Uncle Bob

Like I mentioned before, the whole point of these trips every year was for an annual family reunion at Wind River Ranch just outside of Estes Park, at least that's how these trips started. A large contingent of my family on Dad's side would congregate for ten days at the dude ranch and we would all do cowboy and Rocky Mountain activities together. For me it was always a lot of fun and I always particularly looked forward to spending time hanging out with my cousin, David, who for the most part was my best friend. But the patriarch, and de facto leader of our extended family while staying at the ranch was Uncle Bob.

Even though Uncle Bob commanded respect, and compared to Dad was infinitely more "strict", I remember him actually being very nice and gentle, not scary or unreasonable about spoiling our fun like Dad would sometimes claim. Uncle Bob was the only person who could veto Dad's shenanigans without argument, effectively resolving a tedious situation. Us kids began to recognize that while my Dad's decisions could be way more fun, Uncle Bob's decisions to counter the fun were probably for a reason, and all of us kept our mouths shut about it. For instance: like when the miniature golf game was dragging on without any foreseeable end in sight because us younger players didn't have the skill or patience to time the ball correctly through the windmill obstacle, Uncle Bob had the authority to change the rules up a bit, allowing for a temporary stoppage of the windmill and making it easier for all of us. This rule breaking was not necessarily without it's advantages, narrowing the handicap between kids and adults and giving everybody a satisfying final score.

Uncle Bob had a rare and practical sense of humor, with results that would last for years to come. One early year at Wind River Ranch, it was decided that David and I were to get proper hair cuts, fitting to young cowboys. Uncle Bob claimed to have superior hair cutting ability for boys and owned the electric clippers to prove it. David and I sat on the porch of one of the cabins and Uncle Bob proceeded to shave both our heads clean and smooth as cue balls. This was done without the prior consent or knowledge of my Aunt or my Mom, and when we revealed ourselves, pretty much everyone was both amused and shocked, and a mildly embarrassed for us boys who had to parade this indignity to the entire ranch, the rest of the cousins were also probably having a good laugh at our expense, as well as Dad and Uncle Bob who probably conspired over beers to do this and mostly likely thought this was the funniest thing to happen at Wind River ranch in years. I wouldn't be surprised if Dad suggested Mohawks for both of us (mind you this was way before the time Mohawks were mainstream and common for anybody to sport, let alone kids) I suspect what really happened was that Uncle Bob fully intended to give us regular "butch" haircuts, but his skill level and expectations got away from him and one thing led to another, a little even-ing out here, a tad more off the top... and eventually he just said "the hell with it" and took the easy way out and shaved us clean... done. Lucky for me and David we were both in the same boat with our conspicuous new look, easing the self consciousness, and also, we were cowboys and were able hide our mean looking bald heads under our cowboy hats.

Speaking of cue balls, Uncle Bob was the person who taught me to play pool. For me he was the expert at pool, he owned a real pool table at his house (unlike the dinky 1/2 size Sears pool table we had) so I reckoned he had plenty of practice and I was always eager to take his pool playing advice. Wind River Ranch had this great rec room, complete with a piano, soda machine, shuffleboard, and of course a pool table. I distinctly remember Uncle Bob instructing me the proper way to hold the cue, aim the tip of the cue at the white ball and properly hit one of the color balls to sink it into a pocket. At the time I was too small for the table and I also had this annoying habit of purposely just missing the cue ball right before I attempted to strike it. After a few minutes of me awkwardly hitting balls around without any success, most everyone else would lose patience and forbid me to play, Uncle Bob on the other hand would get out the "Granny stick", that special cue with the bridge on the end for long, across the table shots, and let me have a chance to at least sink one ball into a pocket with it's assistance. This would eventually satisfy my pool playing curiosity and I would eventually get bored and let the adults and bigger kids play without my interference. Over the years when I finally got big enough to see over the table and maneuver the cue without the "granny stick" I remembered the tips and trick Uncle Bob showed me and David and instilled the foundation for my pool playing instincts.

