Hey, y'all;
Well, here's another deer season come in the Old Dominion; and as usual, Kathy is up in them thar hills, startin' off with bowhunting.
Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I've been remiss in my reporting; but every coin has two sides, and the other side of this'n is that there ain't so much to report. But those of you as knows Killy would probably be interested in what little I've got, so here goes:
We got away late last Saturday. It took longer to find and organize and pack than we had anticipated, and then there was the matter of getting last-minute perishables to go in the coolerator, gas for the vehicles, traffic, etc.; and Kathy and I also paid a brief visit to her father and stepmother on the way out, with family treasures she'd gotten just recently from relatives in PA. There was other stuff, but I won't bore you. Bottom line is that it was getting dark as we approached the general region where we camp. We had been up past midnight Friday into Saturday, getting ready. To add to it, I hadn't slept well, and come sundown Saturday in the Alleghenys, I was dog tired. So Kathy accommodated me, and we stopped in Seneca Rocks, West Virginia for the night.
There's an establishment there called 'Yokum's Vacationland', and we recommend it to anybody looking for accommodations in the area. Carl and Shirley Yokum have been married for 69 years this past October; Shirley still runs the reservations and the restaurant, and Carl still does the maintenance. He's a 91 year-old cancer survivor, and she's 87, and has come through a brain tumor and blood clots, and other stuff. They're survivors of the highest order, and we love and admire them.
Sunday morning, we went ahead to the campsite and set up. There were some problems, but we solved 'em, and by late afternoon, the basics were in place. Tent was up, cook shack was up, and we had lanterns, heat, food and water, and a place for Killy to sleep. As the shadows got long, I headed back for the flatlands.
Kathy called me late Monday afternoon. You have to come down off the mountain to use the phone. She was halfway checking on me to see that I'd gotten home alright, and halfway giving me a scouting report. She'd seen no deer and no sign. Pretty bleak. She gave me a 'shopping list' for my next trip, of a few items we had forgotten to bring up, and that's really about it. No word since Monday.
This isn't any real cause for concern. Down near the end of our phone conversation, she was getting antsy to get back up on the mountain. She wanted to get ready for the next day's hunt, and she had gone up there to be in the woods, not yak on the phone.
So there it is. I take the lack of communication as that she's dug in to do some serious hunting while bow season is still in. With so little to go on as there is up there this year, a person has to hunt hard to have any hope of results, so I expect that's what she's doing. NOAA says a weather front has just moved through the area today, and that often stirs the critters up. Tomorow is the last day of bow season up there, and I figure she's going to be all business.
I'm going back up tomorrow (Sat.) for the weekend. More on Tuesday or Wednesday, when I get back home. Say 'thanks' to a veteran this Sunday.
Regards to all, C.