Spring day, Friday, nothin to do, too cold to go camping yet...or is it? We put our heads together and as usual, made asses of ourselves once again...
We have a brainstorm! Let's go camping in the desert! So off we go, we decide to go up to Pyramid Lake in the high desert above Reno, in the middle of the Paiute Indian Reservation, and get on the road about 5:30pm. Well after you get out of Sparks it is pretty much a straight shot on the map that is. After loading up on food,beer and a bottle of Bushmill's whisky in Sparks we were on our way! We didn't figure it would take anytime at all to drive up there and find a spot and be all set to fish for cut throat trout the next morning. Wrong.
Having never been there before we proceed to follow the map and by about 9pm we figgerd we should be there by now, except the only problem is we are in the desert on a reservation and the moon hasn't risen yet and there is not light one of any kind anywhere. So we kept driving around the lake that we didn't know we were driving around. Finally we turned off on a dirt trail and followed it for a bit and EUREKA, we found it. And right about the same time realized we had driven into about 18" of sand and were stuck up to the axles. And about 10 feet from a 20 foot drop to the lake.
Well seeing we couldn't do anything to remedy the situation we struck camp right where we were. Good call bringing the bottle of whisky, we proceeded to polish that baby off. And as we did the pitch black night took on a eerie glow along with the glow in my belly. The moon began to rise over the mountains to the east and was a crescent moon that weirdly resembled a pyramid as it rose over the crest of the mountain and cast a mellow gold shimmer across the lake we almost missed. Too drunk to think about snakes or scorpions or any other creepy-crawlies we threw down the bags and shot the shit about all kinds of useless information until finally boring each other to sleep.
Waking up about the crack of 8 we assessed the situation and both agreed that we were pretty damn stuck. And boy was it ever fun trying to dig out sand with nothing to dig with, hopeless. We started considering hailing down help but not too many vehicles out crusing the desert that morning. First couple of people that stopped either didn't have a chain or tow strap or just really didn't want to bother...and then a big 4x4 rig finally shows up, they didn't have a rope but two guys my age or a little older and the girlfriend/wife of one of them, and these two and Jimmy and I after trying to shove the splits of wood we couldn't light the night before under the back wheels, literally ended up picking the entire truck up and setting it on firmer sand that we could actually drive on...and who shows up after the tree stooges get rescued? Members of the tribe, and we saved ourselves about $500 that they wanted to charge us to tow us out.
Well it's only 10am by then and Mr.Ryan insists on going around the lake and seeing the namesake of Pyramid lake, a natural four sided pyramid formation on the shoreline of the lake. Sounded like a great idea to me since we could actually see the lake now.
It looked like a short drive but ended up to be about an hour to get even close to this amazing rock, after turning off the highway there was another good 5 miles on a not so well maintained dirt road, it wasn't too bad considering the truck was 2 wheel drive and really not meant for off-road activity, all was going fine and we were tooling along finishing up some of the beer left over from last night(whisky didn't make it to midnight) and Jim decides to take a "shortcut" down to the pyramid...bad idea, and I knew it as soon as he made the turn down this road right into another sand pit. Fuck. It could only happen to us... meanwhile luckily we were close enough to a group camped on the shoreline that before long we were able to hustle up ropes and manpower and were back on terra firma once more. By this time we were pretty much finished with the desert and hit the road home. Sorta.
Seems Reno was between the lake and the Lake so being we hadn't been to the city for a while ended up stopping there and doing a 12 hour titty bar marathon, we hit them all, Spice House,Fantasy Girls, The Mens Club, and Wild Orchid, we would nurse a $7 beer and occasionally put a dollar on my forehead for some young thing to remove with her big fake boobies. This went on until we got bored or asked to leave and eventually made it back up the hill to the Big Blue Lake.
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