But one day Uncle Bob showed his control during one of our family picnic hikes into the park. It was the first year we went to Wind River Ranch without David, who was involved in a Boy Scout Jamboree that Summer and couldn't make it to Estes Park. I was terribly disappointed and found myself at a loss most of the time, hanging out with the girl cousins or making feeble attempts at making friends with other guests at the ranch. In any event I ended up doing pretty much nothing, and out of desperation I even tried taking up embroidery which the girl cousins were into, and thinking back I'm glad to say I was completely bored with this sissy activity. So on this particular hike I amused myself by collecting bits of wildlife and nature, such as poisonous mushrooms, rare wildflowers, frogs and snakes (if I could catch them), and I took along an ice bucket with me to catch and keep all my live specimens. The whole family found a nice spot next to the rushing river with plenty of rocks to sit on and opportunity to watch nature in action. The river was rushing fast but not particularly dangerous and I only needed to be mildly aware of the risks to stay out of trouble.

Toward the end of the picnic activity I was busy collecting live specimens and needed to fill my bucket with fresh river water. I had to lean down on a sloping rock and dip the bucket into the river to get the water, not realizing that when I put the bucket into the river, the current grabbed hold of the bucket and pulled me off balance, and into the river. The current was strong and whirling and quickly swept me to the other side of the river bank where I was hopelessly separated from the rest of the family, all the time I kept a tight grip on the bucket. This was immediately noticed by everybody and they all urged me to stay on the other side until something was figured out, but I took it upon myself to walk downstream and look for a suitable place to cross back over.

Only a few yards down did I notice an old fallen tree spanning the river, the log was sturdy and adequately crossing the river, it also had old worn branch stubs sticking out the entire length of the log giving it the appearance of a spiky pole, which made it both easy to grab, but somewhat dangerous in that one slip could impale a leg or other tender parts of the body. But regardless of this I attempted to cross back using this natural bridge against the protest and desperate warnings of Dad and Uncle Bob urging me to not do so, and all the time holding the bucket.

As Dad and Uncle Bob looked on helplessly I slowly creeped across the log maneuvering carefully around the spiky branches so not to stab myself in the crotch or something. Uncle Bob I remember had an exasperated look and Dad was merely annoyed. I made it exactly halfway across when I inevitably slipped and fell back into the river. I fell on the upstream side of the log which made the current push me underneath the log as I hung on, still holding the bucket. Dad came rushing to save me first and awkwardly crossed the log and tried to pull me up. The current dragging me under the log only made it more difficult and frustrating for him and he then attempted to push me under the log and try to gram me up from the other side, but doing this only made Dad fall in the water himself which prompted Uncle Bob to come to the rescue.

It was obvious Uncle Bob had no intention of getting himself wet, and was more than ticked off at me and Dad for requiring him to risk his neck to save us, but Uncle Bob quickly managed to control the situation, allowing Dad to gain control of his own predicament. The first thing Uncle Bob did was to rip the damn bucket out of my hand and fling it as far away as possible, which then allowed both him and dad to pull me up and literally drag me to shore. Dad was complaining that it was all my fault he fell in the water and that Bob only complicated the situation, Uncle Bob kept his mouth shut and suggested I stay out of the water from now on.

My Aunt and Grandmother were severely pissed-off at me at this point and Gammy proceeded to yell uncontrollably for a few minutes about my lack of judgement and ability to ruin a otherwise good picnic. After I was yelled at my Aunt and cousins explained that Gammy was upset because she loved me and was worried I was going to get hurt, but I knew better and believed she was just mad, and it was going to be a long time before she got over it.

Later, after we got to the cars, Uncle Bob approached me and admitted with some humor that cousin Bobby had stupidly fallen into the rivers on a number of occasions and needed to be saved several times, that maybe what had happened to me was just a youthful and expected rite of passage. I got the sense that he wasn't as angry at me as he led my Aunt or Gammy to think.

