asked. “Three days ago,” the addict responded. So, incredibly, Herb brought him home, sat him down with his family, and gave him a decent meal, before carting him off to jail. “The only thing I ask,” Herb said to the addict, “is that you treat my family with the same respect I’m showing to you.” As it turns out, while they were having supper, the addict engaged with Herb’s teenage daughter, telling her at one point, “You need to stay away from drugs, or you’ll end up like me.” I don’t know how all that ended up, but it’s easy to imagine a story of redemption from a simple act of grace and a home-cooked meal. So there we have it: more inspiration from something as common as a neighbor at a campground.

We’re not sure about a Florida trip next year. We’ve basically explored the state to our satisfaction, noting the areas we like (as well as those we’re not so fond of). We may return next year to a couple favorite places, or we may start exploring the options for other warmer climes. Either way, though, this was definitely one of the better Florida trips.

First things first: the campground was a dump. Now on to better things…

On Friday, we made a pair of inspiring stops. First we went by the Valiant Warbirds Museum. It has a very nice collection of warbird aircraft, such as this F4F (one of the aircraft that my dad flew in World War II).

But what made the museum particularly memorable was three aircraft in particular. The first was this B-25 Mitchell, memorable because one of the original pilots, Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot in fact, COL Richard E. Cole, is still alive and is a regular attendee at the annual air show here. He’s 101 years old, but still mentally acute and physically fine (at least for a man of his age).

For those not familiar with Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo (and who haven’t seen 30 Seconds Over Tokyo), after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, along with a long string of Japanese victories in the South Pacific, when American morale was unbearably low, President Roosevelt decided that the American military needed to do something to give Americans cause for hope. The proposal was an improbable idea of launching bombers off of a carrier, flying to Japan to inflict tactically minor but psychologically devastating damage.

The attack was planned and led by Jimmy Doolittle, a famous military test pilot, civilian aviator, and aeronautical engineer. In April 1942, sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers under his command were launched without fighter escort from the USS Hornet, each with a crew of five men and carrying four 500-pound bombs, three with conventional explosives and one incendiary. Doolittle was in the lead bomber and had only 450 feet of deck in front of him. The plan called for the B-25s to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China. Unfortunately, Hornet was detected by a Japanese picket boat and the bombers had to launch 200 miles before the planned launch point. After flying 650 miles at wave-top level, the bombers struck 10 military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama, and one each four other cities. Fifteen aircraft reached China, but all crashed, while the 16th landed in the Soviet Union. All but three of the 80 crew members initially survived the mission. Eight airmen were captured by the Japanese in China; three of those were later executed. The B-25 that landed in the Soviet Union was confiscated and its crew imprisoned for more than a year.

The second was this F-16, a special aircraft because it is the actual aircraft, one of two, on constant patrol over the skies of New York on September 11, 2001.

And finally, my favorite. This C-47 actually flew in the D-Day invasion, flying two missions to drop paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, and then a third mission to tow a glider to Normandy. The initial drops consisted of soldiers from the 505th, 507th, and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments. All of the paratroopers on D-Day suffered badly, but the 82nd was particularly hard hit. Forty-six percent of the 82 Airborne soldiers dropped in on D-Day were killed, wounded, or missing. Major General Ridgway’s post-battle report stated, “… 33 days of action without relief, without replacements. Every mission accomplished. No ground gained was ever relinquished.”

I hate to sound sappy, but after walking around this place, and hearing these stories, and seeing these aircraft, Wendy and I were both emotionally depleted, both of us sensing that we really were standing on holy ground. Between the stories of Doolittle’s raid and D-day, it proved the truth of Eisenhower’s comment that there is no force on earth like that of a democracy enraged.

Then it was off to the Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum. The Memorial honors over 9000 police officers who have been killed in the line of duty. The current rate is that a police officer is killed every two days, and 2016 was a particularly tragic year, with 21 deaths in ambush-style shootings alone. I guess such is to be expected when government officials at the very highest level curry political favor by identifying police as the enemy and by declaring that ruthless punks and thugs are martyrs. This memorial honors those who bear the consequences of such political pandering, such as the five police officers killed in Dallas last year, shot down by a thug who said he was upset about the recent police shootings and wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.

We did pause for a moment to honor Officer Mark Cross, the son of our good friends in Atlanta, who was gunned down by drug-dealing gang-bangers on April 23, 2005. He is survived by his wife and two children.

Again, we found ourselves standing on holy ground. It’s hard to describe the emotional impact of spending a day immersed in the bravery and self-sacrifice of such great Americans.

And we finally got to see a launch. We tried to see a launch back in 2015, when the launch was scrubbed due to something about “down range tracking.” Then we tried again on Thursday, but the launch was scrubbed due to something involving “nozzle thrust thingies.” But on Friday, we finally got to see the SpaceX Falcon9 rocket take off, even if it did quickly disappear into the clouds.

