Author: susank456

I love to be outdoors, hiking, pheasant hunting, playing with my dogs. And I love to take pictures of the things I see and write about my experiences. I don't take life too seriously, I poke fun at myself and just about everybody else. I've gotten selfish as I've gotten older.

Road Trip (2nd excerpt)

The plan was that we fly into Boston, catch a bus to some bus stop, wait for owner of the car to come and pick us up and drive us to some unknown location to look at the car and if all goes well we pay him the cash, load up the car and drive home.  I had never done anything like this, so needless to say I was concerned that we would fly halfway across the country to have our heads bashed in, robbed and left in a field to die by a serial killer like on TV.  I know, I watch too many cop shows. 

The owner of the station wagon showed up and was very nice, but a typical car salesman.  After some more haggling, we paid for the car, loaded up our luggage and headed out to the highway.  After driving the wrong direction for about 30 minutes, going toward Cape Cod instead of west to New York, we turned around and got on track to upstate New York.  Our road trips are always an adventure.  We don’t make hotel reservations and drive until we get tired.  I only have one rule.  NO creepy roadside motels.

The drive through upstate New York was beautiful. We were a little early, the first of September, so the trees hadn’t turned yet, but it was still beautiful.   I loved the Finger Lakes and all of the vineyards and wineries, I was in heaven.  We tasted many wines and bought lots of bottles of wine. You know me, stimulating the economy.   Good thing we had just bought a station wagon to haul all of my finds.  How timely. 

After the Finger Lakes, we drove up to Niagara Falls.  We got there late in the day and didn’t have to pay to park, or get in.  Which was nice.  There were still a ton of people running around taking in nature’s strength and beauty.  But no one was willing to ride a barrel over the falls so that I could take photos of the historic event.  And I take awesome photos.  What a bunch of wet blankets.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first excerpt and this one, come back for more.

Road Trip (first excerpt)

Mitch bought the Buddy Mobile, a 1978 Chevrolet Caprice Station wagon in 1999.  He bought it to replace his 1976 Chevrolet Suburban which had 300,000 miles on it and was very tired. We used it to haul Buddy, our yellow lab, around town and for all of our gear for hunting.  It was a good reliable wagon that got lots of abuse.  Mitch replaced the engine in it in 1995.  It was like a Timex watch, it took a lickin and kept on tickin.  It went through two engines and about 3 tons of dog hair and drool.  The air conditioning went out a few years ago, so in the warm weather with all of the windows down, the dog hair would swirl around like a mini tornado inside the car.  No matter how many times we would vacuum and clean the car, there was always dried dog slobber and nose prints on the windows.  There was also the aroma of “Eau de Dog” in the upholstery that no amount of little green trees could eliminate.

People would point at the dog heads hanging out of the windows as we drove along.  Sometimes I wasn’t so sure that people weren’t also pointing and laughing at us.  The car definitely was distinctive.  Well it now had over 300,000 miles logged on it, so we decided it was time to retire it and buy something newer for the dogs and hunting.

After I gave the go ahead to look, Mitch went on an online search for the best fit for the money.  He searched cross country and even got into online auctions on E-Bay.  We ended up as the high bidder on a 1995 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Station wagon.  Much newer, only 15 years old instead of 31 years old.  We are definitely moving up in the timeline.  Oh, did I mention that the car was in Boston, Massachusetts?  Since we live in Missouri this meant “Road Trip”.  Because I like to multitask, we decided to combine flying to Boston to check out the car and if it met our needs, then we would turn the drive back into a mini vacation.  I had Mitch pick up travel books from AAA for all of the states that would be on our journey home.

Is Journaling the Way to Go?

I’ve been told that journaling your thoughts are very important.  Sometimes I’m not so sure.  I have feelings and emotions that I would love to express but can’t tell anyone nor can I write them down.  If I write it down and someone was to read it, could hurt their feelings.  I was raised to be very cognizant of others feelings and to not intentionally hurt someone.  I know how I would feel if it were me.

