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June 09, 2009

2009 Reunion Notes
The Johnson Family Reunion - 2009
Chapter 1
The Gathering

Each year the swallows return to Capistrano in great sky-darkening flocks. Salmon return to the stream where they were spawned or die in the attempt. Lemmings run headlong into the sea . . . oops, wrong analogy. And the Johnson family migrates to the appointed place at the appointed time to continue a tradition that was started in 1977, The Johnson Family Reunion.

The appointed time and place for this migration was June 9 at 4 PM just outside Bluff, Utah. The family arrived with whatever means was at their disposal; planes, trains, automobiles and even motorcycles.

Parking Lot   Scott Cycle

Some traveled in pairs, some in families, and some as single units. Others were collected along the way who desired to be with the Johnson family even though they were not blood related.

This year’s organizer, Julia, arrived with Shelley a few minutes late. They were distracted from their quest in Flagstaff by a sign indicating an IHOP was near. They found out this was merely a rouse to get hungry travelers waylaid in the maze of streets and eating establishment that is known to the savvy traveler as “the frontage road.”

Nevertheless, everyone had arrived safely at the appointed place. There was much hugging, laughing and catching up to do. The role was called and the following persons were present and accounted for:

Richard and Marlene, accompanied by their good friends and soon to be our friends, Jane and Brad
Larry and Leslie
Donna and Justin
Christine and Monica
Scott
Shelley
Julia who was joined by her friend and fellow geologist and all round fun guy Steve
and
Tony.

The reunion was planned around a river rafting trip down the San Juan River from Bluff to Mexican Hat. The river guides for the trip were Brett, chief cook and bottle washer, Sandy whose job it was to try to instruct us, Robin who served as our Indian guide, and Billy . . . we are still trying to find out what his role was in this adventure.


We met around the campfire to hear what our guides had to tell us about the rules of the trip.

Sitting   Sitting

Monica Chris   Guide

This included the proper way to wash your hands, loading and unloading the rafts, packing our water bags, setting up our tents (thank goodness we got better later) and how to do the dishes. Dinner, which consisted of spaghetti with and without meat sauce, was served on tin plates and we got to practice our dishwashing skills.

The family meeting followed dinner. We met Jane, Brad and Steve. We discussed our family medical history so we would all be aware of common things that we should all look out for, especially now that we are no spring chickens. Julia said she would compile the list and make sure that everyone got a copy. Each family reported on their doings for the year. Highlights included Richard and Marlene’s trip to Egypt, Leslie’s long awaited retirement from teaching, Christine’s move back to Arlington and Shelley finishing her Bachelor’s degree in nursing. Donna, Julia and Tony reported that they were the same. A retirement gift was given to Leslie.

Tony Julia

The “family jewels’ were ceremoniously given to Tony indicating that it was his responsibility for next year’s reunion and we were visited by many mosquitoes.

We broke up the meeting and made sleeping arrangements for the night. Some cheaters slept in their vehicles, but most of us braved the tents. Careful consideration was made to the strategic placement of tent sites, trying to avoid being too close to anyone who would be snoring.

Chapter 2
A Death in the Family
Morning brought breakfast, the dreaded trip to the outhouse, the first try at dismantling the tents and packing our water bags. We all passed dishwashing with flying colors. Robin led us on our first trip to see petroglyphs.

Sign    Rock

We also got a lesson on wilderness survival which included herbs that grow wild and a little thing I like to call the ant popsicle. You need one stick and one ant hill. Put the stick in the ant hill. Watch the ants crawl up the stick. Slurp the ants up by the hundreds. The general consensus was that we would have to be pretty darn hungry to try that delicacy. 

The river trip was to be accomplished using three rafts. Two of them were oar rafts which meant that one person sat on top and used two oars to steer, and one paddle raft that was propelled by all the members in the raft using, what else? Paddles. The oar rafts were laden with our water supply, food stuffs, cooking things and the water bags. We basically sat around watching our guides work and waited for Billy who had to go into Bluff for some supplies.

<Group  Tony

Loading  Julia

Camera  Staging

During the wait, we met several other groups who were also rafting the river. Little did they know what meeting us would mean to them later.

We rafted and hiked . . .

Posing  Anticipation

and rafted and hiked.

Scenery  On Shore

On one of the hikes, Christine took a tumble on the way up. She has become quite a trooper after spending all that time in Arlington walking everywhere. She hardly paused. Who is this stranger in the body of our sister? One hike brought us to the base of a long cliff wall covered with petroglyphs.

Scenery   Scenery

Petroglyphs do not come with instructions. There is no Rosetta Stone to help interpret the images. Some suggestions were made by the family to help understand their deep meanings. One idea was that the early Indians must have had some trouble with their perspective since the images of humans had very large shoulders and very small hips.

Scenery  Scenery

Scenery  Scenery

I believe the best idea came from Leslie. After visiting the ruins of a cliff dwelling group, she wondered if the kids were just in the way of the all the household duties and the moms sent the kids out with a pointy rock and told to stay out of house until dinner time.

