Nov 1, 2015

My daughter Sarah challenged me to post something I am thankful for on each day of November.

For November 1st. I am thankful for my sweet and beautiful wife Kimberley! Each day I can’t wait for her to come home, so I can see her lovely smile when she walks through the door. She is the love of my life, and I better stop because I’m getting tears in my eyes.

Story # 21 Mt Timpanogos Caves

In the summer of 2008, Kim and I flew to Utah to visit our two daughters and families! While visiting Inez, my oldest; her family talked me into going through the Mt Timpanogos Caves. I have been through the Carlsbad Caverns; and the Oregon Caves. This should be a lot of fun! I thought. So we made our drive up the canyon. At the Forest Service station, the parking lot was full, so we parked in the lot farther up the road. When I got to the ticket counter, I asked for 6 tickets. “Your hike will be 10 o’clock” the Ranger told me “and you will enter the caves at 11:30”. “We don’t want to go on the hike, we just want to go through the caves” I said. She looked at me and said “You aren’t from around here, are you.” She then pointed to the top of the Mountain and said “you have to hike to the top of that mountain to enter the caves!”

Standing there I took a split second to mentally contemplate what I was expected to do. It was over 100 degrees outside and at the time I weighed 345 pounds! The hike was a mile and a half rising up 1100 feet in elevation. “NO WAY!!!” I said as I looked at my family. After about three minutes of desperate and pitiable begging, I gave in. “how come you didn’t tell me about the hike beforehand!” I asked “because you would have said no.”, they responded, and I knew they were right. I bought a large bottle of water and up the mountain we went! I did pretty well the first quarter-mile then I started getting tired. So every one hundred feet or so, I would stop and rest, then stop and rest and stop and rest. We did this all the way up the Mountain! At about the half-way point, we ran into a Ranger who was coming down the mountain. We talked to him for a minute, then we continued with our hike. I noticed the Ranger was following us, I guess he thought I was going to have a heat stroke or a Heart attack. I have a very strong heart, and I wasn’t worried about heat stroke, it was my legs that really bothered me. During our hike up I was a nervous wreck! I had two very young grandkids with us and they were always getting close to the edge. This trail had no fencing or guard rails, it is hundreds of feet straight down if you fall. We finally made it to the top, and I got to sit down in the shade while we waited for our turn to enter the cave.

It felt so good to enter the cave where the temperature was 45 degrees! The tour was a very thrilling experience, we got to see lots of neat formations and the Ranger seemed very educated and answered all our questions! Each room we went in seemed so different from the one before, it’s incredible to see what thousands of years of running water will do!

As we left the cave, I was thinking this is going to be a piece of cake; it’s downhill all the way! I was feeling pretty good until we got to the half-way point. My legs felt like they were turning into rubber. I had to slow my walk down; this helped, but as we got closer to the ranger station my legs got to where I could hardly stand on them. I finally made it to the end of the trail, however there were still 25 to 30 steps I had to go down. My son-in-law Jerel, had to help me down the steps. At the bottom of the steps was a bench and Jerel sat me down as he left to get the car.

Mark TimpFeeling a bit overwhelmed and even a little proud that I hadn’t died, I hadn’t notice, my family gathering around me. “Grandpa for a job well done we present you with this ribbon!” They said, and then they handed me a red ribbon with the words ‘I survived the climb’

I am now down to 280 pounds, but I have no intentions of ever doing that climb again! Been there, Done that!

Story #20 “My First Camping Trip”

The summer of 1962 I was five years old when I went on my first camping trip! My grandparents John and Madge Cummins loaded me up in their old worn out Chevy car and off we went. Our first stop was in the little town of North San Juan to stretch our legs and grandma bought me a treat. Then grandpa drove us down that long winding road along the beautiful Yuba River and we stopped at the Ranger Station in Downieville. Grandpa visited with the Ranger there for a few minutes, and the Ranger gave grandpa a key. Then it was back in the car and off to where we would be camping for the next five days. We finally arrived, it was a Forest Service Cabin near beautiful Gold Lake! The first thing I noticed was, on the back part of the cabin, there was this large round tube sticking above the cabin. Grandpa told me there was a door at the top of the tube and that’s how the Rangers would enter the cabin in the winter when the snow was up over the roof of the cabin. The thought of fifteen to twenty feet of snow was so over whelming to this little guy!

That next morning grandma cooked us a big breakfast, and then I was ready to go exploring! Grandpa showed me where the spring was. This was so cool, lots of water running out of the ground, and it had a cedar rail fence built around the spring. Grandpa gave me a tin cup. “Take a drink of the water” he said. The water was so cold, but it was so good! So much better than the Grass Valley water I was used to. I think I sat there for an hour watching this water come up out of the ground, dipping my cup in, and enjoying the wonderful fresh water! Then Grandpa and I walked around and looked at all the huge trees! It was so beautiful and peaceful; I enjoyed walking around with grandpa telling me about the trees and the animals we were seeing! “It’s time to collect some fire wood”, he said. So we walked around, picked up wood and hauled it back to the cabin. The cabin had a nice wood stove that kept us warm at night, and that’s where grandma did all her cooking.

Grandpa asked me if I wanted to go fishing, and of course I said “YES” He found a long straight stick on the ground, he tied about three of four feet of fishing ling on the stick and put a hook on the other end of the line. We walked down to a small stream, he gave me a bottle of worms, and a bottle of salmon eggs. He showed me how to put them on my hook. “Here is a bucket”, he said, “if you catch any fish put them in the bucket, then bring the bucket back to the cabin, and I will clean the fish for you”. As grandpa left, I put a worm on my hook. As the hook touched the water, I had a thirteen inch Brook Trout on the line. In the bucket it went and each time the worm or salmon eggs would touch the water, I had a fish on my line. I filled the bucket to the top with brook trout; however I could not lift the bucket so I dragged it back to the cabin. I said “grandpa look at all the fish I caught!” You should have seen his face! I thought grandpa was going to have a heart attack!

My grandma laughed at grandpa and said you didn’t tell him there was a limit on the number of fish you can catch in a day! So grandpa cleaned all the fish and grandma cooked them up. We had trout for dinner that night and the next night too.  The next day I asked grandpa if I could go fishing again, he said NO! Then he explained to me that I had caught two weeks’ worth of fish in one hour, and that we should leave the fish in the stream for other people to catch. Grandma and grandpa took me camping several more times, but that first camping trip to Gold Lake is still my favorite one!   When I grew up I asked my dad if it would be possible for us to go camping at the cabin up at Gold Lake. He told me that the Forest Service had torn it down. It kind of broke my heart, because I really wanted to take my wife and my two daughters there to experience what I had experienced when I was a young boy.