The Penance for my Sins

So, I was going to try to get away without blogging about this. However, for three reasons I am writing this blog post, and exposing my idiotic decisions, and the "fun" that resulted from them one day last week. :-) You see, my family pretty much figures that with rare exception, if I'm leaving the house for any reason beyond grocery buying and sometimes even then, I usually pop the camera in my purse. I'm a blogger. It's what we do. So, they knew without asking that I had pictures... and the three reasons I am posting it are as follows:

1. Auntie G thinks it's awesome that I did this, and insists that I blog about it. And, anyone who has a sister knows that you usually do what your sisters say, when they say it. It's unexplainable, but true.

2. Frank said I had to blog about it to make up in a small way for all the trouble it caused him. :-) Basically, as penance for my sin. And, personally I'd really rather blog about it, because he's been threatening to hijack my blog lately, and I really don't want this to be his subject matter, I'd rather speak for myself, thank you. I like to make my own plentiful and wordy excuses, and I would guess that he wouldn't even allow me one pithy one. :-)

3. And, finally. It is a good story, and even if it's at my own expense, I can rarely resist a good story.

Fact#1: So, our dog really needs to run. She loves it, and she's happier around the house when we take her out and let her run. We've been working on leash training, but I've been very busy around the house lately, and even when I do take her for a walk, I can't walk fast enough to give her the exercise she desires, so she ends up un-tired, and I end up irritated, it's much easier to just stop by a large empty open space and let her off leash, and she'll run for miles, and then come barreling back the minute I call her.

Fact#2: We haven't been Going Losting lately. The reason for that will appear very shortly in this blog. :-) But, I REALLY miss it. I am, depending on the mood I started out in, generally either irritated or amused when we talk to people about Going Losting, and they converse with Frank and ignore me, because they assume that it is HIS hobby, and I unwillingly tag along and put up with it. It is OUR HOBBY, and we all enjoy it together. If, GOD FORBID, something were to happen to Frank, the girls and I would still go losting, camping, and exploring as much as possible.

So, I was feeling housebound and townbound and crazy the other day, and the dog needed a run. And, usually we take her to the staging area of a nearby wheat field, or up to a sage brushy field area near our house. But, I was feeling bored with that, and needing pine trees, and a gorgeous view, and whatnot. So I decided to just head up Stemilt Loop Hill, and see how far I could get. We drove along, talking, admiring the views, singing, giggling and looking for a good place to let Callie out to run. And, we came to this hill. This hill is the beginning of a Forest Service Road that eventually ends up at the top of Mission Ridge Ski Resort. And, we've done that trip many times, it's one of our favorites. In retrospect, we should have walked up it. Retrospect would not have made for such a good story though. So, we talked about it a few seconds, and decided to go for it. So, Rovey climbed the hill with ZERO DIFFICULTY. No slipping or sliding whatsoever. And, we got out, finished our sandwiches, and played...

Hi Mommy! I'm the princess of the moving Rovey Castle, and this is my window that I look over my land through!!

What's this pokey wire stuff, mom?!

And, the regal dog with the slobber flung far and wide, ran her heart out.

And, after a while we started playing with her and the camera, and seeing how many crazy pictures we could get of her... it was a good day for the crazy picture category, as you can see.

Ok, I'm bored with you guys and the weird black thing you're always holding in front of you.

We enjoyed the hazy bright sunshine.

The view, which on the way up was Wenatchee, and once we were up there is Ellensburg.

And then we got in the car to go home, and I started thinking. I should NOT have started thinking. It usually gets me into trouble. But, you see, The Discovery II, our (generally speaking) delightfully quirky model of Land Rover, is NOT FUN to back down steep hills. I do not know the technical reasons for this, although they have been explained to me at least once. I deleted that information from my archives. It feels really trippy and out of control. And, considering how easy it was to get up the hill, my original plan was just to back back down the hill... makes sense, right?! Well, then I started thinking, it would be SO nice to just drive down the hill headfirst. So, I decided to look for a spot I could turn around. And, without going into the details, I will just tell you that we slid right off the hardpack, and into a soft melty ditch thingy. Ooops. It appears this was a bad idea. Should have backed down the hill. So, I opened up the back of the Land Rover to get into the Pelican Case (one of many that we own)with all the recovery gear. Recently we've taken a trip in Rovey, and gotten a new dishwasher, and these things necessitated the removing of the recovery gear. Uh Oh. But, we did have a hatchet. So I started chopping sagebrush, and thick branches off a nearby tree to try to shove them under the wheels and get more traction.

