Back to Crane Creek

 Around the turn of this century, my fishing buddy Bud Hennessy and I tried to fish one of Trout Unlimited's Top 100 Trout Streams in America called Crane Creek, located in the southwestern part of Missouri near Branson. I say "tried" to fish the creek because we had great difficulty finding it. It was an intriguing stream because it is claimed to have an original strain of McCloud River rainbow trout, stocked there in the late 1800s and now wild, that are known for their fighting and jumping skills. To give you an idea of just how hard McCloud River trout can fight, one day Bud and I fished the actual McCloud River in upstate California. I came across a very deep hole and decided to climb up on a rock so I could better fish this hole. I had on a tiny, size 18, dry fly and cast it onto the surface of the hole. Before I could blink, a sizable rainbow came roaring out of the deep, took the fly and dove out of sight. When I finally got around to setting the hook, the rainbow came roaring back out of the water and jumped as high as the level of my eye while I was standing on the rock. I managed to bring that trout close enough to me so I could gently release him back into the water.

So with visions of catching such a trout in Crane Creek, Bud and I searched and searched for the stream. Finally we found what we thought was Crane Creek, only to find that it was about 2 to 3 feet wide and ankle deep. How could this stream possibly have made it into Trout Unlimited's Top 100? we wondered. While Bud went off to look elsewhere for Crane Creek, I decided to follow the tiny stream of water downstream in hopes that I was just on a small tributary of the real Crane Creek. About a half mile down, the tiny stream opened up into one crystal clear hole of water maybe 20 feet in diameter and maybe 2 to 3 feet deep. In the hole lay many large trout. I knew I would scare all these fish if I tried to get close enough to cast into the hole. Fortunately, there was a large tree overhanging the hole so I climbed up the tree and tried and tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to drop a fly into the pool. I must have spent at least 45 minutes trying to catch a trout with no luck. Frustrated, I walked back, found Bud, and asked how his search for the "real stream" had gone. Bud exclaimed that all he saw were rattlesnakes and he had soon given up the search! I never caught a trout, or any fish, in "Crane Creek" so I was not able to check it off my list. Later I wrote a short review of the Creek in my Top 100 book. I gave it a review of 0 out of 5 stars.

At Carol's insistence, I researched this stream while on this trip and found a number of recent videos of fishermen catching rainbows there. It's a spring creek, with very clear water, and a reputation for large trout that are very difficult to catch. I found the exact location on Google Maps and since the stream was just 20 miles or so off our planned route back home, we decided to detour so I could try again to fish Crane Creek and check it off my bucket list.

As we turned into the parking area where I positively knew the trout stream was supposed to be located, we noticed a dog lying in the leaves. Instinctively, we both knew the dog had been abandoned by a previous owner. It had the look of a pitbull, but was very friendly. Carol and the dog immediately bonded. I walked down expecting to see Crane Creek, but found only a dry creek bed.

This is Crane Creek?

While we were sizing up the nonexistent creek, the dog, and the regulation signs, a Missouri Conservation ranger drove up and asked us if we needed help. "Yes," I said, "Where is Crane Creek?" The ranger explained that, due to the geology, this creek can run underground when the water is low. "But if you walk upstream about half a mile or so you will find it running above ground again." Carol explained to the ranger that the dog had apparently been abandoned there and appeared to be a very nice, well-mannered dog. The ranger promised he would come back later--he had to "run some errands"--and if the dog was still there, he would take care of it.

This sign marked the first access parking lot for the Crane Creek Conservancy.

This sign explained that this creek was a catch and release only stream.

So Carol and I walked upstream, with the dog following us, trying to find the stream. After what we thought was half a mile, we found no water and stopped. The ranger had told us there was another spot further upstream we could drive to, where he knew the stream was currently above water. So we drove to that spot and came across a man on an ATV dressed in orange hunting clothes (there were numerous hunters out and about). While I walked the stream looking for trout, Carol talked to the hunter, who said he was also a catch-and-release fisherman and would take us back to the first place we stopped and show us where all the trout were hanging out. He promised Jack would be able to catch one there. He said he had recently caught a 20-inch trout from that hole!

