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Letter To The Editor

Sent this to the local newspaper, The Inyo Register:

On Saturday May 28th, my wife and I plunked down $30 for two Mule Days Main Arena bleacher seats.

We were looking forward to seeing the Team Pack Scramble . . . but then the event announcer started talking.

First, let me say that as a veteran, I avoid Memorial Day events. To me they are often celebrated by politicians who attempt to wrap themselves with an American flag or by speakers who never wore a military uniform yet who speak as if they led the charge off the beach.

Unfortunately, the speaker at the Mule Days Main arena didn’t disappoint.

He started the event by describing the mountains as “The government says they own them. We’d like to think we own them. They belong to god.”

This was followed by a short prayer to “our savior Jesus Christ,” admiration for all the “true Americans” attending Mule Days, and then lavish praise for California’s 8th Congressional District Representative Paul Cook who gave a short speech.

The speaker also said that Mule Days was trying to become more international this year. Really?

Has the speaker taken a look at this year’s Mule Days audience? Besides those who may have been of the Jewish faith, I saw a fair number of visitors from Asia whose savior may not be Jesus.

Finally, I didn’t know my $30 was going towards supporting local politician Paul Cook’s re-election this November. Were the other candidates in the 8th Congressional District invited speak at Mule Days?

Let’s keep religion and politics out of Mule Days.

Mule Days 2017

We skipped the downtown Bishop Mule Days parade this year (last year’s Mule Days parade.) However, Jan wanted to go to the “Team Pack Scramble” at the local fairgrounds.

What’s a “Team Pack Scramble”?

In the olden days (and today too) mule teams were used to carry supplies in “packs” on the animals. Packers were folks who became expert at doing this.

In a scramble, a number of packing teams (figure 5 mules per team) remove the packs from their mule teams. Then all the mules are set loose in an arena and each team has to capture their mules and repack each animal. Fastest team wins.

It looks like this . . .

After the scramble, we wandered through the stables and found this guy . . .

Snow Day

We took a drive from Bishop, CA to Lake Sabrina and then South Lake.

Bishop’s elevation is about 4,000 ft while both lakes are at about 9,000 ft, so it’s a lot cooler up at the lakes.

Lake Sabrina and South Lake

It was about 50 miles round trip, and it gave our dog Flirt a chance to see snow again — the last time was about 3 years ago.

She remembered.

They Paved Paradise

For the last 2 weeks of April, contractors have been repaving our entire campground.

It was a bit trying, but not as bad as we thought it would be. The new asphalt didn’t stink that bad, and the construction workers were very cooperative. However, the large asphalt rollers were earth shakers. They freaked out our dog Flirt.