Caves

I don't remember if it was before or after we visited our first cave on the trip, but I recall the time Dad read me a story about, Jim White, who discovered Carlsbad Cavern. It was a book we found at the library and Dad read the story to me in chapters over a couple of weeks, I remember the book became due in the middle of reading it and we had to renew it, I was suspicious of this whole "renew" business and didn't understand the concept of borrowing books and I became concerned that the library wouldn't want us to keep the book beyond the time agreed upon on the little card stuck in the inside cover. But, we got to keep the book for another week and Dad read me the whole story about how Jim White found and explored the strange and forbidding cave that had bats flying out every night that made the all locals superstitious and fearful. I was fascinated by the story and the pictures of stalactites and stalagmites that adorned the cave, and I wanted to someday see this Carlsbad Cavern for myself.

The first cave we ever visited was with Mom and Dad on one of the early years on the trip, I don't remember the name of the cavern but I think I visited it again when I went on the trip with Dad in 2000 and shot the video, that would be Grand Canyon Cavern. But the first time I remember taking an elevator way down underground and emerging into a chamber that eventually led us through narrow passageways and a large cavern. The tour guide led the group on a maintained walkway and the trail was not difficult with only a few narrow passages. The cave was well lit and comfortable, however there were none of the stalagmites and stalactites I had heard of being in caves and had seen in pictures. I was looking forward to seeing these stalactites and 'mites, but in fact the cave was kind of plain and didn't really have any interesting rock formations. However, the thing that most interested me, and I remember most clearly was the dead bobcat. Apparently the bobcat had fallen down the cave and died about 100 years ago and was found mummified, this was one of the main attractions in the cave and was displayed behind a roped-off area next to the path for all the tourists to see. For me this was defiantly the most interesting item in the cave and during the rest of the tour, when I was getting bored, I wanted to go back and visit the dead bobcat again for a better look. Years later when I visited the Grand Canyon Cavern with Dad the tour took us by a dead bobcat, and this is what sparked my memory again about the first cave, realizing this was either the same cave, or every roadside cave attraction had to have a dead bobcat section included on the tour.

The tour continued and the ending event was to take us into a vast chamber and gather the group for a picture (to be sold later when we returned to the surface). But before they took the picture the tour guide demonstrated what it was like to be in total darkness by turning off the lights in the cave. Yes, it was very dark down there and I don't think anybody would be able to find their way around in that much darkness. And before they turned the lights back on there was a flash of the picture being taken, resulting in a photograph of a bunch of disoriented tourists nervously smiling in the depths of a cavern. We returned to the top the same way we came down and a few minutes later got to look at the picture of our group in the cave. They were selling prints for what Dad thought was an exorbitant price, and it really wasn't a good picture of us anyway, so of course we passed on buying the picture. We always passed on buying the picture.

Another cave we visited in later years was "The Ice Cave". This cave was a little less formal than the other cave and the infrastructure was more primitive. There was no elevator leading us down into the depths of the Earth, merely a door in the side of a mountain in the middle of the desert. We took a short hike on a trail through a volcanic field of lava rock, it was barren and hot and they included some mannequins of Indians posed in authentic situations along the trail. Apparently the Native Americans used the Ice Cave to store meat and other food like a refrigerator back before the white man came and took the cave over as a tourist attraction. We came to the door to the cave, which was nothing special, and the tour guide gave a little talk before we entered the cave, announcing that we needed to enter and exit the cave quickly as to not keep the door open to long and eventually thaw out the cave (like a refrigerator). So we entered the cave and it was indeed cold, especially in contrast to the outside which was about 100 degrees. The atmosphere was dark and wet and we didn't see much ice at first needing to walk through some terrain first. The cave itself was volcanic and the ice was leftover from ice-age glaciers and survived buried deep within the mountain, it was kind of ugly actually. When we got to the ice, there wasn't much there but it was amazing that it lasted this long. The ice was dirty and embedded in the walls of the cave and there remained evidence of the Indians digging out sections to store food. Again, the tour guide turned off the lights (this seems to be a theme with cave tours) but instead of taking a picture he brought out an ultra-violet light to illuminate the ice, which brought out bright, vibrant and psychedelic colors in the ice formations, this was my favorite part of the tour. The guide then went on to show us what the light does to his eyeglasses, giving them the same groovy colors as the ice, and apparently is a phenomenon particular to the Ice Cave. On the way back to the door leading outside, someone asked a question why there wasn't any icicles, the guide went on to explain, and indicating with his flashlight toward the ceiling of the cave, that there used to be one icicle but it fell off because of the constant opening and closing of the door, This made me think that the Ice Cave was melting.

