We Ain't No Lumber Jacks!

By Correy's Dad
A few years ago on an Opening Trout Season trip they had a late snowfall the week before we arrived, the sun was out but every piece of fire wood on the ground was saturated with water from the snow. It looked like we would have to actually purchase firewood from the local store for the first time.
We were camping at Eureka Valley Campground, about 6500 feet in the Stanislaus National Forest, a favorite campground of our family. The mountainous rocks are behind us & the river nearby, it don't get any better than this. Correy & I camped at the first campsite nearest the rocks, it has lots of shade and also the rock mountain within a stones throw behind us.
As we surveyed areas for firewood everything on the ground was too wet, I looked about 100 feet up on the rock mountain behind us & seen a few 30 foot downed, dried trees. I scaled the rock wall with a rope in tow & climbed up to the tree laying on the rocks just above our camp. Correy attached the other end of the rope to our chainsaw. I pulled it up & started cutting 4' diameter rounds off the downed tree, I cut 5-6 large rounds.
Now the tricky part was to get these down below to our camp with destroying something, seems to be a common denominator in Fedor camping trips!
Just to paint the picture for you, I'm about 100 feet up a rock mountain, with 5-6 large, heavy, round, yes round, this means these can roll VERY FAST & FAR! Correy is away from the bottom of the mountain, our van is about 20 yards away, our camp is about the same.
Our idea is to push the large wood rounds off the cliff, they land below & we just roll them into camp, split them, INSTANT dry firewood...so we thought.
The first round lands below & starts rolling towards camp, it spins & comes to rest about 10 feet away, pretty cool. The next couple of rounds do a similar pattern, one Correy had to chase & bring back. I sent the last 2 rounds over the cliff at the same time, I found this was NOT GOOD!
One careened towards Correy at top speed, he started running from it, but it seemed to have a homing beacon on him, wherever he went it followed, Correy finally dove to the side as it continued across camp over the edge right into the river. At the same time a second wood round headed right for the side of our van, it was going to be a direct hit, 7 feet from the van it hit a pot hole in the ground & changed course, now headed for our tent, it side swiped a tree & was now headed for the outhouse, it hit with such force, it moved the outhouse a foot off its perch.
After laughing hysterically for about 20 minutes we gathered all the rounds in camp, except the one in the river, it's probably in some other town by now.
As we enjoyed the great campfires we had from this wood, Correy said, WE AIN'T NO LUMBER JACKS!

Correy lived in Alaska?????

By Correy's Dad

I heard many people at Correy's service & afterward at the house that asked us if we ever lived in Alaska or if Correy did? It seems Correy has quite a story of living in Alaska, I wonder if it came after our Spring snow opening trout season trip? We went up years ago after the worst, coldest winter ever on record & the latest heavy snow for Springtime. Usually when we go up fishing for Opening Trout Season, the end of April or first Saturday in May, there is snow up in the upper mountains and a few patches in the campsite. This one year all the way down at 3000 feet there was already snow, by the time we got to our usual camping spot at 7000 feet it was a winter wonderland. 4-6 feet of snow & up to 10-14 foot drifts. All of the picnic tables were under 8-10 foot snow drifts. The outhouses were completely covered in snow, they stand at least 8 feet tall, we could make out the angled roof on the snow. We had to lower ourselves down to go to the bathroom. Correy thought we would have to sleep in the van or go home. I said nope, we are going to build an igloo, having built a few over the years. The snow has to be just right, icy, thick & cold!
We took out a wood hand saw & a flat shovel. We cut rows of blocks about 18" x 18", used the flat shovel to pop them out about 8" thick. We layed out our bottom circle then built on that, less than an hour we had our igloo. Correy got fancy & cut in shelves inside to store stuff, you build a small fire in the center & cut 1 small hole in the ceiling, the smoke goes straight up through the hole due to the extreme cold vs. heat. We only caught one fish that entire 4 days, the rest of the time we build different types, shapes of snow structures & laughed at people driving by looking at us funny & shaking their heads like we were crazy. We also snow boarded anywhere & everywhere, including jumping the 2 lane highway from side to side on the snowboard. I think Correy liked it so much that he created his Alaska story years later, for all intensive purposes it was just like Alaska!!! WELCOME TO ALASKA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Correy as "SMOKEY BEAR"

By Correys Dad

Back at our old Family Community Church I was doing a Fire Safety program for the childrens group, they had a camp type theme going on. Usually I wear the Smokey Bear suit, but on this occasion I was doing the classroom talk about Smokey & Fire Safety & I needed someone to do "The Bear." Correy volunteered, it was three separate programs about 35 minutes each. Once Correy put on the suit he became "Smokey Bear", he had all the looks & movements down. By the second program the kids would sing & act out a song, before you knew it Correy was boogieing in the Smokey Bear suit to the music. He really enjoyed it & did a few other Fire Safety programs with California Department Of Forestry.

Learning stick shift in hostile Injun country

     Correy learned to drive like Jarred and I did - on the highway and back roads of the Stanislaus National Forest, from about age 12 on. And Correy, as most will attest, was a pretty solid driver with an automatic transmission; however, Correy behind the wheel of a stick is a whole different matter.

     Correy flew down to Albuquerque New Mexico to help me drive back to Portland Oregon following a month I spent down there doing disaster medicine stuff and eating green chile breakfast burritos. We had no driving plan, just figured we would switch off whenever. I drove us out of  the ABQ and west towards the edge of nowhere. Exactly on the edge of said nowhere is a town called Gallup, NM where there is a Sonic Drive-In (a fun story from there will come a different day). After we filled up on delicious sugary flavory sodas there, I thought it about time for Correy to drive. After all, the road ahead was exceptionally flat and desolate, easy drivin. Little did I know Correy's complete lack of experience in driving a stick shift. When I invited him down, he said "Oh sure, I've driven a stick before, no problem." What he didn't mention until that fateful day was that he had driven a stick before... once, briefly.  Needless to say we needed a bit of a crash course, and in a hurry.

     We coasted backwards out of the spot, and managed to chug our way across the parking lot into a gas station lot before stalling. It took about eight F-bombs and fifteen minutes to back out of that spot again under power. Eventually... eventually... we made it to the driveway and rolled (after stalling) into the middle of the road. One restart later, we were officially underway and quickly out of Gallup.

     Leaving Gallup is not just leaving a city, it is leaving the United States of America. No joke. Correy was to test his driving meddle on the reservation of the Navajo Nation. This is, by all white-man accounts, very dangerous country, with people (mostly drunk bored teens) that will rob you and beat you up and steal your car if you so much as stop to take a picture (let alone break down in a black cloud of shredded transmission). And here was Correy tooling along, stripping my gears, accidentally revving up the engine of my poor and dying 200K+ mile Jetta. And don't even ask about the cars he passed against oncoming traffic.

     Perhaps the more hairy times came when we reached a quasi-town on the reservation, where Navajos were walking about, their sketchy police eyeballing us as we rolled through. Then there was a traffic light! Which means we had to stop, and worse yet... GO AGAIN! Oh please Correy don't stall here, don't stall here. Gratefully my real-time coaching kept us moving every so slowly so as to not actually require first gear, which may have meant certain death in the desert the way we had been going.

     Two close call streetlights later and we were again off into the flat desolate badlands of the rez, where only fifth gear was required. Correy managed to get us all the way through Navajo country and to the relative safety of some white trash redneck hamlet back in the US of A. But it was close, and we drove on singing along to old Dixie Chicks tunes at the top of our lungs, glad to still have our scalps.