Driving Highway 95 south through Nevada during the shortest days of year can be numbing. You are sort of steering on the straight shot steering maybe listening to Willie, "On the Road Again," and so your mind has a tendency to wonder. That can be fatal on these narrow roads. I know by heart what lies over the next summit and each town sparkles like Christmas lights. Small isolated cow towns like Yerington or Hawthorne put us into the Holidays mood. We have driven this way for the past 29 years at Christmas time. This year we the high chilling plateau in west central Nevada around around 7 p.m. near Tonopah and Goldfield where bitter cold can freeze your RV pipes. The town is aolway quiet except for the passer by filling on $3.00 gas. I got sick at the Mizpah Hotel once coming back from a wrestling tournament so I'll wait till Beatty to fuel up on highway food probably at Eddy's
I associate Christmas with Arizona warmth so the high desert coldness is meant for Montana and my hunting friends up there all those gray days for southern Arizona mainly chasing quail. After descending picturesque Goldfield grade we call the Rosary grade, it is down hill to the warm Sonoran desert and best of all the massive wing shooting that lies ahead. We are seeking the desert morning doves that fled, like us, south to a softer warmer sunlight.
Driving through Las Vegas is akin like combat driving to avoid IED. This year the roads are civil and we pass through without the City Bitches and EuroBoyz shooting the gap texting and blabbing on blue tooths. Maybe they left for some where or grewnup. Hoover Dam is a breeze and the monster underbelly of the new bridge is almost complete. I will miss driving across the dam setting my watch ahead. By Kingman its time to close the eyes, air the dogs catch a few moments of "The Hunt for the Red October," before we awake in the WalMart parking lot ready for a cup of richly roasted coffee. It is beginning to feel like Christmas.
A half day later, we are crawling 4x4 low to our family Christmas camp site in the Sonoran desert. Our arroyo spot is still pristine and no one has been there since we broke hunting camp a year ago. It time to collect firewood and find Yule logs that keep the fire ready for next morning breakfast. I worry as usual. We must find the flights and the roost for me to feel at home again.
How hot can our barrels get. They have sizzled for the past 17 years of pass shooting these desert rollers. We gently remove the Lance Camper a snap with the remote jacks, level it and we're off to scout the desert. Our dogs know what lies ahead. this year our Lab is down and the burden to retrieve the fifty or so birds days fall to our German Wirehair. Will she handle the heat and pressure.
At first I can not find the flight and I suspect they are not here until my sons laugh and remind me that I always go through this process each year, They are not concerned and they assure me the flights are around but we must scout hard and we will find the flights. And so we did. By next morning and for the next 14 days we camped, shot over 10 cases of shells, exchanged Christmas gifts, shared campfires with friends and the local Kit foxes then dinned on grain feed doves ala Sonora.
Will the birds be there next years I ask
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