I’m not talking about anarchy or murderous thoughts.  You know when the everyday events in your life just get to you.  Those little feelings and resentments just start to build and build.  I feel that I’m getting slammed from all sides, work, home, life in general.  Just feelings of being helpless to change my life and not having the courage to stand up for myself.  If I write it down, then I might see how trivial and small the issues really are.  Maybe that’s the point of journaling.

Pheasant Hunting Watching the Dogs Work

Charlie Makes a Great Pillow

What Did We See?

Since I normally walk the dogs at 4:30 in the morning, we routinely  run across deer, raccoons and possums.  Some mornings I can hear hoot owls calling each other.  But this morning as we topped a hill, there at the bottom of the hill standing very still watching us was a fairly large animal.  The animal had a large full tail that curved down to the ground.  It had its’ left front leg lifted as if it was in mid stride when it spotted us.  I could tell it was brown in color.  Not a real dark brown and not a tan color either.  The head was squat and did not have a pointed snout like a dog.  But it could have been a dog.  The animal had large powerful looking legs.  It wasn’t a deer.  It wasn’t tall enough and deer don’t have long tails.

The dogs stood very still with their ears at attention, and watched the animal with their whole being.  You know how you can tell when a dog is totally fixated on something.  None of the three dogs moved a muscle toward it.   That’s why I not so sure it was a dog.  After an eternity, maybe fifteen seconds, the animal gave us a final look and walked quietly away into the dark wooded area at the bottom of the hill. 

Did we see a dog or maybe just maybe we saw a mountain lion?

Great White Hunters? (final excerpt)

Mitch waited until Todd left and said, “There are never any birds in these places.  My father would take us into the woods all the time and there were never any birds in the woods.  Oh well, let’s go and get this over with and then we can head over the hill and down into the back side of this field.” 

Against Todd’s advice, Mitch decided that we would both go down into the draw.  The draw had a mixture of snow and frozen mud.  There wasn’t really any easy way down the slopes into the draw.  The good news was that there was a wide open area with very few trees that I could use to slide down to get in the middle of the draw, because I could tell it was not going to be a question of if I was going to slip and fall, but when.

Once down in the draw, we both started off toward the other end with the dogs going back and forth, in and out and not having the trouble I was having keeping my balance.  What looked like snow up top was actually ice-crusted snow up close.  Carrying the gun, not falling on my butt and dropping the gun was immediately more important to me than “no birds.”  Not too safe, huh.  Mitch got up ahead of me about twenty feet and saw what Todd was talking about.  At the backside of the draw, there were birds everywhere.  There were chukars and pheasants just milling around the tree line and the junk farm pieces.  He couldn’t get close enough fast enough.  The dogs were on the birds making them scatter and fly.  Mitch started shooting his gun at the birds and nothing was dropping.  I was down in the bottom of the draw trying to get up the slick icy sides of the slope.  As I was crawling up the hillside, I could hear the gunfire and the birds cackling and the whump whump whump of their wings flapping and Mitch cussing and yelling for me to get up there and help out, and I couldn’t get up the hill.  Just as I had crawled almost up to the top, the shotgun sling slipped down my shoulder.  As I grabbed a tree root to pull up on, the shotgun slid off my arm and slid down the hill back to the bottom.  I looked at the gun at the bottom of the hill and then turned my head back up to where I had almost reached, just inches away from level ground, debating whether or not to slide back down to the bottom of the hill.  I was seriously considering just leaving the gun down there, but I couldn’t, it had been a Valentine’s Day gift.  Still holding the tree root, I turned and sat on my butt.  Then I let go of the root with one hand and pushed off with the other.  Sliding down the hill with only lycra running tights and canvas field pants as a buffer between my backside and crusty ice. 

Mitch was still shooting at birds and screaming, “Susan get up here!  Where are you?  I can’t do this by myself!”

Digging my heels in to stop my slide at the bottom, I just missed a close encounter with a large tree stump.  I yelled, “I’m trying, but I can’t get out of here!”

I picked up my gun and crawled upward again.  I realized that day, that not giving up is essential to hunting.  By the time I finally got out of the draw and topside, all of the birds were gone.  Mitch didn’t hit anything.  Oh yeah, we sure cleaned out the birds for Todd; they flew over the road to the neighbors land.