Six fish-seeking scouts, and four adult leaders along for the ride left the church parking lot on schedule at 5:30PM for Fool Hollow Lake outside of Show Low. There was no time to waste, as the state park gate at the lake closes at 10PM, so since we still had hungry young men to feed in the meantime, Scoutmaster Blair helped speed things up by long-snapping the sleeping bags into the trailer. But alas, long before our interim arrival in Payson for Culvers’ custard, the SUV pulling the trailer was buffeted by such a banging, whipping and clatter just below the Bush Highway exit, that we had to pull off to see what was the matter. Upon further inspection, the rear passenger tire had a steel belt tread separate, and remain attached while battering the poor defenseless vehicle. Long before AAA could possibly respond, our intrepid Scoutmaster left his date night and rode to the rescue with an even bigger and stronger SUV, and we were soon on the road again – only this time able to climb tall mountains with only the change of a single gear. Arriving at our final destination but 15 minutes late (the gate had subsequently been arranged to be left open), setup was cheerfully accomplished before midnight.
Waking to 36 degrees and crystal blue skies, our scouts scrambled breakfast, and then set out to save the world (or at least Fool Hollow) through the eradication of invasive species. Moving from thistle (New Mexican) to mistle (toe, that is), our heroic scouts cleared the complete far end of the lake with our shovels and poke-proof (almost!) gloves, and put a dent in the nasty stuff overwhelming a half dozen large juniper trees. Direction and education all morning from Ranger Fran was amazing, and the boys had a ball killing stuff.
The remainder of the day was spent thoroughly enjoying a relaxing day of fishing down-lake from the dam, eating, and having a most excellent campfire. Heard around camp were amazing elk and geese calls, scary and silly stories with s’mores, eclectic oldies songs (from the boys!) such as Stayin’ Alive choruses, whistling of the Pink Panther theme, and endless renditions of ‘Happy Birthday’ to one of our scouts celebrating his special day on the outing. His aunt sent along the most incredible cookies (sugar cookie, frosting, tootsie roll, pretzel, gummy bear and marshmallow – I kid you not), and the boys had a sugar high that was actually diluted a bit by their breakfast of Fruit Loops. Highlights for the adults included spotless individual restrooms with showers, and a plethora of dutch oven cuisine from master soufflé chef Komar Factor in charcoal broiled Cajun scallops, Trader Joes salmon steaks, and fresh trout from the lake, everybody was making plans for our next great trip to the underwater town of Adair (aka Fool Hollow).
