No, but I've got a Three-Five-Seven.

Dad said in jest to me after the old man had turned back after asking “You boys got a tow strap?”

This is what I'd call about midway into my Father's Day adventure. It starts out like this:

Meet Dad at his house, drive to Rainbow Lake to meet my Sister according to her text message directions which said grab the map out of the Winco bag tacked to the street sign for Cooper Ridge and follow road 205 and pink ribbon the whole way. Easy right?!

Everything was cool until we tried to find the route up to Rainbow Lake, it was about 7pm on Friday night when we pulled up into the hills. 'Reprod' is a new word I learned to describe the area around Rainbow Pond, it's where it's clear cut then re-planted to reproduce the timber.

My Dad and I were driving for about 2 hours trying to find the right road, there was no road that was 205, there was no pink ribbon, and the Google map left for us in the Winco bag was just a line tracing a white line for some unlabeled road on this map. Dad was getting ultra mad, like: I didn't f'ing sign up to hunt around in the backwoods for a campsite. So at about 9 we were done and heading back out to the highway to sleep there the night, driving down this steep gravel road through the reprod I noticed headlights from another truck coming up, so we pulled to the side so they could pass. We pulled over, but the lights weren't advancing, so we crept down a little further and rounded a corner to find an old truck stopped.

This old guy comes shambling up to us and says 'You boys got a tow strap?' like we'd turn around the truck somewhere and pull him up the hill, with his tent trailer. Dad said, no sorry, but we backed up to a wide spot and helped them push the truck and trailer. The old man was also carrying around a fat old dachshund close to his belly, he climbed back into the truck and gave it some gas, but it wouldn't go!

As the old man climbed out of his old truck, with the dog still hunched into his stomach a large Pyrex measuring cup fell out of the cab, my Dad grabbed it and handed it back.

The old guy had some friends behind him in a Mercedes SUV and one of them backed the pickup truck and trailer down to a wide spot. We asked the old man where he was heading and he said 'Rainbow Lake,' Dad said 'We were headed there to find my daughter's camp.' The old guy said 'Rainbow Lake is great! It's so nice!' He proceeded to tell us how to get there, we decided to continue our plan to sleep by Highway 22 for the night and look for Twisted Sister the next morning. As we passed by the Mercedes Dad told that guy that we were just going down to sleep down at the bottom. 'Okay man, we'll see ya down there. Hey, happy Father's Day, man!' So weird! Dad returned the holiday wishes and we rolled down.

Fast forward (because this is getting really long!) to my Sister showing us the actual way to get up to her campground that she intended with her map and the few pieces of pink tape she put out. It was this rutted out, overgrown, practically a goat trail of a logging road, but we took it up, no way we would have found this on our own! Didn't catch any fish and got really cold, but spent some good times with Dad, I just wish he'd chill out sometimes!

We hiked up to Marion Lake, a real lake, with Sevlyor rubber rafts and fished for about 5 hours, got a bunch of nibbles and cold feet. It was pretty fun though! I would row the boat as my sister would hold the two rods and we'd kind of troll with out neon, sparkly marshmellow compound on the hook.





Another thing about this trip: my Sister and I pulled our raft in before Dad, he finally showed up to the little beach, you could really tell how much concentration he had on his face and coordination with careful paddle strokes to get that little raft around a snag and to the beach.