On edit: Good grief. How could I forget to post this? We also went to the Kennedy Space Center. Although we had been here before, this time was a special treat. We went to the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit. It’s hard to describe what one sees and experiences without spoiling the surprise of anyone who may go there in the future, but after walking through a lobby where there is shown a 360-degree film about the history of the Space Shuttle program, the wall in front turns translucent and there, right before us, tilted on one side, is Atlantis itself. The whole room broke into applause. And Atlantis is huge: about the same size as an Airbus 320, 125 feet long, with a wingspan of 78 feet, and weighing as much as 220,000 pounds at takeoff. Which is why it is lifted off under the power of two solid rocket boosters plus a main engine fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, developing in total an earth-shaking 7 million (that’s million) pounds of thrust. The screen then raises and reveals this:

As you would expect, a portion of the Atlantis display recounted the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, and honored the crewmen on those flights, but the display really wasn’t about the cost of exploration, it was about the glory of exploration, the human need to go new places and learn new things, and the indomitable human spirit that allows to achieve the impossible. By this point, Wendy and I were really getting tired of being inspired!

Besides all of that, we also found time for a tour of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, made all the more memorable by the appearance if this little guy, swimming around in the middle of a salt marsh. Go figure.

On edit: Oops, I left off a couple interesting photos. First, this one of a Painted Bunting, a bird I’ve always wanted to see but never have.

And, of course, one of these:

Next stop: Lake Okeechobee. We’re not sure exactly what to expect. Everyone keeps telling us to expect “experiences” with alligators and water moccasins.

For the umpteenth time in the past three decades, we find ourselves back at the Fort Wilderness campground. And once again, here we are without any youngsters at a destination that is seemingly not conceived for unaccompanied old coots like us. So, what gives?

Part of the answer lies in our appreciation for the Disney commitment to excellence, something I’ve noted numerous times before. It is a refreshing break from modern tolerance of mediocrity to be somewhere where there is a singular driving force to do everything as well as it can be done.

And this instance of our recurring migration had a special objective: a visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. What a place, even though we missed out on the one attraction we most wanted to experience: the Kilimanjaro Safari. It’s a weird story, but apparently the animals have free reign in the area where the tour meanders along, and Disney shuts down the excursion when the animals have congregated on the roadway along the designated route. At our scheduled time, several ostriches, of all things, had parked themselves along the pathway and, after an hour of waiting for those improbable but stubborn creatures to move on, the authorities decided the situation was hopeless, cancelled the ride, and gave us all bonus coupons good for priority admission to any attraction in any park. Not useful for us, but a nice gesture, even though it symbolized the perfect irony of the Disney empire thwarted by a cartoonish bird.

Even still, the Wild Animal Park provided a wonderful experience. The Lion King musical was as good as anything one would see on Broadway, and the encounters with the animals occurred in habitats that seemed strikingly natural and not at all “zoo-ish.”

 

And I had a chance to do little “photography” in addition to enjoying the park.

Back to Disney. I guess the one aspect of the Disney experience, and perhaps the one that most compels us to come back year after year, is the way it seems to elevate human nature. I noted in a prior post the comment made by one visitor that impressed me as a perfect summation of my sentiments: “I guess if you’re not happy here, there aren’t a lot of places you’ll ever be happy.” True indeed. Even after the Kilimanjaro Safari frustration of waiting for an hour, only to be turned away unfulfilled, something that one might think would create a flood of nastiness among those waiting in a crowded line, people were funny, and friendly, and good natured, and just adapted and moved on to other things. What if all of life operated thusly?

We love Cedar Key. In fact, last year this was probably our favorite spot in the Florida tour. But twixt then and now, on September 2, 2016 to be precise, Hurricane Hermine made landfall at St. Marks as a Category 1 hurricane, with the eastern-side winds (the worst of the storm) making a direct hit on Cedar Key. The Weather Channel and other news coverage showed poor little Cedar Key being pummeled by waves and wind, with one scene, broadcast again and again, showing an entire dock breaking free and crashing into the shoreline. We were nervous as we left Topsail Hill Preserve and headed for Cedar Key. What would we find?

Nothing. Really. Except for the telltale color of a few new roofs, one would be hard pressed to detect any evidence of a hurricane.

So, what gives? Where’s all the death, damage, and destruction that we saw on TV? A waitress in one of the burger stops said that everything was patched up and businesses were operating and back to normal in eight days! Apparently, Florida has about a gazillion contractors who descend on hurricane-hit areas within days and start the rebuilding process (which was mostly minor patch-up here and there). And Cedar Key was doubly benefited in that Hermine hit a few days before the annual “Pirate Festival,” which as near as I can tell, involves thousands of nearby residents showing up in pirate costumes for a week of drinking, carousing, and saying “a-a-a-r-g-h” to each other, except that a large percentage of them work in building trades and they figured, I guess, that as long as they were there anyway, they might as well earn some drinking money.