Andy, the kind hunter/fisherman that showed us where the trout (and the water!) were.

Sure enough, we had not walked far enough upstream. While I rigged my rod, Carol, the hunter/fisherman, named Andy, and the dog walked upstream and found where the water started flowing above ground again. He showed Carol all the trout lying in a big hole. I met them on the way back and Carol snapped a picture of the two of us.

Carol, the dog, and I walked to the stream where I could see a bunch of trout lying and feeding on the surface. This time it was easy to find a place where the trout could not see me. I tied on a small caddis fly and cast it gently onto the surface. Immediately a small trout took the fly but got off. Another cast got a trout to look at the fly, but he refused. On the third cast I caught a 9-inch hard-fighting rainbow and released him. He stirred up the fish in the pool so I waited about 15 minutes before trying again. The friendly dog came down, drank water and sat beside me.

At the tail of the trout pool. I'm sitting down so the trout can't see me.

The dog lay down beside me.

First fish!

About to be released.

It was a pleasant sunny day and a light wind rippled the water making it hard for the trout to see my 7x leader. I got another 8- to 9-inch trout and then called it a day. Now I can check off Crane Creek!

Before we left, Carol fed and petted the dog. He was a very nice, intelligent dog and we both felt sorry to leave him there. We toured and had a late lunch in the quaint little town of Crane. Carol called around trying to get someone with the authority to take the dog to a shelter. Apparently there's no animal shelter or even a dogcatcher in this county. The Missouri Conservation ranger said that "people abandon dogs here all the time" and "usually someone will adopt them." Carol shed a few tears over this dog--finally a ranger returned her call and said various people had been feeding him and one older man was probably going to adopt him, so she felt a little better. [Carol: I was thinking about turning around and going back 300 miles to get him. Still thinking about him. Nice dog.]

We spent Thanksgiving Day with Jack's sister Hazel in PA, at the nursing home where she's living now. The lunch was delicious (traditional!) and we had a good visit with her. Now we have one more fishing adventure ahead, in Maryland, before returning home to Virginia.

Hazel and Carol at our Thanksgiving Dinner

Desert Fun and Friends

It's been over a week since our last blog--sorry about that! We spent some time reacquainting ourselves with one of our favorite old hangouts, the Anza Borrego Desert State Park a couple of hours east of San Diego. This park is HUGE--all the other California state parks could fit inside it! You could get lost here for a lifetime. We moved to a nice campground right in Borrego Springs, the sleepy small town that is surrounded by the gigantic park and acts sort of as the Park headquarters. Our campground is actually a hotel with an adjacent RV park, with nice amenities like swimming pools and a hot tub.

View from Visitor Center, Anza Borrego State Park.

Museum display showing present-day desert wildlife.

We went to the Park's Visitor Center and walked around in the desert--we've been to the visitor center several times but it's been over 20 years since the last time. We learned a lot about this, our favorite desert, that we didn't know before--like the fact that this sand, dirt and rock has washed down from the Grand Canyon! And that years ago the place was a fertile grazing ground for lots of mastodons, camels, zebras, and other now-extinct mammals--many fossils are found here. We relearned the names of all the cactus--teddy bear cholla, barrel cactus, prickly pear, etc. Very neat place. We love the pastel colors and the corrugated mountains that form the backdrop for the desert floor.

We went to town one day and had coffee and a muffin, and Carol did some shopping. Borrego Springs has several more eating places now than it used to, but it's still a quiet, friendly little town and remains one of our favorite places.

When we left the campground, we drove the back roads to Oceanside, north of San Diego, to visit our friends Cindy and Tom. We stopped in the little mountain town of Julian to pick up a couple of their famous pies (apple and rhubarb/strawberry)--forgetting how busy that little town gets this time of year! Jack drove the van around while Carol jumped out to stand in line for the pies!

