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Archived Newsletter |
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May 2007
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RED ROCK Casey and I left home, early on Wednesday April 18, 2007, to get a good campsite, do some Geocaching and to start the exploration for the prerun. We did get a nice spot to camp but the wind was as high as 45 miles per hour and this made finding caches very difficult. We decided with only a few hours left in the day we would do some exploring. I was looking for the path Rick Schaffer had taken the club on quite some time back, so that I could use this for the beginning of the run on Saturday. Because Casey and I were alone (Only one Jeep) I didn’t get too far until a little voice in my ear said this is far enough. I therefore decided to wait until Thursday. The next day, as soon as Ric and Pat Jones arrived, he and I explored the north end of the park and completed a very good, first half, of the pre-run. Thursday evening my kids, James, Elaine, and Andy arrived. Friday, we all i.e., Ric, Andy, Elaine and James began the pre-run for Saturday’s traditional Red Rock FITS club run in the drizzling rain and wind. By 2:00 PM we had completed the pre-run, were off the trail, and we were headed for the Randsburg General Store for a root beer float. We woke up to a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning and by 9:00 AM everybody was ready to go…or so we thought. Even Andy was sort-of on time. We waited until 9:15 AM and when no one else showed up we hit the road. The beginning of the run was just two miles up Hwy 14. On the trail were Bob and Sally, John and Dale, Andy and Elaine, Bob and Pat, Dennis and Casey. Ric, having done the trail two days in a row, decided he and Pat would explore Jawbone Canyon and Dove Springs and do some geocaching instead. We had just completed our Jeep tires air-down when on the CB came a cry of "FITS, where are you?" It was guests Karyn Villa in her ‘07, white Rubicon, and her husband Louis and son Louis Jr. in a bright orange VW Baja Bug. We contacted them on the CB and had them come up to our location. At 9:57 AM, after they had aired down their Rubicon’s tires, we got the run started. We traveled up through the Opal mines area just north and east of Ricardo campground and down a very steep, rocky, trail with a sharp drop off of several hundred feet on one side. We heard no screams coming from the new Villa group so they must have either been having fun or have been frozen to their steering wheels. At about 10:40 AM we took our first break at Cudahy’s camp. After a brief 10-100 we headed up "steep hill" and north out of "Last Chance Canyon." By the way, "Steep hill" was quite challenging as this year’s spring rains had made it nearly vertical and left some very large boulders in our path. We proceeded north onto EP 30, past Bickel’s camp, past Mesquite Canyon and onto EP 26. With this beautiful spring day and the mountains to the north, this was a very scenic part of our run. We arrived at Colorado Camp for lunch at noon. After a nice lunch break in the warm afternoon sun, we proceeded east on EP 26 to EP 11. We were in the midst of deciding whether or not to include "Sheep Springs" in our run when Bob Matula mentioned he might have a flat tire. Sure enough the right front tire of that amazing Cherokee was flat. This brought out two of our journeymen mechanics and as fast as you could say "Red Rock" Bob and Andy had the tire changed. Time was getting late so we skipped "Sheep Springs," and headed south down EP 11 to the Red Rock Randsberg road. When we had finally aired-up our tires we headed back to the Randsberg General Store where we met up Ric and Pat for that famous two scoop Chocolate Sunday.
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