On the Road Again....

Left Ben Avery at 0900, got in to Roper Lake State Park, Safford AZ about 2.  Nice park!  We walked all around the lake, saw lots of birds, a rabbit, some anow capped mountains on our west side.
Incredible scenery on the drive over from Phoenix.  Big mountain passes, narrow gorges, a short tunnel.  All impossible to photograph either because there was no place to stop or it was just too much to capture with a camera.

Three views from our lunch stop

Walking around Roper Lake

Yellow headed blackbirds

A Coot.  Can't tell if it's an old coot or not.

Palm trees and snow capped mountains.  How cool is that!

Our campsite at Roper Lake SP

Winter Range is over

Watched the Top 16 Shootoff and the Wild Bunch Top 8 Shootoff this morning.  That was fun.
That's the top scoring 16 men and 16 ladies who go one-on-one until there is one left, then the top man goes against the top lady.  The guy does not always win.

The awards ceremony lasted from 11 to about 2.  Nope, I didn't win anything more.  I placed 13th in Frontiersman and 14th in Wild Bunch Traditional.  My score would have placed 10th in WB Trad. Senior, but I'm 5 weeks too young!  hahaha

Later a group of New Englanders met at Henri's camp for unwinding.  Good time!



Here is a video of Half-a-Hand Henri (on right) in her first run in the Wild Bunch shootoff against Serenity.

Inside the main tent for awards

Second round, HHH (on left) vs Texas Tiger

Last day of Main Match

Four final stages at 11 AM, then some fun with a Gatling Gun.
Look below for a couple videos that Carlene took of the action today.  Stages were still very good, a little more simple today so I could run a bit faster.  Of course when I run faster I can miss.  Yup, did that.  As Yankee put it "the scoring gods were favorable to me" meaning I probably missed two but all three spotters called one miss.  That's the way it goes, sometimes you're lucky and sometimes they call misses that didn't happen.
After the stages we went over to the Gatling Gun.  I had to buy a few rounds just to have the sensation of firing that big boy.
This evening was another dinner and side match awards.  A few days ago I said I shot Plainsman OK, turns out to be better than I thought.  I got 4th place in Plainsman Traditional!  Yeee Haaa!

Vendor Row 2

Vendor Row 1 

Food section

Stage 3

Stage 4

View out the window of the camper

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Doc's Friday, Main Match day 2

Started out quite chilly at 39 degrees this morning.  Since I didn't have to shoot until 2 PM that didn't matter.  So I had the worst stage of the match so far, and my 3 best stages too.  Ended up feeling very good and back in the groove with 4 more stages tomorrow to finish the match.
This evening was a spaghetti supper, in honor of the Spaghetti Western theme of the match, followed by Casino night.  Now this casino night is all-for-fun gambling, craps, Blackjack and roulette.  The absolute best was Doc Holiday demonstrating Faro.  This guy is a great Doc character impression.  He tells many stories and as close to true history of Doc as he has been able to establish.  All told in character while playing Faro with us.  There is plenty of slight of hand while he cheats at a game that already has a huge house advantage.  Great entertainment.  For the other games we are given a $50 stake and can buy more when that runs out.  In the end all chips are exchanged for raffle tickets.  I was fine with my free stake.
Speaking of raffles, I won 10# of black powder today!

The Rhinestone Roper is one of the entertainment shows.  Here he is showing tricks with his horse Jesse James 

Horse is balancing on his back, note the hat on his hoof

The late afternoon sun was messing with the exposure.  These are a couple of the ladies on the posse.

Carlene's day 2/24/17

This morning, I went to the Pioneer Living Museum a few miles away.  It was nice that it was dog friendly so Callahan could tag along.  It reminded me of Shelburne Museum as some of the buildings were moved here from nearby areas.  It represented life from the mid to late 1800s.  Some of the buildings were in great condition while others were in need of repairs.  I still enjoyed the whole setting.
In the afternoon, Andy shot four stages so I went to watch and took some pictures of the action.

Doc's Thursday, start of Main Match

Early start for the first day of the main match.  Winter Range runs 3 groups each day.  Today I had the 8 AM group, tomorrow the 2 PM and Saturday the 11 AM group.We shoot 4 stages each day.  It's a pretty casual pace overall yet we have to move right along to get our 4 stages done before the next group arrives to start their shift.
I shot fairly wel with 1 miss on the second stage.  Got that "clean match" stuff out of the way early.  The rest of the day was taken up with wandering around the vendors, spending some time hanging around Tazz's tent and cleaning guns.

Carlene's outing

I drove several miles north to an exit off I-17 that I thought might lead me to a hiking trail.  The forest service sign read Horsethief Basin Recreation Area.  The road started out paved and soon turned to a rough potholed gravel road with still too many miles to my destination.  I quickly realized this recreation area was being used by people using jeeps and ATVs.  This wasn't exactly what I had in mind.  I turned around and headed to Black Canyon for other hiking opportunities.  My two attempts brought me to water over the road and road closures.  I went back to Lake Pleasant to hike a six mile trail.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear some wild burros braying and lucky to spot them in the distance.  They were standing in the shade of a small tree. The wind kept the temperature at a very comfortable level for hiking.

near Black Canyon

road closure

desert lupine

saguaro

Doc's Wednesday, warm up and Plainsman

Started off with 4 stages of warm up event.  That's just like a regular cowboy match but just for practice .  We still keep score and there are some winner trophies but it's not part of the main match.  Most of us just want to shoot some more.  I did pretty well, shot it clean and respectable times.  Good practice session!

Later in the afternoon was the Plainsman side event.  That's using cap & ball pistols and single shot rifles.  I had volunteered to help.  I was the only official volunteer so I was running the event.  About 30 shooters, I don't see that many Plainsmen in a whole year in New England.  But this is Winter Range!  The rifle targets were way out.  OK, OK, so it was about 40-50 yards and that's not very far, but this is CAS and that's a long way in CAS.  (Cowboy Action Shooting)  I did pretty well here too, only missed 3 of the 27 rifle shots.  I always get a chuckle out of the guys with vernier sights for Plainsman, and I have shotgun sights, and shoot as well as they do!  Proves you don't need the fancy sights for this game.  Long Range events are their own little world and really need the best sights.

After all the shooting was done we had the opening ceremonies for the main match including a flyover by the Warbirds, 10 of them in formation for 3 passes.  Beautiful!  Then a cowboy dinner, beans & dogs.