Finally one year, I was able to visit Carlsbad Cavern. I was on the trip just myself and Dad and we had planned from the beginning to visit the cavern, I was excited and looking forward to connecting the actual cave with all the stories and pictures I read about over the years.

I realized that we weren't going to be able to see the bats flying out of the cave, being that it happens too late in the day and we needed to push on after seeing the cavern, but I had convinced myself that the gift shop was going to sell souvenirs of real stuffed bats or a real bat encased in plastic for a paperweight. In the past I had always collected souvenirs of real animal parts or preserved specimens, like the baby octopus in the jar of formaldehyde I got in Big Sur and kept for many years, or the various rabbit pelts, raccoon tails, I even had a coyote paw for some time. One item I always wanted but we never bought, (because of the price) was the mounted head of a Jackalope, which was a hare with antlers, a creature that adorned many touristy gift shops and was the subject of hundreds of postcards. For many years I was convinced these creatures were real, which Dad continued to encourage this belief (like Santa Clause) and he often would engage us by having us keep out eyes open for a jackalope on hikes. But days before we arrived at Carlsbad Cavern I would remind Dad that I especially wanted to get a "stuffed bat" and we were to set aside funds for this item. I now suspect Dad was only humoring me and was aware that no such item existed in the Cavern gift shop, and indeed there was nothing in the gift shop coming close to a stuffed bat, even the fake bats were hard to find.

Carlsbad Cavern was a National Park and the attraction was very big, highly organized and crowded with visitors. You could take a guided tour if you wanted (for an extra cost) or you could take a self-guided tour that wandered through the various sights in the cavern. We of course opted for the self-guided tour that allowed us to see things at our own pace and not have to deal with other people so much. You start at the top entrance where Jim White and earlier explorers entered the cave via a barrel and pulley, which has since been modified to allow tourists to easily hike down a trail of switchbacks, which eventually led to the main cavern rooms. This cave was more of what I imagined a cave to be like, with lots of stalactites and stalagmites, the cave was lit in various fashions to best display the different formations. The cave was huge and there was lots to see with park signs directing visitors to the various scenes and formations. One area Dad pointed out that I remember was "the bottomless pit", and he told of how when he visited the cavern years ago the tour guide tossed a rock down the pit and you couldn't hear it hit the bottom, suggesting that it was falling forever so deep that there was essentially no bottom to the pit. This time we were forbidden to throw anything down the pit to test this, given that people would probably throw anything down, rocks, garbage, children... and eventually fill the pit up with debris. We meandered through the cavern and although the space was enormous we still had to navigate through and around crowds of people. One of Dad's tricks was to find a guided tour and follow at a nonchalant earshot distance, getting the benefit of the tour without having to pay, and allowing us to abandon the tour when it got boring. We found a guided tour and pretended to not pay attention but followed at a safe distance for awhile, gaining valuable information along the way. This time there was no dead bobcat on display.

We saw about as much as our patience could take and decided to get a treat at the famous snack bar in the cave before taking the elevator back up. The snack bar was of course expensive and limited but we got a token beverage and made our way to the top where we were met by the visitor center and forced to exit through the gift shop. Again, I searched for the stuffed bat paperweight to no avail and left the gift shop empty-handed. Dad contemplated staying for the "bat show" but it would be many hours before it would happen, and then we found out that there was a chance the bats could give a disappointing showing, so Dad decided to not stay after all. We continued on our trip, the Carlsbad Cavern experience fulfilled.