Colorado - Episode 2

Every year as it starts to get despicably hot, like unfortunately it is right now, my mind begins to dwell on my family's summer get away from our coastal heat and humidity - Colorado.  Every year we went it was a different adventure and every year it seemed somehow we came away with a greater knowledge and appreciation of ourselves, our family and low humidity, moderate temperature living.

Now this is not to say that these adventures did not also come with their own ordeals.  We often met the unexpected, ran out of essentials or just ran into bad luck.  Somehow, the knowledge we gained from one misadventure never seemed to help us to avoid another situation.  It was as if each time we went there was some great fateful roll of the dice and we would be coping with a new type event.

Take for example the time my father, my sister and I were out camping.  We were definitely into roughing it in that we would go for a week, camping in a tent with sleeping bags and only rudimentary sanitary facilities.  Getting to stay at a camp site with a 'hole in the ground' toilet was a luxury.  I must mention that my sister and I were still of an age that going for a week without a bath was nothing but a welcome relief.  By the end of the trip we would be smelling of camp fire smoke, fish bait and damp sleeping bags, but we loved it.

On this one trip we were at the end of a several day outing that had our camp supplies running a bit low.  The next day we would be moving our campsite, so we would be stocking up again at one of the stores that was currently miles away from where we were.  It looked to be a meager meal since that day we had not caught any fish. Our provisions were down to a single can of chicken soup, a box of Bisquick and a couple of pieces of bread.  As my father was getting ready to heat up the can of soup over our cook stove, I happened to notice the Bisquick package had a recipe for dumplings.  Dumplings for me were these heavenly things my great grandmother had made for me along with a fresh helping of homemade chicken soup.  They were like little soft sided biscuits floating in a savory broth.  I pointed out the recipe to my father, more of as an aside than actually thinking we could make them. 

Cooking at 7500 feet of elevation is not an easy proposition.  Water will look like it is hot when it is barely even warm.  There are whole cookbooks devoted to correct ways to cook at high altitude.  We had no such a book and even if we had I doubt we would have paid it much attention.  My father thought for some reason that I knew how to go about making dumplings.  Eating dumplings was as close as I had ever come, but I liked it that he thought I had a great idea.  So we mixed up this jam jar full of Bisquick and water.  He kept asking me if he had mixed it correctly and I, savoring the attention kept saying 'yes'.  My sister was keeping to herself in the background, either uninterested in our experiment or perhaps just too weak with hunger to comment.

Everything was going great with the soup in the pan steaming, which it unfortunately would do when barely tepid.  I was re-reading the Bisquick box which said to put spoonfuls of the batter into boiling water.  The soup looked to be boiling so I told my father to put the batter in.  I failed to explain the exact way he was to do this so he just dumped the entire jar of batter in at once and began stirring the mixture vigorously.  Apparently he and I shared a lack of cooking expertise. 

I was a little stunned by his method, but I didn't say anything.  After all, the deed had been done and my saying the batter should have been spooned in and not stirred wasn't going to change a thing.  The pot that had once contained a meager but perfectly functional chicken soup, now contained a maelstrom of thick white goo.  The bits of chicken and carrots just made it look like some sort of raw dough trash.  We all took a look at it and decided that we really were not as hungry as we thought we were. There is nothing like the promise of something absolutely awful to staunch even the strongest appetite.  I think I ended up eating a piece of bread for dinner that night.

We survived and the next morning we broke camp and high tailed it to the closest store.  I thought we had gotten off relatively easy, none of us having to suffer through actually eating the culinary disaster.  Little did I know that this would be the start of a lifelong legend.

To this day when we are trying to decide where we might want to go to eat, or if the subject of camping comes up my father will look over at me, wink, and say, "Hey, I know, I think we have some Bisquick..."

Colorado - Episode 1

My family had a favorite vacation spot and that was the state of Colorado.  It was everything you wanted in an adventure including distance.  The trip from the Gulf coast of Texas to Colorado was almost a thousand miles and took us two days by car.  It was a long trip, but nothing about the car trip was monotonous to us as children because we got to watch the scenery unfold before us in an ever changing geographical transition.

First there came the flatness of our coastal lands which gradually turned into the rolling hills as we took Highway 71 through Austin.  The land remained hilly and became more and more dry the further north and west we traveled.  By the time we were past Amarillo the land was very arid and desert like.  This eventually transitioned into mesas as we entered into New Mexico.  By the time we saw our first glimpses of mountains we were nearly vibrating with excitement.  Here was a place so utterly unlike our own home it was like a dream.

We went to Colorado over so many summers and varied our travel and destinations so often that it is impossible to tell the family Colorado experience in one story, so this will be just be the first episode, one of the earliest I can remember.

