Lest we forget, April has been stay local month, sort of. And what has this given us?
The Fort Worth Mud Run 10k, of running through mud, water and botulism based challenges hosted by the always faithful Marine Corps.
Did you know "Semper fi" is an anagram of "free pims".
Golly Tarquin, so much combat trousered testosterone you never did see.
Then there were the women..most of whom were only distinguishable from the men by the wrist and hand action. This is the group that didn't scare P.
Then there were the fun groups, like the pentecostal church mother's group trying to get over a sequence of ever heightening muddy poles. Well they all managed the 18 inch one and the 3ft one but then it came to the 4 and half ft pole which required team work; it involved the only one who managed it over, we'll call her Sister no 1 coming back to kneel on the ground with one knee up so that Sister no 2 could push off from it while Sister nos 3 and 4 could push her upward via the bu-ttocks and Sisters 5, 6 and 7 pull on her arms and shoulders to the accompaniment of:
All sisters to sister no 1 Hell since when you been able to fly like that girl
Sister no 2 Watch where you putting those hands missee
Sisters 5,6 and 7 You gonna get those giant buns of yours over this bar or what?
Then it came to them all swinging over the muddy, water filled trough on ropes..... or not.
Finally, the reason we went in the first place, our non-marine friend Michael, a Canadian in third position, determined to stuff the US army muscle bound machismo.
Looks like he's gonna do it don't cha think...
For those of you about to be offended I apologise but -
You see the kid bending down, well he was a member of the Marine Mini League marshalling the stunts. Now I am not normally one for violence against children (or anyone) but he was the best excuse there ever was for nipping in the bud a future psychotic sparkly diamond general meglomaniac of the Allied Forces, by I think the politically correct technical psychoanalytical term is erm
"punching the speccy four eyed git's lights out" (he is wearing glasses).
While Michael is in mid manouevre this kid in all seriousness is shouting:
- Don’t make a mess of my warder
- It’s my warder you do not have the right to get wet
What's he like when he gets behind a virtual war game?
Calm calm......
Anyway I am thinking of doing this in November but only because at the end you get to do this with a fireman.
Next we have Prairie Fest for the second year running - a sort of green love in with music powered by solar energy.
Breathtaking feats of
Lasso twirling.
Steady now don't pull on that rope too soon.
And they're back with more lard than a Glaswegian fish and chip shop!
More pluck than jolly good sport Joyce Grenfell.
The US answer to the Rollie Pollies.
It's........... the Brazen Bellies.
Jiggling their stuff to a Polish Polka.
Joined by Aunty Emm''s brick lavatory sized cousin,
A devil
And a wolf
We know how to live.
Ok enough of the locals let's head north west for Caprock Canyons and Palo Duro Canyon State Park via
Who? Don't y'all cut yer throats now
I said we know how to live.
A brief stop at the Michelin 4 flat tyres hostelry with patio cuisine:
And five hours and 7 chapters of Ruth Ren...Dell (?????) later we hit Caprock Canyons:
And so you get a sense of the scale
And the detail
This is Comanche country well it was until they were all shipped to Oklahoma after the battle of .......Palo Duro. The rock formations do give it a real spiritual feel, there are faces everywhere:
Have I told you....there's always a breeze in Texas and it was OK once in the Chisos Mountains (see Big Bend blog). But it's getting beyond a joke now. The morning after the night before:
It is not because of our inferior tent erection skills, if you note we are hugging the trees and bushes from behind which the wind was coming. We actually slept in it like this as there was no point in getting up to fix it. Nor did I want to meet this in the dark:
Please note that I took this as it was International "cure my irrational arachnophobia week" (that's a Sunday word Bryan). Normally P gets this job but he's still recovering from the near car jacking by a spider in Big Bend.
Ok let's go make my heart race another way.
- I know there is no-one else about but no the tent has been taken down and the airbeds are flat and I don't know where Incy Wincy has gone.
- I meant find another canyon to climb.
- If you've got energy for outdoor sports young man you've got energy to climb a canyon.
I think this marks the entrance
We are heading for Haynes Ridge Overlook. This is halfway up, at least the brochure did say a steep rugged climb. And a rare view of P minus Indiana Jones hat, tossed back in gay abandon:
And from the top:
To my left
And to my right
And so to Palo Duro, the Grand Canyon of Texas which is like saying Blackpool Tower, The Eiffel Tower of Lancashire.
A new campsite below Fortress Cliff:
The sunset continued to blow me away
I almost dropped the camera when this thing let out a huge gobble and ran towards me.
Close up and rampant (ooh missus) it is the same height as me.
The point in coming to Palo Duro was not just to admire beautiful plumage but to do a Virginia Woolf. Initially a 5 mile round trip to the Lighthouse (get it yet). A giant one of these
or this
They are known as Hoo Doos and the rock sitting on top is literally a Caprock...in Caprock Canyons much of the caprock has eroded unlike here.
Thank goodness that on this day the cloud had sucked up the intensity of sun in one whole gulp
There is no water in the canyon. And there are no comments on what passes for a Year 3 attempt at a map, about a steep and rugged last half mile. On which we encountered Thelma and Louise from Dallas:
Whose idea of finding their way around is to ring a husband, get him to Google Map destinations for them and then ring back with the answer. Like they can tell him where they are in the first place and there is always a signal.
We made it.
Then we discovered you can go further and walk between the two rocks.
Just to the left of P is an 80 foot drop. I negotiated this bit facing the wall and clinging to the red rock and the desperate notion that it would not just crumble away in my hand leaving my voice and my nails to scream in tandem as plunged into the canyon below. It obviously got to P because at one point he was convinced someone had parked a car just below....
And this is the view from the platform between the two hoo doos:
Proof we was there.
This is other side of the canyon.
Then it came time to come back down...feet and bum the only way
This was almost my last photograph as a young texan with a dog that should have been on a leash careered down and then found she couldn't stop and regarded me as a safety barrier with the same value to the rest of the world as a crash dummy. No apology, nothing just a blank no-one home stare. The second child in this blog to come close to a good slap.
We decided to do the rest of the round canyon walk and this is me appropriately at Hully Gully.
11 miles later we were in the Visitors Centre over looking all that we had walked from a spectacular panorama window, serenaded by music to hang yourself to from Wichita's answer to Willie Nelson only he was a native American Indian in a poncho. And the "rest" were all in there too:
The military policman from New York who loved Texas and was never going back, well not unless he couldn't pay for the entire shelf of glass ornaments he proceeded to knock to the ground.
And yet another character from Deliverance who on overhearing us rushed over with his girlfriend who we presume he had met on the Internet via Mismatch.com, each using someone else's photograph on their profile as she was Nebraska's answer to Hattie Jacques and he was the diminutive, toothless, almost hairless Not so Quick Draw McGraw. An ageing lovesick puppy convinced his amour could be the first female president as:
- she's so 'telligent, she's a teeeecherrrrrr.
President in waiting fluttered her eyelashes, blushed but only momentarily lost for words:
- I'm sorry I don't quite quite recognise your accent, which part of the British Empire are you from?
When I escape from our friend Bryan's Bide a Wee Rest Home for the Seriously Bewildered I plan to be the one in the middle.....xx
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