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07 September 2004
- 15:21 views of a point - monday
The first vehicles out through my check station Monday morning were these.
At first, I thought it was the truck that blew a hose on Sunday, the hunter calling his pastor for a ride into town. Kid got found by a game warden the same time he was making his call, but the pastor still made it to the check station before the warden and hunter did.
But no, this wasn't that truck. Just another casualty of the first hunting season of the year, and a source of revenue for the garages in town.
The kid with a blown hose brought a hose out and repaired his rig on the spot, so he could spend the rest of the holiday hunting.
There is usually a rush on the check station some time on the last day of the weekend. All the hunters who have been camping get packed and ready to hit the highway at about the same time. Labor Day was no different, but the rush came a little later in the day than I expected.
No football games to get home to watch, I guess.
Among the camps to come out included one with the second Humvee I've ever got to check. Following immediately behind the first Hummer that I'd checked last year.
Yep. His and Hers Humvees.
Just between you and me, I think some people got too much disposable income to dispose of.
But even with the "rush" after lunch, there wasn't a lot of data to collect. Quite a few of the harvested animals had already been checked, by either me or one of the wardens. This truck with three fine bucks brought in 30 percent of my sample for the day.
They thought it was wonderful that I asked to take a photo, and went to considerable trouble to rearrange the carcasses to get them unstacked and lined up. One of the men grabbed his camera as well, and was shooting over my shoulder. When one of their sons came out and started examining his Dad's antelope, running his hands up the horns, the Dad shooshed him off to get out of the picture.
Noooo! That's the shot you want!
But it was too late. Kid feels like he's just in the way, and Dad has an empty shot of a dead goat.
A little before lunch a young woman arrived in a truck. Rather than pulling into my pulloff, she passed and parked next to the highway, by the stop sign. Not a hunter, she was the chase vehicle for her husband, who is bicycling the Divide trail in segments. Only, he's chasing her, not the other way around.
She had left him 25-some miles back, but it took him forever to catch up. And her with nothing to read but a highway map. So we visited and played "rock" with her abuse-recovering pound-adopted ridgeback mutt for an hour or more. Checking on her husband's progress by asking hunters how far back they passed him as they pull in.
While they live in your state, turns out they had stayed the night a hundred-some miles up the trail with a fellow the wife knows from her tourism work.
And were planning on staying tonight with our dentist. Small world, that biker clan.
After a brief lunch in their truck, they were on the road again.
Although, this time she had half my Monday's paper to read while next she waited. (I kept the back half with the crossword puzzle, which was soon finished.)
Speaking of bikers... earlier in the morning I had been wondering to myself why you don't see trail bikers on tandems anymore. And what should pass by within the hour?
But otherwise, it was a slow day. When the gumweed growing along the road starts to look pretty, it's getting bad.
I got a fair amount of office work done, though. And got to watch a family of magpies remove a roadkilled rabbit from the highway.
One bite at a time.
The end of the day wasn't bad. A kinda quick and anti-climactic sunset, with no clouds around to reflect the colours,
but did a nice job on the hill behind me (Yes, I was alone. Another reason the day was so slow. The heelers stayed home to enjoy a holiday sleep-in with the wife),
and the limestone plates on the far mountains.
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