Tom and Cindy have recently purchased a printing business, an AlphaGraphics franchise, so we met them at their new office and got the grand tour. Very exciting to hear all that they're involved in, and their plans for the future. We then adjourned to their home for late lunch and pie (a la mode, of course). As delicious as we remembered it to be! And made even more delicious by the setting, their beautiful upper deck with ocean view. We talked and laughed and caught up on our lives since we'd last seen each other, while the sun went down over the ocean. Ahhh. Great visit with good buddies. We spent the night and headed out early the next morning when they left for work.

Cindy and Tom, looking good!

Old friends reunited!

We had decided to go back to Agua Caliente County Park for a few more days of desert sun-soaking (and hot springs soaking), since we'd enjoyed it so much when we were there a few days ago, before starting on our journey east. Plus Carol had a book to edit and Jack wanted to do some more work on the novel he's writing. Since we were there during the week, we had no problem finding a good campsite, near the pools and with some shade over the picnic table. (This park apparently fills up on weekends and we understand why. It's pretty close to paradise, in our estimation.)

Beautiful Agua Caliente campground tucked into the desert landscape.

The water from the springs runs many places in the campground, and the fan palms always find the water.

We had a quiet several days of working and soaking. Carol had fun birding--saw several new birds for our list: California thrasher with its large curved beak, and a ladderbacked woodpecker. Lots of the silky black desert crested flycatchers called phainopeplas, and lots of roadrunners too.

Crested phainopepla, a flycatcher.

Mr. Roadrunner--didn't see Wiley Coyote while there but heard him.

The place has no cell signal at all, so we were there over Election Day, completely disconnected from the world, and had no idea how the election had gone. Late the next day we were soaking in the pools and some new campers came in with news from the outside world. I (Carol) asked nonchalantly who the new president was (thinking that I knew the answer) and when the guy answered "Trump" we nearly dropped our teeth! We had managed to stay completely away from any election news or coverage since July--except that we had noticed in our travels, which were almost exclusively in rural or small-town areas with very little venturing near big cities, that the Trump posters outnumbered Hillary posters about 10 to 1, or maybe even more.

Finally we drug ourselves away from the hot springs and headed east on I-8 and then I-10, toward Tucson, to visit friends there. Leroy (Lee) Krumm was a classmate of Jack's from the Coast Guard Academy and he and his wife Patti now live in a lovely desert community, with a golf course and lots of other great amenities for "senior living." The desert near Tucson is remarkable for the large and varied saguaro cactus everywhere. It also has beautiful rugged mountains that provide a scenic backdrop to the desert floor. We had a great time telling/hearing Coast Guard stories and getting the tour of their beautiful surroundings. Carol even got to drive Patti's cute little Miata convertible--fun! (And Lee tooled Jack around in his golf cart.) Lee is a VERY funny guy and Patti holds her own quite well as a great storyteller, so it was a lively and hilarious visit--so good to reconnect with old friends! Thanks, folks!

Leroy, Patti and Jack. Love that roadkill apron!

Patti, Jack and Carol.

Nice convertible! (Two blondes not bad, either....)

We planned to head for I-40 to continue our drive east and Lee gave us a great tip for a scenic way to get there. It went through a dramatic canyon (the Salt River Canyon) that rivaled the Grand Canyon for scenery. We stopped for photos, of course. The canyon runs through two Apache reservations, the home of Geronimo. Beautiful, striking place!

Salt River Canyon, which we drove through.

Apache reservation, home of Geronimo.

Looking down on the river from pedestrian bridge.

View at near-sunset.

Now stopped in a town called Show Low, AZ (the name is related to a poker hand that one of the founders had, to win the place from his partner--the main street is named Deuce of Clubs). Love the West!

