Resurrecting Saddam

Benjamin--they killed Saddam.  We can't get him back.

Funny thing, I was just going to assert myself as well and declare a bunch of things, when I saw that I had a new email. Sure enough, James beat me to it. I was even going to say do your own lunch. That's what I get for going to help with the baby.  j/k

Three things I would like addressed:

1st: I think we need our own firewood. I can bring this, if we can fit it in the truck.

2nd: Utensils, paper plates? I can bring these for the group as well. (unless we do mess kits, but I lost mine ages ago)

3rd: Is there room to tie my bike on top of our junk? I kind of want to be semi-mobile for my own reasons. Maybe I should have made a deal about bringing 1 and 2 if I could bring 3.

Here's the Plan:

OK, here we go.  I hereby assert a bunch of stuff which can be treated as the defaults for what we are doing, if we decide to do something else or change it then so be it.

Looks like Cedar mountain is where we are leaning, so lets make it duck creek campground.  Apparently some reservations are available, I will place one in the next 24 hours if I have not heard otherwise from anybody.  I imagine that with 14 impaired the demand will be lower, but it won't hurt to make sure.

I recently got a couple dutch ovens, and have the food already to make that classic standby of dutch oven potatoes and chicken.  I have gotten pretty good at some more advanced recipes and can make them instead if anybody would prefer, but I think that this will work fine.  This means I will take care of dinner completely.

I will also be happy to make my dutch ovens available for use for breakfast. We will have a dutch oven omelet, or a mountain man breakfast, or whatever you want to call it.  The assignments for this meal are as follow:

• Abe - 18 eggs
• Ben - 1 red pepper, 1 green bell pepper, 2 medium onions
• Ked - 1 lb sausage
• Nate - 1 lb bacon
• James - 1 bag frozen hash browns, cooking supplies, oil, salt/pepper, etc.

For lunch the next day, it will be bring your own lunch.  Sounds like there is a high probability of us doing something or being somewhere at that time, so it should probably be something portable.

Everything I have seen calls for great weather, so I plan on sleeping under the stars and will not be bringing a tent.  I will bring a large cooler and some ice, and I will bring a water cooler (2 or 3 gallons, I think there is water at this campground for refilling).

We will meet at Abe's house at 5:00 for an immediate departure.  I will have my truck available and can fit all of us if necessary, although the back seat won't be as nice for somebody (except Ben who probably won;t notice the difference).  I don't anticipate it being too uncomfortable for anybody in just the 45 minute drive.  I can probably fit all of our gear in the bed as long as most of you are minimalistic campers.

Anything I missed?  Feel free to chime in below and make changes to this plan, and we can get a final version of this plan in another post tomorrow night.

The Plan

We don't need a dictatorship.  We just need something other than a straight democracy.  Appointing a person "in charge" would be a better way to go for this type of thing.

 Results of the poll are mostly in and it seems with time constraints and things that Cedar Mountain would be a good option. It is close and fairly easy to navigate.  As far as activities we can go cave hunting or a myriad of other things, hikes etc. The road opens as 5 pm on Friday so that would be a departure time for all that can make it by then.  It is open all day on Saturday for the return.  As for food I think group meals would be relatively easy.  I don't have much camp gear, but I would be happy to by some eggs, bacon and pancake mix for Saturday and Hot dogs and buns for Friday night, I even have roasting sticks I can bring if we don't want to rough out our own sticks.

Someone else can volunteer for lunch on Saturday or we can do our own thing if nobody wants to claim responsibility I can buy stuff I just wouldn't be much for deciding what to eat.

As for campsites either TE-AH or Duck Creek would serve I think.  They are first come first serve so it would just depend on which hasn't been taken.

Let me know what you think.

Abe

The Time is Far Spent

So, what's the plan?

As far as meals go, I think that depends on where we're going.  If we go somewhere more established campground-y I motion for some everybody meals.  If we are going to have to pack things in too far or lack much by the way of cooking facilities, we may be better off with lighter backpacking-style fare.

I understand Nate may get here late-ish Friday; if that's the case, does that influence our location decision?  Do we want to go somewhere he can find us when he gets here, or should we still plan to all go en masse?

So many questions.  This is why dictatorships are easier.  Didn't we have a dictator once?

THE VOTES ARE IN!

It appears it was a 3 to 2 vote to go to Disneyland!