Besides that, as the locals explained it, the damage wasn’t that bad anyway. We struck up a conversation with one of the guys who runs a local fishing charter, and who shed more light on the absence of any catastrophic destruction, something we should have known. Apparently the news folks, desperate for dramatic footage, would walk around, stand in a few inches of water, and zoom in on the water to make it look light an sea of wind and tsunamis. One guy even leaned sideways as he broadcast to make it look like he was struggling to fight the force of the winds and stay upright. The guy said he watched the broadcaster, wondering “what is this idiot doing?”

The explanation, of course, is that we were watching news stories. As Ken Myers points out, they don’t call them stories for no reason. The model for news coverage is not teaching, but fiction. That is, all of the elements that make for a great novel also make for great “news” and therefore drive the coverage: drama, tension, suspense, tragedy, and heroism. And like fiction, a connection to the truth is not an essential element. A degree of verisimilitude helps, but only to provide a backdrop of plausibility. And this is “real news.” “Fake news” is even worse. No wonder we’re all so stupid.

There was some damage in Cedar Key, to be sure, which is what one would expect from a 5.8-foot storm surge and an incredible 22.8 inches of rain! For example, one hotel had the ground floor flooded (but only in the area where it negligently failed to extend the sea wall), a falling-down building, not even open for business when we were here last year, fell down some more during the storm. Some railings and terraces had to be replaced and, of course, many of the roofs went bye-bye. As we drove around in the residential areas one day, we did notice a few, maybe a half-dozen, trees that had been snapped off near the top. Overall, much less damage than we feared based on the sensational coverage we had seen.

So, since everything survived just fine, what we do in Cedar Key? Everything we loved about this place last time. Toured around in the nature areas, ate at world famous Tony’s Seafood, and enjoyed the warm weather (mid-70s and sunny with light, trade-wind-like breezes).

So, Cedar Key remains one of our favorite places and a sure stop on every future winter trip to Florida. Next stop on this trip: Orlando for a ham radio thingie, then off to Disney World.

We started off this leg with a quick overnight stop to see two of our favorite people on earth, Harold and Jeneve Brooks, who recently moved to Dothan.

Then it was off to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. Well, it’s not exactly a “state park.” It’s a former high-end RV resort that was turned over to the state, who operates it as a park. In any event, we’ve been coming to this wonderful campground for years, which caused me to wonder whether we ever get to the point where our assessment evolves to “been-there-done-that” and we look for somewhere else as a destination. Nope. In fact, we decided that next time we come here, next year I hope, it’ll be for an even longer period, like maybe a couple weeks. And here’s why.

There were a couple experiences, not guaranteed to occur from year to year, that can make Florida in the winter a wonderful destination.

Beautiful sunrises.

And a perfect day for a bike ride 8 miles down the Highway 30A bike path to Grayton Beach State Park.

 

But what occurred to us on this trip, and one of the main reasons we’ll be back, is that there’s an unlimited number of things to do that either we never grow tired of (like the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, something we didn’t get to this year), or nature talks by rangers, like this one on sea turtles:

Or an infinity of little known, rarely visited places that are special for us, like these memorials to the soldiers and Marines who lost their lives in a helicopter crash near Navarre on March 10, 2015. We stopped here only because Wendy just happened to see a small blurb about the memorial in one of those dippy little magazines put out by the Chamber of Commerce.

The memorial was especially important for us, not only because of a son who is a Blackhawk pilot, but because the crash occurred during a training mission in unimaginably terrible weather. When asked whether the weather was acceptable for a training mission, a military spokesman said, “Training in adverse weather conditions is not unusual for military personnel. We train as we fight.” Indeed. In a world where trepidation is increasingly common (this week featured a national news story where thirteen DC-area schools cancelled all outdoor activities, no kidding, because a 7-year old female bobcat named “Ollie” was discovered missing from its pen at the National Zoo), this memorial serves as a reminder that there are brave people who not only put their lives on the line when deployed to combat, they do it every day, day in and day out, to keep themselves ready to go if needed. And sometimes, even readiness demands the ultimate sacrifice.

Our only complaint? Florida seems to be unbelievably hostile to dogs. Dogs are banned from beaches, parks, picnic areas, and paths. Good grief. I guess it figures, though. Here in Okaloosa County, we learned that the word “oka-loosa” comes from the Seminole phrase meaning “no dogs.” Really. [I was going to insert something here about enhancing our travel options by having the dogs put to sleep, but since the last time I did that it caused people to line up in support of the dogs, I’ll skip it this trip.] Oh well, a small price to pay for a special place.

