I enjoy showing photos of people enjoying the wilderness in our backyard. These are photos of another NOLS course that is spending the month walking through the wilderness. (You can see other NOLS courses here and here.) The sunny photos were taken by me last Wednesday during their first re-supply. The cold and damp looking images were taken today by my father-in-law, Mike Meekin, (Meekin’s Air Service) because I was busy making other flights. Mike has flown hundreds of tons of supplies for NOLS over the past 30 years. NOLS has been hiking through these hills for a long time and their, “leave no trace” policy is greatly appreciated by those of us who call this area home.
One of the course leaders of this team is a long-time friend, and it’s always great to see him out in the field thoroughly enjoying his summer season. His Mother is a wonderful women who bakes amazing cookies and sends them in with the supplies. On a number of occasions I have had the privilege of hijacking a cookie along the way, sometimes they are shared, other times I have taken “pilot privileges” and exercised the Leather man tool on a well duct-taped package. During this particular resupply his Mother and Father are in Africa … so he has been nervously relying on his girlfriend to get the cookies baked and delivered in time. The preplanning for the cookie drop began months ago and Keeton had meticulously coordinated several back-up plans if “plan A” failed. The most comical was “plan C” which involved me baking the cookies for him. I assured him that this was as far-fetched as Obama’s health care plan. Fortunately, for all of us, his girlfriend had an awesome follow-through, and the cookies made it in time. You can tell by the HUGE smile on his face.