Campfire Tales 1993.
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Poison Spider Mesa
I rolled over in my sleeping bag and looked at my watch. “7am.
Why is it so hot in here?”
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Campfire Tales 1996.
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Trails of the Ancient Ones, Impassable Hill, and
the 1995 Chevy Blazer are all included in this issue
of Pass Patrol Campfire Tales. A slide show goes
through a list of cliff dwellings along the trail featured
in this story. If you like this story, you will
also enjoy the book for sale in our store will the title,
Trails of the Ancient Ones.
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The road to Angel Arch follows Salt Creek all the way to the
hiking trailhead for Big Pocket, then heads up a side Canyon. The
trip up Salt Creek to that trailhead is mostly under water ... some
of it headlight deep in the spring ... some of it with quicksand
holes certain times of the year.
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Devil's
Highway
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No matter which of its many names you choose to use, the Devil's Highway earned them by taking
the lives of travelers without mercy. Even before Columbus discovered America,
this passage across baron desert lands was luring travelers into its clutches
and never letting go. Although mankind has long since developed the means to
boldly go where others have perished before them, grave sites still mark ended
journeys from years gone by.
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Hole
in the Rock
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During October and November of 1879, Mormon pioneers trickled into a base
camp located at 40 Mile Spring, east of Escalante Utah. They came in small
groups from every direction until their numbers grew to 250 men & women, 50
children, 200 horses, and more than 1000 head of cattle. They were on a mission
from the Church. A hard mission ... the San Juan Mission ... expected to last
six weeks.
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Buckhorn
Wash
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With two posses hot on their tails after the Castlegate Holdup, Butch
Cassidy, Elzy Lay, and Joe Walker charged into Buckhorn Wash. They wasted no
time getting to the San Rafael River and following it to Mexican Mountain where
they had fresh horses waiting.
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Butch
Cassidy Slept here.
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Our first stop was The
Wyoming Territorial Prison state park
in Laramie, Wyoming. We took the tour of the prison where
Butch Cassidy was a prisoner in his early years. Butch was released before his
term was complete on the promise that he wouldn’t rob any banks in Wyoming.
Unfortunately, the governor forgot to make him promise to leave trains alone.
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Kaycee
gun battle!
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(There are many millions of stories about the naked west. As with
all Pass Patrol Campfire Tales, the facts of this one have been distorted.)
It began on a late July evening in the year of 1996. I was
enjoying a quiet evening alone camped near the Ute Indian reservation in
southern Colorado. ....
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Missouri
Breaks!
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On July 3, 1901, the Great Northern Express from St. Paul pulled
into Malta, Montana. One of its passengers sat quietly in the back with his hat
pulled over his eyes. He could not take a chance that someone would recognize
him. His face had been appearing on wanted posters since he made the mistake of
having a photo taken in Ft. Worth, Texas.
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Campfire Tales 1997.
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The Pony Express Trail
"Recruiting pony express riders during the year of 1860 was no
easy task.
Can’t imagine why with such
an appealing help wanted poster."
I don’t suppose we could have been hired by the Pony Express
being over eighteen (well over) and not so skinny. We are expert riders, however, (in our Toyota
4X4), but we could use a raise in pay.
It cost us nearly $25 just to gas up the rig. Maybe that’s how you get to be skinny. You put all your money into the steed.
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A new year in New Mexico
“Yup! I remember the
winter of ‘97. That was a tough
one. Cold ‘nuf to freeze the handles
off’uh space heater.” That was the
year ole Trapdoor went and run off with one uh Outlaw’s girls.
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Jenny Creek in Colorado
The original
stagecoach road over Rollins Pass followed Jenny Creek. When the railroad came along, a different
route was selected higher up the mountainside.
After trains abandoned the Rollins Pass and Needle’s Eye railway, the
rails were removed and the railroad grade became the main vehicle road.
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Rollins Pass in Colorado
There are few passes in Colorado whose name is better known
than Rollins Pass. It began as a mule
trail between Denver and Winter Park.
Indians, fur trappers, lumberjacks, and miners used it extensively long
before tracks were laid across its saddle for the iron horse.
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Lucky Ledge in Utah
On another trip, Sundance, Wild Coyote, and I took the right
fork at the intersection and found another access to I-70, but we passed the
access and took a faint trail going north.
It did appear on our map but was simply a dotted line with no name or
description. In a few minutes we came to
a screeching halt at the bottom of what
we soon named, “Lucky Ledge.”
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Hole in the Rock - West side
There have been lots of stories written about Hole in the
Rock located west of Blanding in Utah, but most of those stories cover little
more than a twenty mile section of the original two hundred mile journey and
never even visit the actual site of Hole in the Rock. Very few visitors realize the original name
for the journey more than one hundred years ago was, “The San Juan
Mission”.
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Longwater Road & the Teller County Car Wash
Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to wash the family
truck. Keeps the paint looking like ...
well ... looking like paint. When that
time comes at Pass Patrol, we take’um down to the Teller County Car Wash. It’s a drive-through wash and if everything
goes right, it’s free.
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Family Fun Trail
Of course we got in the way of other folks who didn’t like
the pace we putt along at, but we just moved over and let’um pass. One group that went around us was in such a
hurry, they banged, clanged, and scraped just about every rock that dared poke
its top above ground level. Our group
managed to make the entire journey without any new dents or serious
scrapes
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Grand Staircase National Monument
Before President Clinton took it upon himself to bypass all
the normal channels to create such a monument, that part of the country
received very little attention. I must
confess, no one in the Pass Patrol 4X4 Travel Club had ever been there except
for the part that includes the Hole in the Rock trail east of Escalante, Utah.
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Holy Cross City
Pass Patrol’s first visit to Holy Cross City was in
1987. There were four vehicles on that
trip. One lost a muffler and another
suffered a dented rocker panel. We
didn’t make it all the way to the ghost town because of a huge mud bog on the
west side of French Creek. That bog was
no place for stock vehicles.
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Outlaws on the run!
It was to be a top secret operation. No one, except for the entire world, knew
Outlaw and his band of desperados, operating under the code name of Pass
Patrol, were headed for Escalante, Utah.
Under normal circumstances, such activities are quietly ignored by
everyone, sometimes even those who are on the trip, but there was to be nothing
normal about this activity.
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Muley Twist Canyon double arches.
I reached an intersection in the path and slammed on the
binders. I couldn’t believe what I was
looking at. I keyed the mic and
read the sign: “Boulder Airport and UFO Landing Site!”
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Campfire Tales 2005.
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Sundance Kid in Sundance, Wyoming
Of those who were called members
of the Wild Bunch, Sundance Kid (Harry Longabaugh) was the most
mysterious. There is nothing to prove
where he came from or who he was. Life and
times on the Outlaw Trail.
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Copyright (c) 2010 Lone Writer, INC. All rights reserved.
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