Next stop, Cedar Key.

Every year, Cliff and I journey off to Union Springs, Alabama, for the Conecuh Springs Christian Springs charity hunt. I’m told that I was actually one of the first hunters, maybe the first, in the program. It all began back in the early 2000s when Robert and I were on a hunting trip in Alabama and decided to drive around and see the area. As we were driving along on some dirt road, miles back into the woodlands of the county, we saw some guy walking along the side of the road with a rifle slung over his shoulder. “Need a ride?” we asked. “Boy, do I ever!” [Digression for readers living in New York, Massachusetts, California, Washington, or any major American city: No–it’s not unusual to see a guy with a gun out in the woods, no–it’s not dangerous to stop and talk to such a person, no–he’s not going to shoot you, and yes–there are places in this country where strangers stop to chat and are friendly and helpful to one another. Now back to the story…] As we were talking, he asked, “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in doing a deer hunt, would you?” and then proceeded to explain the concept behind the first charity hunt that the local Christian school was putting together.

The idea is the local farmers would take you to their absolutely favorite hunting places on their own property, the places where they knew the odds were very good for seeing deer, and let you hunt there for three days, but at the cost of your making a nice contribution to the local Christian school. It’s a totally win-win situation. The cost is very modest compared to commercial hunts, and it’s not only great hunting, it’s a chance to hang around salt-of-the-earth, decent people who are as warm and welcoming folks as I’ve ever met.

So, this year is the umpteenth trip back to central Alabama, back to parking the motorhome at the same hunting plantation, and then back again to the farm of Don and Connie Jones for three days of hunting. The Joneses raise limousin cattle, a breed known for producing very lean and tender beef, commonly sold as “Laura’s All-Natural Lean Beef.”

Hunting always produces great stories (which, like fishing stories, are rarely true, but who cares?) but this year the stories were the best ever.

Day 1: Cliff saw a monster buck, but it was too far off for a shot, so he took a shot at a doe (or so he thought). The deer took off like it was shot out of a cannon, right for the fence at the side of the pasture. He heard a crash sound at the fence line and we took off to recover the doe. Instead of a deer piled up on the fence, though, we found this:

Day 2. That morning, Cliff took a shot at another doe (this time it actually was a doe) and once again it headed off like it was shot out of a cannon. (Cliff must be using rocket fuel in his hunting rounds or something. What’s the deal here?) Instead of blasting through a fence, though, this time the deer propelled itself over a cliff and down ten feet into a creek, where it promptly lodged itself under a log.

 

Later that day, Cliff returned to the pasture where he had seen the monster buck the day before. For non-hunters, deer are highly unpredictable. Sometimes they show up, and sometimes they don’t. If they do materialize at some location, there’s no telling which direction they’ll come in from. The “home range” of a buck can range anywhere from 100 to 700 acres. Bucks, especially large bucks, are especially erratic. They didn’t get to be big, old animals by being stupidly predictable, and on top of that they have evolved over millions of years to avoid predators, such as humans. Although a deer’s hearing is not much better than ours, their sense of smell is up to 10,000 times better than ours (a deer can detect a foreign scent, and avoid the area, up to a mile away) and a deer will almost always enter an open area downwind of the woods, so that it is sure to pick up the smell of any danger lurking in the woods. The smart ones will even sometimes circle an area so they can enter it from downwind. They see about five times better than we do, and their eyes are particularly adjusted to detect movement. Plus, hunters subscribe to a code of ethics that requires one never to take a shot at a deer unless one is sure of a clean, humane kill. The result of all this is that even with modern-day camouflage, scent-suppressing chemicals, and long-range rifles, combined with the fact that most hunters are smarter, at least somewhat smarter, than woodlands animals, the odds of being able to get a good shot on a deer are very low. Just to illustrate the point, while Cliff’s hunts are proceeding as described here, good ol’ dad is sitting about a half-mile away, overlooking a nearly identical pasture, not seeing anything. Such is the nature of hunting. As the expression goes, “That’s why they call it ‘hunting’ and not ‘shooting.'”

So, Cliff decided to park himself overlooking the place where the monster buck had shown up the day before, hoping (against considerable odds) that the buck was following a routine that would compel him to show up in the same place again, that Cliff could avoid detection (he was hiding behind a fallen log, downwind of the buck’s previous path), and that all of this would come together in a way that would allow Cliff to get a good shot. Unbelievably, all of that actually happened and here’s the result.

I eventually did manage to take a couple deer, but the real stories of this hunt are all Cliff’s. What a great and memorable weekend. We’re already anxious to come back next year.