Posted by: Crazy Horse in MyBlog on Jul 28, 2009
Now this whole incident was started by my Mother-In-Law a couple of years after Lora and I were married.
We were over at my Mother-in-Laws house in Irving Texas. I do not rmemeber what the occasion was, but some how we all got to looking at old family pictures and discussing them.
Lora's Dad had been in the Navy and the family had lived all over the globe almost. Looking at some of the pictures and discussing places the family had lived, Lora's Mom looked at her and asked, "You remember the Moose don't you"?
Lora stated that she did not remember the Moose and so the conversation turned to trying to figure out which kid Lora's Mom was thinking about and where they were living at the time.
Turns out, she was thinking about Lora's older sister, and at the time Lora's Dad was stationed on Newfoundland.
This was a few years before Lora's birth, so naturally she did not remember the Moose.
Now when the conversation had tunred to Moose and Newfoundland I got to thinking about some of the old Sports Afield and American Sportsman shows from back in the 60's and 70's and thinking about the videos that had been taken of the great Lee Wulff and some other folks up in Newfoundland hunting Moose and fly fishing for Atlantic salmon.
I was extremely fortunate in marrying Lora, because even though she is not that much in to hunting, she does like to fish, but more importantly she likes to tag along with me, just to see the country.
I had done my first elk hunt in Colorado in Oct. of 1992, just about 35 days or so after mine and Lora's wedding on August 29.
I was able to go each year thru 1995, and had started before the elk hunt in 95' to make plans to go to Newfoundland on a Moose and Woodland Caribou hunt.
Lora has been a really good sport and very patient with my foibles, even though I almost missed our First Wedding Anniversary, due to some brainless scheduling on my part for my first Pronghorn hunt in Wyoming in 1993.
Lora had over heard me and the outfitter I hunt elk with in Colorado planning out the trip to Wyoming, so when I got off the phone, she calmly asked me when I was leaving to go on the "Goat" hunt.
Being moderately brain damaged i looked at her straight faced and said I will be leaving on August 28 and coming back on..........and that is when I noticed this little hurt look forming on her face, and reality whacked me one and I said, I will tell you when I get thru talking to Pudge and called him back.
So, instead of leaving the day before our First Anniversary, I left 2 days after. It must have made her happy enough, because we are fixing to celebrate our 17th. Anniversary, and she did not complain too much when during that Fall, I hunted Pronghorn in Wyoming, Elk and Mule Deer in Colorado, and Mule Deer and White Tails in Nebraska.
During my elk hunt in 1995, I told Pudge what I was planning on doing the Fall of 96'. One of my friends that I had become aquainted with on the elk hunts, an older gentleman by the name of Ed Dudley, from Cato New york, invited Lora and I to stay with him and his wife on our way to Canada.
See, where most normal people would have flown for a trip like that, I love adventure. Lowell Thomas was one of my heros as a child, and I have always been enamored with trying to experience all that I can when doing something.
All during the remainder of 95' and the first few months of 96' I worked on getting ready for the tip of a life time. I even built a small trailer to pull behind my Mazda B2200 pick up, complete with a non-working chest type deep freeze mounted on it, so that I could ice the meat down from the game I was going to kill.
Lora and I both arranged what we felt would be the necessary time off for this undertaking, the entire month of September 1996. We even checked our Daughter, Lora's younger duaghter out of Paschal High School for the month.
Our first night out, we stayed somewhere in North-Eastern Oklahome, because we were going to be stopping at Bass Pro in Springfield Mo. the next day.
In the next installment, Bass Pro and Lincoln's Home in Springfield Illinois.
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