Now, it is important to know that we never went to Colorado to stay in some building.  We went to there to camp out.  This meant tents, sleeping bags, cooking fires and primitive bathroom facilities.  Nobody liked the camp toilet experience, but it was somewhat mollified by the fact that we weren't asked to bathe for an entire week, so for us kids it was great.  We were stinky but it was great.

We also went to Colorado to fish and this was fishing unlike anything we had in the salt waters of our coastal home.  This was fresh water fishing and it had entirely different rules. The fish were wily and set in their ways, so we had to entice them onto our hooks with stealth and cunning.  Fishing in the fast running streams and rivers called for different tactics than dropping a line off a boat in the comparatively placid bay waters of the gulf.  My father taught us the ways of this experience.

On one of our first Colorado camping adventures that I can remember we had set up camp in one of the many National forest campsites.  This was a lovely place with a small stream branch from a larger river system running right through the campsite.  We were unable to get a spot right next to the stream as it was already claimed by other campers, but we did get a great spot surrounded by huge trees.  We set up the tent and I was practically vibrating with eagerness to go fishing.  I was about five years old and already an avid fisherkid so as soon as possible my father grabbed a fishing pole and he and I set off to the river.

He carried the single pole over his shoulder and we walked down the campsite road to the river and past the small stream and campsites beside it.  A couple of men were at the stream doing various camp things and as we passed they called out, "Heeeey!  Gonna go get a big one huh?"  The smirked and laughed and it was even apparent to me at that young age that they were teasing us.  My father just smiled at them and said, "We sure hope to."

We went down the road and off onto a trail that took us close to the river.  The trail opened up onto a clearing right at the edge of the river and although the ground was clear for about twelve feet in all directions the huge trees arched overhead keeping the clearing in shade.  The river was fast flowing but only about ten feet or so across from bank to bank.  There was a log in the center of the flow and the water was probably only a few feet deep at its deepest point.  The water was crystal clear and splashing with a soft rattle against the smooth river stones that lined its banks.

As we got within about six feet from the bank we stopped and my father began to speak to me in a whisper.  "Let's get the bait ready here.  We have to go up very quiet because if the fish see us they will swim away."  Being a veteran of many fishing encounters I understood exactly what he meant.  He baited the hook with some red colored fish eggs, a bait we purchased especially for Colorado fishing.  He told me because of the speed of the river we were not going to use a cork and we would just cast it out and see what happened.

We crept within a couple of feet of the bank.  He made the first cast and as the bait entered the water it was quickly whisked into the current, the line pulled by the swiftness of the water.  He reeled the line in and handed the rod to me.  "Now you cast. Try to aim for that log."  I had been practicing casting for several weeks in anticipation of this trip so I gave it my best shot.  My first cast was very short of the mark and fell well in front of the log only to be whisked away quickly.  I reeled it back in and my father told me to try again.

On my second cast the bait actually landed on the log itself and seemed to snag.  I looked at my father in surprise and alarm, but he nodded to me that it was okay.  "Just pull it gently a couple of times," he whispered.  I did just that and with the second tug the bait popped off the log and into the water.

Immediately there was a huge yank on the line and I instinctively pulled back.  The rod tip bent down nearly jerking the rod from my hands.  My father grabbed the pole to steady me and said, "Reel it in," now making no attempt to keep his voice quiet.  I set to reeling in the line but the fish fought hard.  My father finally helped by pulling the tip of the pole upward and bringing the fish out of the water.

It was a large rainbow trout nearly a foot long and its beautiful spotted skin glistened in the dappled sunlight.  We were both breathless and excited with this catch.  My father was very surprised and in fact had not at all anticipated us catching a fish, so he had no stringer or any way to carry the fish.  He told me with all the commotion this spot wouldn't have another fish right now so we might as well take this one back to camp.  He searched around until he found a tree branch and used the end of the branch through the fishes gills to carry the fish.

As we came up the trail and back onto the road leading to our camp he had me pause.  He whispered to me, "Here you carry this fish over your shoulder and as we pass by those campers don't say anything and let's see what they say."  I took the heavy fish and held the stick over my left shoulder like he showed me while he carried the fishing pole.  He had me walk by his left side as we approached the camping area and he began to whistle a little tune as we walked.  I practiced walking as nonchalantly as I could with a heavy fish dripping down my back.

The campers we had passed on our way to the river were still there.  It hadn't even been a half hour since we passed by them before.  My father nodded to them and as we came almost past them they let out a whoop.  "Whoa!" one man exclaimed, "Did you just catch that fish?"  My father turned and smiled at them.  "Oh no," he said shaking his head, "I didn't catch it, she did."  They just stared at me and I smiled at them and nodded my head.  "Yeah," I said, "We got a big one."

We turned and sauntered away while the men began to scramble for their fishing gear and run down the pathway we just came from.  We laughed all the way back to our campsite.