Return to Expedition 2000 homeMay 9 2000
Day 9
Very eventful day today! The first half
was pretty tedious, and as Cody and I rounded a hillside into the next coulee,
I remarked, "the scenery is probably going to be the same for a long time."
How wrong I was. Scott and Chris trudged on ahead after lunch, as
usual. About a half hour later, we saw them stopped at a gate with a pickup
truck next to them. As we got nearer, Cody and I saw two burly men in
the pickup, who looked like they could have built it themselves. One of
them didn't give his name, but the other was called "Big Jim." He
wore a homemade cowhide hat, with many exotic feathers in it. He had squinty
eyes, like th kind that are used to seeing far off into the distance. Eyes
that had seen lots of sun. His teeth were huge and healthy looking, and
he had a gigantic thick white beard. He wore a cowboy blue denim shirt
with a home-stitched vest. He said he had to ? it because he gained too
much weight. It was held together with buttons made from deer antlers.
"Just saw up that there antler-buttons." He said, "I
keep my gun in here" he said patting his right breast pocket, "my
cigarettes in here, a lighter over here, a spark plug here, and a spare lighter
over here." he said as he pointed at various points of his thick vest.
The other rancher had a red jacket on and a huge cap. They both
wore jeans and one-piece leather shoes. Scott and Chris had stopped because
on the other side of the fence there were the meanest looking cattle I have
ever seen. They had huge, sharp horns and were staring at us and pawing
at the dirt, sending up huge plumes of dust. They said that the cattle
were calving, and that they were very defensive. When a coyote came into
their pasture, they would "have a field day and tear the coyote apart."
Then they said that if we walked Brandy across the pasture, the cattle
would think that she was a coyote, kill her, and then come after us! They
offered to drive us across and we agreed. Along the way down the trail
in the back of the pickup, it started to hail heavily. There were even
a few cracks of lightning and thunder! We met Mo a mile past our goal
stop for the day and camped by an old grain elevator. We drove into town
(Moses
Lake) and went to Godfather's Pizza,
which gave everybody a stomach ache.