Giant Trees and Back to the Desert

It rained on us when we left Yosemite and we didn't go too far. We wanted to stop in a reasonable sized town and see if we could get the van engine light problem looked at and maybe fixed. So we stopped at Oakhurst, a town just an hour or so from the south gate of the Park. We found a good deal at the Yosemite Southgate hotel--folks there were friendly and helpful-- and located a local mechanic online (with excellent reviews) and Carol called to make an appointment for the next morning. The van still didn't have any symptoms, just the engine light and an error code which apparently indicated "misfire on cylinder 7". Carol took the van to Dan's Auto Center the next morning.

Dan and his employees had all their bays filled with other vehicles, but shortly Dan himself came out to see what the problem was. He looked like a very kind man, almost saintly. I explained the situation. He brought out his little computer to hook up, and said it actually said "misfire on cylinders 2, 3 and 7", not just 7. But he tried for awhile to see if he could make it misbehave again and couldn't hear or see anything at all wrong with the engine running. He also did some transmission checking at my request, but all seemed well. We talked it over for a good while and he said it could have been something as minor as some bad gas. He didn't think we should try to fix it when no symptoms are occurring. So I was reassured. If no more symptoms occur, we'll get it tuned up by our regular mechanic when we get home. Dan spent about a half hour checking the car and talking to me--time that he could have been spending working on the other broken cars in his garage--and he refused to charge me a nickel! Yes, possibly a saint. This is a very nice town.

Our next major sightseeing stop was a visit to General Grant and General Sherman, the two largest trees (by volume) on the planet. They were in King's Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park, respectively, which are adjoining parks. King's Canyon, which contains the Grant Grove housing Gen. Grant and many other mind-boggling sequoias, was our first stop. The drive up into the park was a major climb, with lots of twists and turns. We stopped at the Park Visitor Center first, to get our Natl. Park Passport stamped and to watch their movie. Then we headed for Gen. Grant. Right in the parking lot for the Grove there's a cluster of VERY big sequoias. As we walked the trail, we kept seeing more and bigger trees. It finally just stuns you--how big can a tree actually be?? These trees, the giant sequoias, are related to the giant redwoods we'd seen earlier near Eureka, CA, but they're more massive (the redwoods are taller but have smaller diameters). When we finally got to Gen. Grant (the second largest tree in the world) it was almost anticlimactic. But he's very big, all right. We took a bunch of photos of different trees--most of them have been named, but we didn't record their names.

We saw this grove of large trees as soon as we entered the parking lot of the Grant Grove.

Jack and Carol and a cluster of big sequoias.

They just kept getting bigger....

General Grant was the king of his grove!

Then we headed off to drive into Sequoia National Park, to see the BIGGEST tree in the world, Gen. Sherman. It was another long, steep, twisting and turning drive to get there, but with great views. Gen. Sherman had many more people visiting him than Grant did--I guess more people like to see the biggest and best, rather than the second biggest and best. There were probably 100 people in front of Sherman, jockeying for photo positioning. I decided to just take a photo of a group of kids in front of the tree, since it gave a pretty good perspective. (Bear in mind, however, that they are about 20 ft in front of the tree.) Sherman did look bigger than Grant--his trunk was more cylindrical. Wow. Big trees!

General Sherman was mighty impressive!

The drive down to the south entrance/exit of the Park was spectacular, range after range of mountains--VERY twisty road and it was slow going. We thought maybe we'd be able to camp at the Foothills campground, which was still open--many are closed for the season--but it was full by the time we got there. So we kept going out of the park to the first town, Three Rivers, where we found a little private RV park and camped there. (The owner of the campground was a West Virginia guy--small world...) As it turned out, the next day was Sunday and there was a little church right next to our campground, so Carol went to church--very welcoming, friendly people. The church was beautiful and old--the inside was built all from local woods. It felt a lot like our Oriskany church.

Beautiful mountain scenery driving down out of Sequoia Natl Park.

Three Rivers church, constructed from local wood.

