Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 8:48 pm
Subject: REPORT FROM THE SPRING CREEK LOG DODGE HOVERIN
Spring Creek Hover Log Dodge Hover-in 8/4/03:
Lane Crampton is always in search of new places to hover in
Houston. On his last outing, he managed to get his Aircommander
stuck in a marsh when his lift engine suffered an untimely and
sudden death. It took a posse of folks to get his craft back to
civilization.
So on Saturday, I am talking to Lane on his way to the movies and he
says he has found a "great" place to hover. It is an ATV park and
they have a web site with pictures. So, I look up the web site and
pictures … Oh my … the first picture is an ATV dodging a big tree in
a little creek. The second picture is a TALLLL sand hill between
what looks like the entry area and the creek. Hill might be
misleading; the term "cliff" comes to mind. In panic, I call Lane
back (it was his birthday and he was at the Pirates movie…). In his
most carefree manner he says "don't worry mate, those pictures
really don't show the entry into the water". He goes on to say he
has been on the creek many times and its no problem.
I don't know what I was thinking, and I really am old enough to know
better, but… off I went Sunday with hovercraft in tow. Well, the
pictures didn't do this place justice. You get to the place by
following a pipe-line road (think unpaved, narrow (one car at most –
sometimes not even that), and not for the family mini-van kind of
woods road. I arrived a few minutes late and my first view of the
place is not a view but a huge billowing tower of a dust cloud
following Lane who is coming in my direction on this "road" in his
hovercraft. The entire forest behind the hovercraft is hidden, the
sky is hidden, it looks like the sand storm scene from "The Mummy".
I quickly close the windows and make sure the vents in the truck are
off. Heck, I don't need paint on my new truck anyway….
The fates were with me and Lane turned around and went back through
the dust cloud and back to the clearing where the ATVs are
unloaded. After waiting for the wind to blow the cloud off the road
I drove into the park. The parking area was pretty good with lots
of room to turn around and park. It was, as it turned out, the
highlight of the park.
So I get out and am greeted by a gritty looking Lane (turns out that
was the highpoint for his appearance also) and the owner of this
recreational establishment. I expressed some "concern" about
getting my hovercraft down to the creek and generously offer to help
Lane take his down there first. So off we go in Lane's car towing
his hovercraft through a trail in the woods to a barbed wire fence
that is about 700 feet from the edge of the bank of the creek. The
gate in the fence is just about as wide as the hovercraft. We
unload the HC and Lane drives it to the edge of the creek and I
follow on foot through the brush so that I am well upwind of the now
sizeable dust cloud. I finally get to the edge of the bank and look
DOWNNNNNNNN at the creek. This is not an entry, it is a toboggan
run cut out from the cliff by the ATVs running down it. Clearly you
could get the hovercraft into the creek (gravity and all), but it
was unclear if you could stop before you hit the bank on the other
side. Then there was the matter of getting the hovercraft back
up…. A short excursion found that there was a path from the bank
further down the creek that you could likely come back up on but it
had fairly steep banks in it and was quite narrow (about an ATV
wide).
Lane went down and was able to get back up along the path (it was
fun to watch him at the bank turns). So lacking any sense, I went
back and got my HC. Lane went down the toboggan run first and
promptly got stuck in the trees on the other side of the creek. I
dragged the rump of my HC down the run to keep the speed down and
entered the creek. After about 3-4 minutes Lane finished with his
forestry exercise and we flew up the creek (yes, without a
paddle). It was a challenge. The creek was about 3-4 inches deep
and there were sand bars everywhere. There were logs and other
snags all over the place and you had to be very careful how you flew
but we traveled pretty far up before we decided to head back. On
the way back I took the lead and we went down the creek from where
we started. It was pretty fun but hairy. The sand bars were quite
large and long so we often used them to get around blockages in the
creek. The creek went from pretty narrow to almost river like. We
passed a lot of ATV folks that stopped just to watch us. They had
never seen any thing like this before. After a while I decided to
turn around and went up a sand bank. Unfortunately, the other side
of the bank was a crater with a big bushy log. I killed the lift
engine but it did not die soon enough and sure enough I whacked the
log on the right rear of my HC. It snapped 5 zip ties and bent a
tab on my rudder support. After a short repair, we were heading
back to the launch point. My steering was now shifted so to go
straight, I had to turn the handle bar halfway to the right. Oh
well.
Well I got out along the path Lane pioneered and loaded my HC on the
trailer. Lane parked his craft and went looking for the owner to
give him a ride. The next time I saw Lane he looked like a walking
piece of brown sandpaper. I mean, he was loaded with sand –
everywhere. It didn't seem like an answer I really wanted to know
so I did not ask about the matter…. BTW, Lane had been on the
creek "many times" but he failed to mention it was on an ATV.
We likely went 15-20 miles along the creek. It was fun; it was
challenging and, most assuredly, it was dirty. Now I have 6 weeks
to fix my AC-3 before the Lone Star Hover-in.
Howard
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