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NFC: Trip story



As many of you know, I go out in the desert about 4-5 times a year to help
do desert-spring-habitat maintenance for the Nevada Wildlife Dept., the
USF&WL Service, and to help in a special research project of DSAC. Go to the
Desert Springs site for pictures and less flamboyant stories of the
activity.

http://www.tkphotos.com/DSAC/index.htm

If you check out past trips, under the April 2000 trip are some photos. If
you click on "217K Sampling the Virgin River," you can see the seining was
rough and the river was fast -- about like chocolate milk, too. In the last
shot, Tom was standing on a 60'-high cliff to shoot down to where we were.
My young Lab bitch, Teena, wasn't in these shots as she was just out of the
hospital and old Gus (13) is getting too arthritic for strenuous stuff. They
stayed in the car for a change.

When we broke for lunch, and climbed up to the cars, Teena was full of P&V
and wanted to play. This was despite the fact that she had undergone major
surgery just a week earlier (spayed) and still had her stitches.

She found a huge asphalt shingle, about 2' square. She brought it to me with
a wag, and a look of "Is this a Frisbee?" I spun it across the road, and she
delightedly decided it certainly was. After a bit of this, I tired of the
game, and thoughtlessly tossed it off the edge of the cliff to end the game.
I expected her to run to the edge and stop.

Wrong!

My heart sank, and I nearly became ill, when she disappeared right after it.
The cliff was a full 50' high at that point. It was absolutely vertical,
ending in a steep slope of rocks and rubble that ran down to the river for
another vertical 10' or so. I figured she was dead, for sure, with innards
spilled all over the rocks.

I quickly headed for the closest way down, an old track that wasn't really
much of a road, thinking to do what I could. I hardly got started when
around the curve, up the road, trotted Teena with a wagging tail and an ugly
old floppy shingle happily hanging from her mouth.

I didn't know whether to kill her or hug her. I did the latter, while
feeling for any burst stitches. She was absolutely unhurt, and I still do
not know why. [See how you make out, jumping off a five-story building onto
rocks and gravel, sometime!] She never showed any tender spots or soreness
in her feety or legs, either.

Teena's picture is at:

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/ViewPhoto?u=972804&a=7136021&p=24179841

One other, minor excitement on that trip was the rock that fell in the road
at Beaver Damn Wash the night we were there. Click on:

"160 k Scenes from Beaver Dam Wash."

Jeff tries to squeeze his pickup past it in the top right shot. BTW, I'm on
the left in the lower right picture. The overall April 2000 trip was 1700
miles, crossing 9 passes over 7000 ft high, and 4 or 5 that were near or
above 9000' One thing about the Great American Desert, there's sure a
helluva lot of it!


We were back out in Preston the weekend just in front of the 4th. If you
click on the June 2000 trip, you can get the latest chapter. Tom and Kaz
Webster are professional photographers. They usually document our trips with
their photos. I'm very proud that Tom let me do this one with my new digital
camera. He also does the web site, and they are both quite fussy about what
gets shown there. :-)

Cheers,

Wright

-- 
Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 494-8679  huntleyone at home dot com

           To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.
               *** http://www.self-gov.org/index.html ***

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