Cody, didn't hear from you or some others. Did you get out?
I did. Met Ben at IHOP, and looked for a place to go. Ben has some good ideas in the Cleator area. But this was the last weekend for higher elevations without snow.
He had been to a place that I hadn't seen and agreed to show me. It was cool! We went off of Walker Rd. at Banny Mine Rd. We drove a number of intersecting trails to reach Big Bug Mesa Rd. One of them hadn't been traveled much in a while. It was covered in unbroken pine needles. The trails were narrow but not really rough. Lots of pinstripes.
Ben knew that if I scared my daughter, I might not get her back in the truck for a while. But she was having fun. He warned me about this climb. When we got to it, it looked like nothing. It was just a 40 degree slope, a steep drop on the right, with rocks a foot high sticking up.
Ben's done this a couple of times recently. I could tell because he must have driven up it by the braille method. When I followed him, the sun was right in my eyes, and I was totally blind! I stopped and walked it. Well, Ben walked down to the top of the sunstroke slope and stood there. So I started up again, daughter whining. Ben was pointing left and right to steer me around the biggest rocks. Missing rocks wasn't important to me. I was completely blind! After a few feet, I told myself that there was nothing on the hill that a LC can't handle. The truck didn't need my help! I just steered toward the shadow that was Ben, and let the truck do the work. It walked up the hill with a blind driver and never missed a beat. When I passed Ben, I turned left and I could see again! That was interesting.
An 80 with a blind driver can climb a rough hill all by itself. It just needs a target to aim at!
Did I mention that Ben has the coolest pair of dogs? Little Lessa is a bit of a "critter kid". She took to them like a turtle to a pond, only faster. The line of the day was "Where's Lessa? She is over there with the dogs." We visited a mine and played around for a while. Ben has a mini rock crawler (about 16" long) that is a lot of fun. From there we went up to the five roads at the top of Poland Rd. I was out of food and had to go get dinner. I would rather drive drunk than hungry. I get jittery when I am hungry. Then along came a black and silver LX450. It was sharp, with a 2.5" lift and lots of pinstripes on the sides (the scratchy kind). He joined our group then and there, and agreed to go with Ben over to west Prescott. So we went down Poland Road to Prescott Valley. That was the end of a great day.