I am only here to ask more questions, something Abe will have to deal with.  You have to ask a lot of questions before you can get the right answers.

Food.

Separate meals? Together?

Location Poll

Ok here is a quick Google Form with the suggested locations.  Lets get this figured out.

Abe

Ked's Comprehensive List of Places and the Wonders They Possess

So, Abe said list all the places we were thinking and he'd make a poll. So, here I've taken my list and also made some notes of why these places might be interesting and the rough driving time to each.
I agree with Ben that we need something to do. I've tried to include places where we could have fun, explore, and that are more in our driving range.

• Cathedral Gorge  (1 hour 34 min)
• We know this is cool. Also, I was told that there are similar canyons close by that are not actually in the state park. We could do whatever we wanted. Cool beans.

• Bull Valley Gorge (2 hours 30 min)
• A long slot canyon. Could be fun, but it is long. 

•  Bryce Canyon (Less than 2 hours)
• National Park, but lots of cool things to see, hiking trails, etc. Can't run wild, though.

• The Mine @ Milford (1 hour 20 min)
• Cool tunnels, excellent exploration. Not a great camping area (although Glen and I did camp in the opening of it) And it's legal.

• Notch Peak (3 hoursish)
• One of the tallest vertical faces in the United States and it's near Delta. Great hike, view. Look it up to see.

• Mammoth Cave area (Less than an hour)
• I'm on the trail of a cave nearby known to only a few people, supposedly large and unexplored. Below I've included some notes taken from a book about the cave. I also recently made contact with someone who's been there and it's still there. He's simply covered the entrance...his email to me is also below.

"Our Cave" Taken from a book of memoirs by Alva Matheson. I've included some interesting snippets.

"Zella, my wife, and I decided to spend a couple of days on the mountain. I had told her about Mammoth Cave and she wanted to see it. I had only been there once, seventeen years earlier, but in my minds eye I knew the road. What I didn't know was that there were two branches of the road about one-hundred yards apart. I took the first on which got me confused. I was so sure I was right that I would not give up hunting. Leaving Zella and LaKay, our baby, at the car I began hunting through the trees. I had about given up and was headed back to the car when my heel broke through soft dirt."  He goes on to detail how they entered and whatnot.

"We passed other intersecting branches and at one place the tunnel opened into a room which I believe to be seventy-five feet across."

"As we reversed our steps the other way and slightly down hill we began to find odd formations where the liquid rock had dripped from the ceiling and had built into odd piles of funny shapes and sizes. As we neared the end of the tunnel Leon began crawling into another small hole. I tried to persuade him to come back but my pleas were of no avail. I listened to his excited Oh's and Ah's and his exclamations for a few minutes and then decided to see for myself. As I entered the reason for his exclamations was easy to see. Before me was a fairyland of the most fascinating little statues resembling elves, fairies, and goblins. Little animated characters of all kinds that one could imagine, ranging in height from one inch to eighteen inches all built up of pine nut size drops of molten lava dripping drop by drop from the ceiling and as the drops had left the ceiling they had gradually built a stalactite formation as as a cooling breeze cooled the outside the hot lava inside had dripped on through lengthening the stalactite and leaving the inside hollow resulting in paper thin tubes from the size of a match stick to eighteen inches in length and an inch in diameter. Most of the large ones, however, were so delicate that they had not been ale to support their own weight and had fallen to the floor. There is an area of several hundred square feet of this formation. The ceiling in this room is a gradual oval and is from nothing to about six feet in height."

Recent email to me from the writer's son:  "Regarding the caves, there are many, but not worth the effort, except for Our Cave, but it is not open at this time, I covered the opening over to protect it.  It is several miles long and unexplored. I may return later this year."  

We could find it. I'm sure he simply covered the entrance with trees or rocks. We have some details as to the general location.

Man Camp Revisited

I just read some of that last post. I totally meant ramble alert, but I was in a hurry. It was quite random too.

Ok, Man Camp.  Here's my proposal:  We each suggest what we want in the camp and maybe each suggest three spots. Then we vote or reduce possibilities by simple deduction of what we want, what's feasible, time, weather, money for gas or entry, etc. Any thoughts or other ways we should do it?

Another thing for us to consider: who can drive?  I wouldn't mind, but the vehicle is in the shop and I honestly have no idea when it will get out. Transmission problems--the joy.