Camp Verde Arizona….

Dogs noses are cool*

We were joined by our good friends Vickie and ~~Jethro~~……I mean Jeffand Jim and Judy were still hanging with us

While Jethro….urr…Jeff and I were ~~surveying the canyon below our Rimrock perch~~ swilling beer / bourbon in lawn chairs when we noticed a object tangled in the rocks and STICKERS below. Jeff grabbed the binoculars…or far lookers as my good friend Danny Clark calls them…….now before all you snowflakes say ” I’ve always called them far lookers”……I heard it from Danny first…..so get over it**

A quick far looker scan revealed ………A mangled Tent!!!!

Jeff ….who to hear him tell it…is college educated……….. started to babble about a recovery operation…………..uhhh……….hola!! (Hello) it’s straight down!!! Are we gonna repel down??Jeff looked at me like I was some kinda simpleton***

then Jeff said:****

“we’re gonna walk around silly, I just need to cypher on it a spell”

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(Houston we have a problem)

After much discussion, I commented that our location was similar to

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and there Is no way “around”

Barton and Jeff decided that we should head east

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in search of a way into the canyon and the holy grail…….the TENT!

Instead of sugarplum fairies I dreamt of dead bodies in the tent********

……wouldn’t it be cool to find DB Cooper or something?*********

after walking well well, well past where we thought we could easily walk into the canyon….we surrendered……

We arrived at the road where the creek entered the canyon….walking into it ,we were in awe as the walls climbed quickly……..blocking out the sunny day….aided by the trees that somehow thrived. Many trees were in the creek……normal I suppose for a place where water comes and goes very swiftly. It was a different landscape for a Wyoming boy….the canyon widened and choked and widened again…what was cool was the evidence of the past Flood…..or perhaps it’s called normal run off here.

What I found different was a stream that wasn’t streaming….just pools of stagnate water…yet at some point it flowed 100 yards wide and deposited stuff 6 feet up the trees!.

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I just threw her in there to make sure I hadn’t put you to sleep yet.

We only made a few hundred yards before realizing it was too tough and far to go this way to the “tent”. After a group discussion about the impending arrival of happy hour….and our not being anywhere near the booze…..it was decided to make way for camp.

after a fine dinner made by JudyJeff and Barton announced we should head west

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I wish they’d make up their mind!we set out early in the day and were embarrassed to find a VERY easy way into the canyon from the west that was not 200 feet from our fire pit …..duh!!

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there didn’t seem to be any game trails that we could find,this led to a lot of back tracking as we were repelled by cactus and my arch nemesis the STICKER BUSH!!

I don’t know the real name of the bush beyond “you bastard”. I swear they reach out and grab your clothes, always making sure to take some hide too…..bastards.

The creek bed was cool as Barton and I kept an eye out for the Lost Treasure Of The Serra Madre……….we never found any treasure……we did note that every rock you stepped on moved or rolled completely in an effort to snap your ankle off like Joe Thiesmans leg…..so we did have that.

Jeff and I not so silently jockeyed for position …….”go ahead Jeff” “nah,you go ahead Kelly” as we both saw imagined , 4 foot rattle snakes under every rock. After considerable huffing and puffing we came to moment of truth……Jeff and I declared Barton the leader of the expedition! Thus he should have the honor of unwrapping the tent and. ~~be devoured by a den of hundreds of rattle snakes~~ ….being the first to lay eyes on our corpse and or gold bars. Barton was cagey enough to poke the shredded tent with the mangled poles that were scattered about…….no body ………no treasures……what a bunch of crap!

Jeff secured the tent to the rope he and Barton fashioned out of local materials…….

not really…..they got it out of their campers….

Jeff and I suddenly realized we had to climb outta here!! We had a conversation about climbing the rope……….after 3 seconds of Jeff looking at my belly and I at his…….we trudged off in the direction we came……..have I ever mentioned this hiking is BS?

To our credit Jeff and I shave 300 yards off the “walk around” by doing the old fat guy shuffle up a fairly easy cliff face…….well not really a cliff…..more of an incline….with rocks. As we pulled and pushed one another over the precipice…collapsing in the red dirt…our spittle pooling and our raspy breath swirling the dirt back into our faces…..we looked up, and see a boot, not 3 feet from our faces…..there sat some Marlin Perkins looking dude…..complete with safari hat…..in a lawn chair swishing a Chardonnay around his long stemmed glass.!,! He looked at us quizzically and announced “the trail is right there fellows”…..following his gaze…..sure enough…the trail…..it was so flat and easy…it looked like the people mover escalator at DIA…….son of a ……………… we dusted ourselves off and slinked out of Marlin’s camp siteJeff and I pulled the rope and tent up before Cherokee and Barton made it back to camp…..and were greeted as triumphant mountaineers by our lovely wives!Karen And Vickie showered us with praise as they stealthily steered us towards their true agenda …………we needed to make their drinks……..so no treasures…no cadavers…….plenty of cactus scratches…….but at least no snake bites!!