By Stephanie Fowler
On a Friday morning last summer I was practically jumping with excitement. At 2:00 I was t leave work with my Oma (that’s Grandma in German) to go pick up Joshua from his house and leave to go camping at Upper Tonto Creek.
Bus alas time never goes faster than a crawl when you are excited about something out of the ordinary to happen. After about 7 hours we were on our way to Tonto National Forest. Of course we had a truck full of camping equipment
On the way up we saw all of God’s fury. Thunder, lightning and tons of gallons of rain was pouring distance. On the way down the hill to Jakes Corner, Oma gave Josh and me a choice, “We can spend the night with Grandpa and go camping in the morning or we could go camping in the pummeling rain,” she had said. After only a moment of thought we both chided, “No, we want to go camping!” Once we arrived in Payson it was pouring. I was starting to have second thoughts but I kept them to myself. Once we got to our destination we were surprised to see that it was just sprinkling. We got everything set up and then the storm kicked in. So we took our chicken, Gatorade, cookies and chips and scurried to our little sleeping tent. Since there was nothing to do we decided to bed at 8:30. When the storm died down to a sprinkle. Momentarily, Oma put the last piece of chicken in the ice chest and then ran and jumped back in the tent.
After playing picture on the back games and being sung weird songs to we finally fell asleep to the pitter-patter of the rain on our tent. The little creek tried to make itself heard but we could only hear a fragment of it.
Josh and I were the first to wake up in the morning. We went down to the creek to look for crawdads. The sky was blue and the birds were singing.
While we were down at the creek, Oma woke up. As she emerged from our sleeping domain she happened to glance at our ice chest. She was that the plastic baggie with our chicken bones in it was dangling of the side of our ice chest! It was full of puncture holes as f something had tried vigorously to tear it out of our food container! Oma also saw that our last big chicken breast and the bad had vanished without a trace! Something had opened up the ice chest and had taken and eaten it bones and all! Oma said that our fried chicken bandit must have been a raccoon or a skunk. It was a mystery we shall never know.
While Oma was discovering our loss, Josh and I were down at the creek enjoying ourselves. I was coaching Josh on how to catch a crawdad without being pinched. Finally he caught one. It wasn’t exactly big yet it wasn’t exactly small. But we threw it in the bucket to boil up later. As we were going down the creek I happened to over turn a rock that had a little lagoon under it. As I looked down and saw a crawdad about 4 inches long with his tail out and claws in front of him. I had said, “ Josh, it’s a granddaddy crawdad, grab it!”
He exclaimed, “I’m not going to get pinched by that thing!” We were nearing our curfew (Oma had told us to be back in a hour). But I said I don’t care if we are late we are going to catch this crawdad! “ So I got it to grab on to a reed and I flipped it on shore then Josh grabbed it and put it in the bucket. As I let out a war cry Oma poked her head over the rock above us and said, “Your breakfast is ready if you would like to come up and eat it.” After a breakfast of egg burritos we went down to a pool and Oma caught a trout in less then 10 minutes. After Oma had showed me how to clean it an idea had struck me. Maybe if I put a fish head on my line I would catch a big crawdad. So I tried it out.
I put the head on the line I dunked it down in a deep pool. I waited for a minute or so and began to slowly bring it up. And there, on my line, was the biggest crawdad I have ever seen. If someone had never seen a crawdad before and saw that huge revolting thing they would have thought it was a juvenile lobster. Hoping he wouldn’t let go I pulled him up .I put him in the bucket. Then I looked at it closer up it has a huge 8inches not including the pincers. I new we were going to feast that night
Oma went up to our camp to boil us some bratwurst for lunch. As she was starting to fill the pot with water, she looked over and saw a diamond-back rattlesnake! “I was standing there staring at it, trying to figure out what to do.” She said later. “So I just waited for the kids to come up. I needed to be sure that they didn’t stumble into it ”
After catching 30 or more crawdads and 3 trout, Josh and I headed up to our camp. When we got there I saw Oma just standing there staring at the ground. I followed her direction of sight and gasped. As I was staring at it I asked Oma If it had moved at all. She told me that it hadn’t moved since she came up (which was like 10 minutes ago).
So we started throwing rocks and twigs at it. Then I noticed that its mouth was sort of ajar and its belly was big as if had just eaten something. It was dead. Whatever this snake had eaten had killed it. Oma said that we needed to get it out of our camp, so Josh and I worked together and picked it up with our two fishing poles. Finally we go it on a rock belly up so that any hungry birds of prey could see it.
After a delicious dinner we lit a campfire and started to relax and warm our toes. Of course no camping trip is complete without bugs. One big moth was flying around our lantern and suddenly must have thought that Josh was the lantern and started crashing into him. It was so funny to me that I was doubled over laughing. Then the moth was took Josh’s side and flew and hit me full in the mouth. Blach
We went to bed laughing. The next day was almost exactly the same except there were no more snakes. I was starting to get tired of fish and crawdads. Again we went to bed to the pitter-patter of the rain.
After packing up the camp the next morning we started our tedious drive home. Luckily we dropped by Grandpa’s house. My Uncle Ronnie took me on his ATV down to an old gold mine and guess what creek I saw? Lower Tonto Creek. When we got back (speaking of back, my butt hurt!) We said our good-byes and left. We all agreed and that we had to do that again.
After dropping Josh off at home Oma and I headed to our house. Once we had unpacked everything I went into my room and Millie was asleep on my feet I sighed and thought about how much fun I had and how much laughter there had been. Unfortunately I was too tired to memorize it all and fell asleep to the laughter I was remembering.
"Once we arrived in Payson it was pouring. I was starting to have second thoughts but I kept them to myself. Once we got to our destination we were surprised to see that it was just sprinkling. We got everything set up and then the storm kicked in. So we took our chicken, Gatorade, cookies and chips and scurried to our little sleeping tent.