SUMMARY (for those too lazy to go back 4 posts and read this: The Doctor-Daughter and I decided to go camping together, and since I'd heard raves about summer smallmouth fishing on Central Oregon's John Day River, we made a reservation with my property-access club, Wilderness Unlimited, and shoved off for the Twickenham River Ranch property, where we set up camp in the minimalist but bucolic campsite next to the river. We were in the middle of a horrid heat wave (as was most of the Nation), and had brush-fires raging in the same county, but we went anyway. We set up camp, but were rousted out of our tents when the rancher began his alfalfa harvest at midnight. We got no sleep, and were told that the harvest would continue the next night, so we decided to move on...
Part Deux, The Misery Continues.
After an efficient reloading of the vehicles, we drove out of the Twickenham River Ranch, through the Painted Hills area via yet another Class-C highway, and stopped at Mitchell, OR for ice:
The General Store was just across the street from the Feed Store, where our vehicles are parked. We were in the General Store for about 3 minutes, purchasing ice and inquiring about the lack of cell-phone signal (I needed to call Wilderness Unlimited to tell them I wasn't going to stay at Twickenham all three days I had reserved). After being told to drive to the top of Ochoco Summit on the way to Prineville, where we would get cell reception, we went back out to the cars and iced down the coolers. We decided to take about a 100 yard walk to look at the rest of the town, seemingly frozen in time at about 1895. After our look-see, we went back to start the drive West and North to our next destination, the Wamic Ponds property about 100 miles and several mountain passes away.
Time Check (you'll see why as this travel-woe-log progresses): 1210 Pacific Daylight Time.
I get back in the LBT, which has been sitting in 107-degree sun, according to the thermometer on the Feed Store:
I get the A/C running, pick up the FRS radio and call the dau to say, "Vamanos!". Except the dau isn't in her car, she is messing with the hatch-back lid. I get out, and trot over there, and find she has locked herself out of her car. We briefly discuss trying to force the trunk lock, but figure that will result in $$$ damage, and that is what her AAA membership is for, right?
Time Check: 1225 Pacific Daylight Time.
Right in front of the Feed Store is a pay phone, so I go over there and fumble it into action, calling AAA myself, since the dau has locked her wallet in the car. I get AAA Dispatch, and tell the dispatcher the issue, and she looks up the dau. account. It's not current. The dau has let it lapse, due to being overseas, and hasn't restored it. I beg to use MY Triple-A account, and they agree, and because it's an "R/V-Plus" account, it won't even cost extra to send the tow truck on it's three-hour round-trip out of Prineville. We decide lunch is in order, so we hie ourselves across the street to the local tavern, stuck only in the 1940's (it does have "swamp" cooling, which works fine in the desert). We have a brew, we have some so-so onion rings, and the dau produces a deck of cards and we play Five Card Stud, Low Hole Card Wild for the rest of the two hours it takes for the un-lock guy to get there.
The un-lock guy, from a very civil outfit, Dave's Towing, takes just a few seconds with the air-cuff shim and wonder-snake to get into the car. He had brought his wife and kid all the way out to Mitchell in the tow truck so they could see the famous Henry the Mitchell Bear, a captive at the little truck stop, but the bear is no longer there, only a pair of goats, and the look on the kid's face was so sad that I tipped the tow guy $20 so he could buy the family a round of ice cream to cheer them up on their way back over Ochoco Pass.
Time Check: 1445 Pacific Daylight Time (two forty-five for you landlubbers).
We shove off, westbound on US 26, a fine, Class A, Federal highway, and easily make Ochoco Summit with speed no worse than 45 mph for the LBT. The Works Mini was idling, while I was grunting at 3,000 RPM in Third. We pull over at the summit to use the cell phones, our first outside contact saince early afternoon the day before. I make the call to Wilderness Unlimited, and get the reservation for Wamic Ponds. We're golden, all we have to do is breeze another 70 miles or so, pass through two medium-sized towns, Prineville and Madras, refuel, and we're there for a 5pm set-up. Easy-peasy.