Unfortunately, with traction control, the only wheel that was working was the one that didn't have any of Rovey's weight on it. So, I worked on it for a while, before making the dreaded phone call to Frank. I had to move 12.5 feet away from Rovey, stand on one foot with the other one held at a 90 degree angle to my body, and one arm as high as I could reach, and the one holding the phone had to have my elbow pointed straight out in a 45 degree turn from the angle of my leg. Or something like that. Basically, I had no service. Um... I'm stuck. Finally, I figured out that even though I didn't have phone service, I could send and receive text messages. Thank The Lord for that. So, he started heading up to where I was in his business casual work clothes, and I kept working on digging, branchifying, letting air out of the tires, which never seemed to get flatter and it turns out they, hahaha! were getting flatter, the snow around them was just keeping them puffed up at so it appeared that they weren't getting flatter. At this point, I would like it duly noted that I was taking pictures, not it a "Hahaha! Silly me, getting Rovey stuck!" sort of way, but rather in a "Oh Crap. I'm gonna have to hike out of here with the girls and the dog, and Frank's going to need to see what the situation is so he can plan recovery mo' betta." I also, sharing this one single trait with Lara Croft, Tomb Raider "brute strength of a hammer usually wins out over the technical prissiness of a screwdriver" sort of person, also decided to try to drive and use a pulley system I devised with a rope tied to the back of rovey and a sagebrush at the same time. It didn't work, probably looked and definitely felt stupider than stupid, but it was worth a try, and it was good exercise, is all I'm gonna say.

So, after a while, my ever patient man appeared hiking over the edge of the ridge, all GQ-business-casual-white-knight-delicious looking. He drove his 300 as far as he could, and hiked the rest of the way in, pretty close to a couple miles, would be my guess. And, he worked as hard as he could to get it out, before we decided that I would hike down to the nearest house--not very far, and see if they could help. So I did, and a sweet teenage boy, who reminded me of my brother so much it actually made me really homesick for my brother, who very nearly said in conversation three times that "nobody is stupid enough to go up there" but worked as hard as he could to get Rovey out, came and helped us. He did, for the record, say that I was most definitely NOT the stupidest person he'd ever helped. Phew. I was worried. He was pretty impressed at how far Rovey had gotten, that's for sure. He had a huge diesel truck that dug in, instead of riding on top of the hard pack snow. So, he gave us all a ride down to the 300, and we drove home, leaving Rovey up there for the night. Frank put out a call for some help to other overlanding friends we have, and ended up getting help from a friend of a friend who lives in town and owns a Jeep, and was excited to do a recovery, and brave enough to go up the hill in the first place, and skillful enough to not get himself stuck in the process as well. The thing about Overlanders is that usually: 1. They're excited about their hobby, and love to talk about it, and explore new places with new people who share the same hobby. 2. They love to help with recoveries, every chance they get. Thank The Lord for that.

As a result, I've learned a few things.

1. I need offroading classes.

2. I need recovery training.

3. When Rovey gets worked on, I need to help, and learn, and not delete the information about Rovey as soon as it enters my head. Apparently, when you have a Land Rover, chances are good that if you are going to get stuck, Rovey will get you deep deep deeeeeeeeep into the woods before you stuckify.

4. And, apparently, even when I decide to take the dog for a simple 1 hour run, I need to pack snacks, and a warm blanket. We could have spent the night in Rovey if we'd had to, I had some food, warmer clothes type stuff, and we would have been fine, but, I also could have been much better prepared. I had some warmer clothes, and a heater of a dog, three knives, toilet paper, dog duck jerky and a leftover PBJ half, but that won't keep a body warm and well fed.

And, for the record, everyone who hears this story thinks I was lost. I WAS NOT LOST. I knew exactly where I was. We could have walked right down to Wenatchee.

And, one more thing. Many thanks and love to my husband, who amazingly DID NOT SAY ONE WORD about my intelligence, and lack thereof. He took the whole thing with considerable aplomb. I know him well enough to know what he was thinking, so that shows some considerable impressive restraint. It's further proof, if I needed any, that God really did give me the perfect man... in case you haven't noticed, I'm the adventurous one, and he's the one with common sense. So, (at least when we're together) we make a really good team.

The next day I quilted all day. The End.