"Crazy, Mixed Up"
Memorial Day Run
Saturday
This run was a little different and kind of weird. We got into Disney on Friday afternoon and tried to find Marty Young who was supposed to be camped at Hogan’s. He hadn’t arrived yet, so we waited a while. After waiting for some time, we decided to go check into our motel. On our way to check into our motel in Ketchum, we passed Rick Mosley our designated trail leader for this run, heading into Hogan’s, so we pulled over and talked to him for a while. Christine Foster had ridden with him on this trip.
We were on the side of the road talking when Marty passed by with his son, Marty Jr., on his way to Hogan’s. We turned around and followed Marty into Hogan’s to talk to him. After everyone decided to go eat in Vinita, we left to go check into our motel again and so did Rick, while Marty set up camp.
Tom and I went to pick up the two Marty’s for our supper that evening. Christine had told me earlier that her daughter, Melinda who is 7 months pregnant with Christine’s first grandchild, had worked a very long day and was not feeling very well on her way home from work. As we were eating, Christine had several calls from her pregnant daughter. Christine was concerned for her daughter, so Rick and her left to go on home. Since Marty Young was very familiar with the Disney area, everyone decided that he would be the leader for us on Saturday. Rick gave him the Run folder before Christine and him left for home. This was the first crazy thing for the weekend.
Now, let me tell you about the second crazy thing. Saturday morning, we left our motel, then stopped at Frosty and Edna’s to help our group (whoever showed up for our run) to get to Hogan’s to start our run. We found Don Weiser and his son, Brandon, visitors Gregg and Kate Contreras, and brother Jamie and Gary Olvera, and Jamie’s two sons, Coby and Dakota. Don went outside after he ate breakfast to tinker with his rig (tinker means raising the hood with tools in your hands and doing stuff). Then we all left to go meet Marty at Hogan’s.
After we got to Marty’s camp at Hogan’s, members David and Pattie Brumley and visitor Tom and Cindy Shankles (friends of member Mike Jones) came for the run. We had seven vehicles for the run. When we arrived, Marty had the hood of his Suzuki raised and was working on it. Marty was having carburetor problems and he was trying to fix it. So Tom was designated as the substitute leader until Marty could join us when he got his rig running.
It had stopped raining by that time which pleased us all. However, Tom did not know the area at all. All we knew how to find was the rock garden. So we went there to play for a while. When we got tired of that we decided to head out and find some trails. Tom Shankles knew some of the trails so we had him lead for a while. We found a lot of trails and even knew the names of a couple of them. One was Hogan’s Revenge and the other was Panty Hill. You can’t miss Panty Hill because when you come to the head of the trail there are panties hanging from the trees to show you the way down the hill.
None of us knew for sure where we were or how to get back to the main road that goes to the Waterfall or back to the Rock Garden. But we had a great time while we were lost exploring the trails at Disney. Marty called us on my cell phone and told us that he was up and running again and for us to come to the main road.
We guessed right and found the main road and Marty. Finally, we had a person who actually knew where we were and trail names. There were now seven rigs and one ATV. We all decided to head to the waterfall for some of us to try. By the way, the stock rig did extremely well on all the trails, even the steep muddy ones and the river crossings. It was pretty wet out there, but nothing that really bothered any of our rigs.
What did bother me was all the dead fish and some that hadn’t died yet, but were going to soon. It seems that when they open all the gates on the dam and let the water spill over to where we all wheel, a bunch of fish get let out too. Well, when the water recedes, there is no place for the fish to go to be in the water. It was a very sad sight. We saw cat fish, spoon bill and needle nose plus many small fish. The number was in the thousands. There were a lot of people there trying to catch the fish with their hands in the deeper parts of the river bottom.
We got to the waterfall and watched some rigs trying to get up. Don Weiser tried in his recently purchased Suzuki and made it easily. Gregg and Kate in their Blazer and Tom Malone and I in our Toyota also made it. Marty tried it in his Suzuki, but he had new swampers on his rig and they were just too stiff for him to get any traction on the wet rocks.