Prineville and the refueling stop in the rear-view mirror, we pull out onto US 97, the major North-South highway through Eastern Oregon. That is, I try to pull out on the highway. As I'm eyeballing the high-speed cross traffic, somehow or other I bump bumpers lightly with one of our friends from South of the Border. He gets out to exchange curses, despite there being no damage to his LaRaza-decorated mid-80's Nissan with not one, but TWO giant coffee-can mufflers almost dragging the ground underneath it, but his curses freeze on his lips for some reason. Maybe he saw the levergun in the gun rack, maybe he made my more-OC-than-CC .357, maybe it was the belt buckle*, I'll never know, but he summoned up a quick "no damage Senor, eees Okay", got back in his beatermobile and roared off. I drove off Northbound, and the DR-dau was on me in a flash, asking if I was too heat-stressed to drive. I might have been a bit dehydrated, so for the next 10 miles, I pounded a half-liter of water.
Time Check: 1545 Pacific Daylight Time.
At that 10 mile point, about half-way to Madras, the traffic stopped on the highway. About 1/4-mile in the distance I saw emergency lights, then various emergency vehicles began to pass us, heading to what was an obvious accident scene. A Semi sat out in the pucker-brush on the right side, and the very shallow ditch on the left sort of concealed what might have been an inverted vehicle. We settle in for the wait. A few vehicles reverse course, but the road is wide, with good shoulders, so I assume one-way traffic will be restored shortly. If not, there is a "long-cut" of a gravel road to Haystack Reservoir, some 23 miles of dirt. Oops, I forgot, the daughter is driving a ground-effect vehicle, and probably can't do that much dirt road. We sit tight.
We sit tight some more. Finally, some geezer zooms up to the disaster site on his quad, and comes back to report the details of the fatal accident he observed. I see the flash of lasers from up there, and know the Oregon State Police Major Accident Reconstruction Team is at work, micro-mapping the crash site. After about two hours of waiting, we get to move. As we putt by the scene, it's ugly: there isn't a piece of the car, which appeared to have had a totally plastic body, that I couldn't have put in the cab with me, with room for me. The 20" high grass hid the engine/chassis, or the crash-force might have sent it into orbit. The Semi, a UPS rig, had it's rear van wheels almost torn off by the force of the crash, easily a 100mph-plus head-on. The skid marks told the tale: the car driver crossed the centerline at high speed, braking heavily but ineffectively. He might have bollixed up a dangerous pass. The UPS driver saw him coming and drifted his tractor off the road in a successful Accident Mitigation Maneuver, but his trailing van was still in it's travel lane at 45 degrees and skidding/wheel-hopping when the doomed bozo got there and took the van bogey-wheels dead-on. The plastic car exploded to bits, the van duals were separated from the bogey with one wheel totally demounted by the force, and that wheel looked like a compact spare. "He left the road at Ninety, that's all there is to say, the Devil got the plastic car and Desert Racer on that day..." apologies to Robert Mitchum, who sang it better in "The Ballad of Thunder Road", the only song he ever sang in his entire film career.
Time Check: 1750 Pacific Daylight Time.
The two of us get on the FRS as we're coming out of Madras. The DR-dau is now VERY concerned about me, since I didn't stop to wee in Madras like she did, and yet I've had a fair amount of water. We still have at least an hour to Wamic, and now we won't arrive before 7pm, more likely 7:30pm, which barely gives up time to set up camp, since Mt. Hood blocks out the setting sun, so it sets about 45 minutes early in those shadows. I get a bad case of the fukits. Fukit, just fukit, and I decide to bag the rest of the trip at that point and just head home, about a 2.5-hour drive. She agrees. We do stop at Frog Lake Camp on the way back and grill our last steaks, and have a decent tailgater BBQ, then over the Mountain, and down to my place on it's western edge.
Time Check: 2030 Pacific Daylight Time. Trip aborted and ended.
In retrospect, I srcewed myself up. I should have been hydrating more all along, and I would have had the attitude to press on regardless of the adversity. It took me two days to recover from the dehydrated state. I had no excuse, since I was carrying plenty of potables, both potent and non, and 28 gallons of potable water on the truck. I just got complacent and lazy, drinking 4-6 ounces of water when I should have been drinking at least a pint at a time. I've been to survival school, I know all about drinking until your pee comes out frequently and clear, I know that I should have set hydration goals and stuck to them, but I used none of that knowledge and did none of those things. I'm probably lucky I got it all back home with the greasy side down, and didn't wind up like the Plastic Car Desert Racer.
*****************************************************************************
* Belt Buckle is my Retired Deputy Sheriff one, very bold and brassy, and the sun was shining directly on it....
