by Crispin Kangas
(Westfield, Wisc USA)
On The 4th of July Weekend, some of us "Pipeliner's" who are here on a 8 mo. long project, rondezvous'd at Lone Mountain Station to just go "Bumm'n" in the open wilderness mountain areas. 1st we headed towards Tuscarora, and about half way out we took off "Cross Country" and hooked onto a old cattle ranchers trail that was pretty much re-grown over, and followed it until we could not climb any more @ 7327 ft.
Then one of the bunch heard that there was a little mining town of Jarbidge that you had to take dirt mountain roads to get there, AND they were having their TOWN FESTIVAL today! Well we can't pass up a small town's DRINK'N PARTY, it's only 85 miles via GPS, that should take us only a couple of hours to get there, MOUNT UP YA BEER HUSTLER's, LET's HIT IT!!
WELL, on this "Billy Goat" of a trail to get there, we are dodging "Retiree's" pulling campers smoking their brakes coming down the 12-15% grade at us on this 1-1/2 lane mountain cut road,.....and finally our "Expedition" arrives 3 plus hours later at Jarbidge !
We arrived a little late for the Vol. Fire Dept's BBQ, But the Beer Tent is still OPEN! AND THEY HAVE GASOLINE!!!! Yes we all still had our "Gerry" cans full, but it's always a relief to fill up in BFE as we were all down to a 1/4 tank or so!
Jarbidge, if you took all the pick-up's and SUV's off the street, you could shoot a old cowboy/western movie here. DIRT main street, no SIDEWALKS, just boardwalk porches in front of old buildings and everyone treated us like long lost relatives. We stayed only about an hour as we needed to beat the setting sun to get back, promising to revisit soon, just as the "County Cops" are passing our riggs for the 2nd time "Give'n Us The Old Evil Eye" (The locals told us this is the first time since last year's festival that a deputy has bothered to come out this far!!) and we all got back with minimal repairs.
Dat Displaced Yooper! CAPT