After church, we drove south, heading for southern CA, to visit a place where we used to spend a lot of time when we lived in CA, the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. And we also plan to visit some friends on the coast. That day we made it as far as Mojave, a desert town noted for its Air and Space Port, of all things (www.mojaveairport.com). Apparently a very major deal in aviation. We stayed in a motel for a couple of nights here, to catch up on work. Some major wind generator farms are located here, and all around for miles and miles.

We passed gazillions of windmill generators on this drive.

Back on the road, we saw a sign for the town of Boron and started reminiscing about 20 Mule Team Borax and the Death Valley Days TV show, hosted by Ronald Reagan and sponsored by the Borax company. We were both fascinated by the idea of driving a team of 20 mules and we wondered if there was a museum where we could see that happen. Just then we passed a sign saying "20 Mule Team Museum Next Exit", so of course we took the exit! There is a borax mine in Boron, and they do have a little 20 Mule Team museum--but no actual mules there. The mules are apparently kept somewhere near Bishop, CA--there is a working team of 20 mules that pulls vintage borax mining wagons and appears in parades and events (next appearance, Rose Parade and then the Presidential Inaugural Parade). They had lots of models of the mule teams and equipment in the museum and we watched a movie showing the team being hitched up and driven. The cool thing is that when the wagon needs to go around a curve, some of the mules are trained to actually jump the chain that runs down the center of the whole team and pull to the side, while the remaining mules keep pulling ahead to provide the motive power. Totally amazing. Each mule has a different job to do and knows its name, and the driver calls each mule by name when he wants that mule to do something special, like turn one way or the other. Only two men work the team of 20 animals. Those are some well-trained mules. A feisty little lady at the museum told us all we wanted to know! Carol bought a tee shirt with a mule on it and then we crossed the street to have lunch at the 20 Mule Team Cafe.

The museum of our dreams.

This lady was our hostess at the 20 Mule Team Museum, and she was a fountain of knowledge about mules!

How many of you remember Death Valley Days?

This painting shows the team executing a turn--the mules facing us jumped the chain on command.

Beautiful mule painting--obviously by an artist who loves mules.

We finally drug ourselves away from the mule museum and continued our drive south. We made it to the town of Yucca Valley and the Joshua Tree National Park, where we camped for the night. We'd camped in this Park 3 years ago, during another long Epic Journey, and liked it. The Joshua trees are weird and wonderful to look at, and there's lots of wildlife around. Had a quiet night and shoved off the next morning, to see if we could make it to Agua Caliente County Park on the border of the Anza Borrego Park that we're heading for. Agua Caliente has hot spring water piped into pools for soaking, and it has been awhile since we've soaked in a spring.

Agua Caliente hot pool is housed in a sun room--the ceiling opens.

Another soaking pool that's kept a little cooler.

These two borregos posed for us!

We stopped at a general store by Agua Caliente Park--no one was around but this sign and giant gong were there. It said to "Ring Bell 4 Service"!

We made it, claimed our campsite and immediately put on our bathing suits and headed to the pools. Lovely! Everything looks brand new in this park. We were here one time maybe 30 years ago and the pool was a little sketchy back then. According to another camper we talked to, they had a big flood here not too long ago and it destroyed most everything, so it's been rebuilt and they did a nice job. We could have stayed longer. We walked their nature trail, reacquainting ourselves with the desert flora and fauna. And we soaked and relaxed in the pools night and morning. And as an extra treat, just as we were driving out of the park this morning, two desert bighorn sheep trotted right by us, climbed up on a rocky outcropping next to us, and posed for photos! Nice!

We're now in a campground in Borrego Springs, the little town right in the middle of Anza Borrego State Park. It's good to be back in our old stomping ground! We've always loved the desert pastel colors here and the way the rocky, barren mountains seem to float above the desert floor, like a mirage. And something new--an artist has created lots of cool metal lifesize sculptures of wild horses, mastodons, eagles, dragons--lots of different stuff. They look very primeval out on the desert scrub. We'll be here for a few days, before going to visit our friends Cindy and Tom.

Metal sculptures of wild stallions fighting in the desert.

Desert mastodons.