Now let me tell you about the third crazy thing that happened. Three of us were on the top of the waterfall and the rest of the group was at the bottom. We all wanted to go to Little Blue next. Marty had gone over to some rocks so that his son could play around on his ATV. The others at the bottom decided to head on over to the top of Little Blue, without Marty, to wait for us. Meanwhile, those of us at the top of the waterfall were trying to head to the bottom of Little Blue. We expected to see the rest of our group at the bottom of Little Blue, but they weren’t there. Instead, there was a rig broken down right in the middle blocking the trail.
We all really wanted to do this obstacle, so we decided to wait. While we were waiting, Donald Weiser was playing around at the bottom of the trail. He was trying to climb a steep wall and broke his Burfield. Ouch! So, he was finished for the day. He left to go back to Hogan’s. We offered to loan him our spare axle and Burfield.
After the broken rig was fixed, they found out that it had no steering, so they pulled it out. Once the broken rig was out of the way, all three of us make it up Little Blue. However, we still didn’t know where the other part of our group was; since it was late, we started looking for them. None of them were at Hogan’s, so we called Donald Weiser and found out that he was going on home. We would latter learn from Tom Shankles that we had just missed each other by minutes at the top of Little Blue and at the campsite. We were all pretty tired and decided it was time for us to go eat some Mexican food at a local restaurant. We made plans to meet on Sunday morning at Hogan’s at Marty’s campsite at 9:00 to run again. It was time for us all to get a good nights rest.
Sunday
It rained on and off all day on Sunday, but not enough to dampen our fun. Marty was again our leader, because he knew the trails. We recognized parts of the trail from Saturday, but we also went on many more than the day before. We again decided to go to the Waterfall and Little Blue; there were much fewer people than the day before out running the trails. Marty decided to try the Waterfall again; he had aired his tires down quite a bit more than the day before and he made the waterfall. Tom and I, and Gregg and Kate, also made the waterfall again today. We ate lunch at the top of the Waterfall while watching other rigs try their luck at the Falls. It was fun watching the different techniques of different rigs and drivers. Gregg had so much fun doing the Waterfall, that he decided to do it again and Marty Jr. decided to ride with him. When they tried it again, Gregg made the Waterfall look very easy. Marty Jr. was grinning from ear to ear when they made it to the top. Next, we headed over to Little Blue to try it again. It was just as fun as it was the day before. All three of us made the obstacle (some with finesse, some with speed). We helped a group that wanted someone to spot them up Little Blue. We also watched some very big rigs crawl it with no problems at all.
After Little Blue, we went to a steep wall. Marty and Gregg tried it, but it was very hard. Tom decided to try, and with Gregg spotting us, we made it. Hooray!! I was extremely surprised and my eyes were open very wide, I’m sure. Gregg and Kate were had other things to do on Sunday, so they loaded up and left for Tulsa.
Marty led us to a spot called Nose Dive. Marty tried it a couple of times, but Tom decided not to because he was sure that we would really mess up our driveshaft on the rocks. We had already been bent the day before on the Rock Garden. It started raining a little harder and we headed on over to the Rock Garden to play on the rocks again. Marty let Marty Jr. drive his rig a little at the Rock Garden. He did extremely well for a 12 year old boy who could barely see over the steering wheel. We played on the rocks for about an hour during some pretty hard rain. It was time to call it a day and call an end to our Memorial Weekend Run.
We went to dinner at a new pizza place next to Frosty and Edna’s. It was very good pizza. Tom and I had planned on staying until the next morning and then heading home, but my own bed sounded so good and it wasn’t very late so we packed up and headed home. We found out later that the two Marty’s had also gone home that evening although they left much later than we did. I think that we all had a very good time on this run, even though it was crazy, mixed up, weird and wacky.
We’re sure glad that the run wasn’t called off because of the rain.
By Jan Malone