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THE BROWNS BOARD

Favorite Outdoor Stories


TexasAg1969

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Give your top two or three hiking and/or hunting stories.

1. Snorkeling a small half-moon island with pristine coral reef full of tropical fish where no one ever went at that time (1960) in what is now the Morrocoy National Park on the coast of Venezuela.  

2. Snowshoeing off Bear Lake to Bierstadt Lake in RMNP in about 3 ft. of new snow on a sunny morning after the clouds had cleared off the mountains that were also laden with new snow on top of old.

3. Bowhunting with a Bear recurve bow in the wilderness between Cheyenne and Laramie. Same trip I came upon a half naked (waist down) woman I later had a clear easy shot of about 25 yds. from     above a deer that was looking down below us and had stopped on the trail I had placed myself uphill from. I drew the bow all the way back, then let it slack and deliberately aimed underneath it so that all I did was scare it with a shot below it's body between the front and back legs. It was just a spiritual thing that told me to let it live for another day, another time. I felt very close to God at that moment in time and listened to an unspoken message. 

I always feel closest to God when I am in the wilderness on my own. I fully understand what many of the western American Indian Tribes incorporate into their spiritual beliefs, that God is all a part of it if we just open our eyes to that basic truth.

 

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56 minutes ago, TexasAg1969 said:

I always feel closest to God when I am in the wilderness on my own. I fully understand what many of the western American Indian Tribes incorporate into their spiritual beliefs, that God is all a part of it if we just open our eyes to that basic truth.

I've felt this way since I was kid old enough to go out squirrel hunting with my Dad. We talked about it often. And the Blue Ridge mountains, hiking up the mountain of his old home place, almost up to the cliffs below the Skyline Drive. I still feel that way out in our woods, hours at a time when I can. As in, my Wife in Dallas visiting her Dad, or, the short while I was retired, and she was still working a few years..

   My Wife and I sitting, cuddled in a blanket, watching the sun's tiny diamond slowly creeping up over the dramatic horizon of Mnt. Haleakala - sitting near the top of the crater there. The Hawaiian Island of Maui. just over 10,000 feet up.

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snorkeling at Trunk Bay, St John, Virgin Islands - the water was actually clearer than when we snorkeled some places in Hawaii.

When my Wife's parents moved to Texas, she stayed up here in Ohio, in college.(she was playing for the local state college basketball team - a 5' point guard, before Title Nine and scholarships.) Her best friend's family "adopted" her as one of the daughters.

My one adopted sister-in-law went swimming there, only because I was going out again, while everybody else stayed on the beach...

my Wife's parents also went - in their seventies)... 3/4 out along that island? Somebody was screaming "big barracuda",

and started to panic, she gulped in some sea water from a small wave, and panicked, not a good swimmer, so I lifeguarded her to shore on that island til she quit gagging and coughing, lol, and escorted her back to shore. After that, they bought a pool and she became an excellent swimmer. Later, Wife and I were snorkeling and I was diving down to read the Underwater State Park signs, and I read "fire coral", then turned around and bumped my inner upper leg near my groin on...fire coral.

Now, THAT hurts. lol

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Been to both of those places cal having stayed on Maui a week and same for St. John. I introduced my young teen daughter and pre-teen son to the joys of snorkeling in several spots around St. John. I also took a trip on the Nat. Park run snorkeling boat around the island to some isolated spots you can't get to by 4 WD (we rented a Suzuki that week). Saw a Hawksbill turtle and a  peacock flounder on that trip as well as a fully grown queen angel fish at Trunk Bay. The flounder is really cool with all that blue in it though this one looks a little too tinted.

Bothidae - Bothus mancus.jpg 

You should have told them the barracuda won't hurt you. They just look like they would. LOL!

And amen to fire coral. That stuff really stings as much as a man o' war does.

Edit: Great snorkel spot  on St. John is Waterlemon Cay. Too bad the hurricane tore up the island so badly a couple years ago.

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Snorkeling in Roatan Honduras yrs ago..  Too clear, like flying over the unbelievable Coral

The first time we laid eyes on the Grand Canyon.. Don't know what else to say.

Normandy.... Thee most powerful place on the planet we've had the good fortune to visit..

 

Too many to choose from.. We've been very lucky..

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Visiting the Pearl Harbor Arizona Memorial.

Two stories about Hawaii -

   Inlaws went to visit a church on Maui ? We decided to go off on our own. We wanted to find out own beach, all by ourselves. As in, romantically alone on beach. Rented a 4-wheel little jeep. Drove down the coast, found beach.

As I drove out onto the beach, I got about 30 yards from a house, when all of a sudden we couldn't go anywhere and got stuck. It's pretty hot, no wind, palm trees, beach. and 4 wheel drive just had all 4 wheels rolling and getting in deeper.

   Turns out, later, it was a beach with very old sand. OLD sand, the grains aren't all that angular, more like marbles.

 So, we only got the jeep back out, by my Wife driving carefully, and me getting a bunch of palm fronds and putting them in front of the tires. Well, that got us about five feet. Again and again. And to get traction, I had to actually lift the back of the little jeep, bounce it long enough to get traction to move onto the palm leaves. By the time we got back to that house, we drove up into the yard. Except, I was way over heated, mad, and dizzy/dehydrated....I fell over into the sand. She got out, helped me into the jeep and we took off. Got me a bottle of water at some little store, and we happily returned the jeep.  Ah well.

   After that disappointment, we never told her parents, but laughed about it often, one of her favorite stories over the years... we made up for it at a Luau party one night, while staying at a hotel on the beach on Kaui. Her parents went up to go to bed, the party ebbed later on, and we had our blanket, and went out onto the beach. Had a really great time. While we were out there being frisky, another couple had the same idea, walked out nearly stepped on us, they were apologizing, we all laughed, they went down the beach.

   Beautiful moonlight, whispering warm breeze, lapping of water on the water's edge. Later, we decided we were tired, and went to leave to go back to our room. We got up, etc, I turned on the flashlight, and here was a bunch of holes in the sand everywhere around us. Except under our blanket. Figured horseshoe crabs whatever, dig out of the sand at night and go into the ocean. We never knew it.

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