The Re-Tour Day 9: Our Trucks are Too Heavy
September 1, 2018.
Camped in a bit of a depression and surrounded by trees, there was no reason to get up extra early to catch the sunrise — something I took full advantage of as I slept in until 8:26am — I believe my latest of the trip! Still the first out of bed, I wondered around taking in the sights — the creek behind camp, the glassy lake a quarter mile up the road.
As I made my way back to our camp, I thought to myself how glad I was that we hadn’t camped at the lake. September 1 is opening day of hunting season, and several hunters were “camped” nearby in their trailers and RV’s…generators churning away. Definitely not the experience we were after.
As I returned, others in camp were up and about, and we set about making breakfast — a feast really, one that would hold us over until late in the afternoon. Dan @drr got to work on some hash browns, Mike @Digiratus on scrambled eggs and salsa, and I fired up the griddle for bacon and sausage. In no time, we’d gotten everything cooked and Monte @Blackdawg and Zane @Speedytech7 setup a table for us to lay everything out.
Everything was delicious. Our bellies full, we sat around for another hour or so just enjoying ourselves and the company. This morning we were in no rush, and it was nice. (Though, we’d be pulling into camp well after dark it turned out!) We finally pulled out of camp at 12:15pm and pointed ourselves down off the mountain through the Medicine Lodge Habitat area.
It was a dusty drive — as was much of the trip — for anyone not leading, as we descended.
Once again, as we had in the Pryors, we found ourselves on a road next to a canyon, water having carved it’s way through hundreds (thousands?) of feet of mountain, leaving the vibrant red, yellow, and white stone exposed under the blue sky. Traffic behind us, we didn’t stop much or for long, but there was no way we could pass this up completely.
For the most part we kept up a good pace however — behind us, two brothers in their Jeep, out for a Saturday morning drive, just checking out the mountains. But then, over the CB we heard Monte — “We’ve got an oncoming full-size SUV.”
Normally that’s not an issue, but the road we were on was a relatively narrow, single-lane road on the side of what I considered to be a relatively steep hill (after-all, there was a canyon to our downhill side). So when Monte came over the radio again to say, “Looks like there are a bunch of them.” I think we all wondered what was going to happen next — especially given the six trucks headed down the mountain.
Well, this was clearly these guys backyard, and they were quick to pull off the road — in some relatively precarious positions if you ask me. And after pulling off, they all piled out of their vehicles — drinks and cigarettes in hand — eager to say hi and see what we were up to.
A bunch of our crowd popped out as well — happy to chat for a few minutes and get a closer look at their vehicles, which included a couple of really nice Toyota’s that we naturally pointed out as being the best of their group!
But, being stopped on a single-lane road wasn’t something either group wanted to maintain for an extended period of time, so we ultimately thanked them for pulling out of the way and continued down the hill towards Medicine Lodge — the views in front, behind, and to the side splendid all the way down.
In Medicine Lodge we pulled over. Or more appropriately, took over the parking lot. Monte had told us earlier that there were some cool petroglyphs here, and we definitely wanted to check those out. The rock art covers the face of a 750-foot long sandstone bluff, which shelters the area (and petroglyphs) at its base from wind and rain, preserving them over time. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation in the area stretching back nearly 10,000 years, and some of the drawings are over 2000 years old.
It was pretty cool to see these ancient drawings in the sandstone, knowing that since the time they were created, that much more elevation had eroded away next to the bluff (20 feet in some cases). It was no White Mountain Petroglyphs, with its ghostly hands, but it was cool nonetheless, as was the bluff itself.
Eventually our curiosity was mostly satisfied, and we returned to the trucks which were starting to attract attention in the parking lot, pointing them northwest toward our next rally point: the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracks. The road from Medicine Lodge was well maintained at this point, allowing us to up our speeds and have some fun. As most of us spaced out a bit to reduce the dust and increase the visibility, our dust clouds spread across the landscape; quite a sight to behold — and extra-cool from above, I’m sure.
To see those dust clouds and much, much more — check out at Re-Tour Day 9: Our Trucks are Too Heavy — at adventuretaco.com.
Originally published at adventuretaco.com.