Scenery  Scenery

Robin did not seem to agree with any of the proffered suggestions.

We finally arrive at our camp site for the night. One of the first orders of business was to learn the fine intricacies of the groover and the ever important “sign of the oars.” The groover was where everyone had to do their business. It was placed a little way away from the camp for obvious reasons and the path was marked by a set of oars. If the oars were crossed, that meant that someone was using the facilities and if they were open, you could proceed. More to come later.

We settled into camp chairs after setting up our tents. Brett was working hard on our lemon chicken dinner.

Relaxing  Really Relaxing

Monica  Marleen

We occupied our time by watching Tony and Scott try to figure out how to open the packages for hot chocolate. After letting them suffer for quite some time, one of the sisters (a girl of course) was able to rescue them by showing them where the directions on the packet where that explained the opening process. The family brought plenty of pogie bait to use as appetizers.

This is the moment that Steve introduced the Murder Game. The rules are simple: Steve would choose a murderer. He would whisper his choice to the “murderer.” Death was caused by a wink. The murdered can then die in their own special way, in their own special time. The biggest problem that came immediately into Julia and Shelley’s minds were “What if you cannot wink?” Julia is known for her famous turn-your-head-and-blink-so-they-think-it-is-a-wink trick. Shelley’s entire face contorts into spastic seizure. We saw later that didn’t make a difference.

Sandy had the unenviable job of trying to teach us about survival techniques. After the ant Popsicle came flint napping. She planned ahead and brought in a large rock from one of our hikes. She tried to explain the secrets to striking off just enough of the rock to make a sharp edge. Unfortunately, she kept being interrupted. It was not just the raucous laughter of a regular family meeting, the coyotes and burros added their voices, family’s favorite flavors, licorice and its many shapes and colors, gummy bears, jokes and the story of Tony’s latest girl friend, Lucy Morales kept interrupting the lesson.

After dinner the family was enjoying more talk and laughter and Marlene suddenly cried out and landed face down in the dirt. The group was struck silent. All mouths gapes open and no one moved. Time seemed to stand still.  The people in the crowd with medical experience were not very helpful as we watched her collapse. The first murder of the night was a wild success. We all agreed after the trip was done that this was the best death scene of them all.  After that, we started dropping like flies. An attempt was made to ferret out the murderer which resulted in the deaths of Jane and Christine. Finally Richard was singled out and a new murderer was chosen.

Chapter 3
The Long Hike
After a fitful night of sleep thanks to the burros braying lullabies, we started the next day with a long hike. Robin wore her fancy red shoes.

Feet

We learned as we hiked, Sedges have edges, but I cannot remember if that means they are eatable or not. You can always eat tadpoles, but only if you really want to. You can always start a fire with sage and cottonwood, good to know.

Burnng Bush

Steve and Julia provided geology lessons along the way as well. We saw rocks from the Triassic period that came from the Appalachian Mountains. They also pointed out zircon.

We hiked to the pictographs.  These are different from the petroglyphs in that they are painted onto the rocks rather than carved into them. We saw what could only be described as a baseball picture. Were the early Indians the real inventors of the sport?

Scenery  Scenery

Once again, a pictograph to English dictionary would have been helpful.

There was murder and mayhem all along the way. It turns out that Julia does know how to wink. She tried to kill Larry several times, but every time she winked at him, he just winked back. Christine and Leslie asked Julia who she thought was the murderer and died in the attempt. Leslie was then able to tell Larry that he was dead several times over.

Group  Did You See That

We found pottery shards on the trip back to the camp site. After we figured out what to look for, we found many shards and were able to fit a few of them together.

We found Brett in camp killed with a bread knife. Pretty dramatic but Marlene still gets the prize. After lunch, we floated the river enjoying the beautiful scenery and the time not hiking.

On Board  On River

We camped early at a very sandy camp site. The time between camping and dinner was pretty long.

Sitting  More Sitting

Talking  Standing  Lookong
Donna  Reaching  Flexing

Richard used the time to tidy up the camp site by picking up the oars that marked the site for the groover. Even after so many days on the river, he just didn’t get it.

Sitting

Sandy taught us how to start a fire without matches. Justin was the best fire starter. Always remember to never lose your ember.

Fixing  Helping

Steve led an interesting discussion on global warming or should I say the climate crisis. Sandy and Robin made it clear that they did not agree with Steve’s opinion that although humans are having some effect on the climate, that mother nature has a larger hand in the cooling and warming cycles of the earth.

Sandy did Yoga on the beach. We were not impressed. Sand in your teeth is not a good thing. Christine and Monica can giggle for hours in their tent alone.

Looking Good  Don't Wake Me

And we played charades. Tony’s phrase of “Pirates day tomorrow” was difficult to decipher. I am not sure he understands the rules of charades. We got Richard and Brad to play as well.

Flexing  Chair Sleeping

And we discovered that Steve knows lots of Elvis songs, but we don’t know why. And we learned that Monica should never confess that she is not wearing underwear.

The long awaited dinner finally came. We had several desserts including pie and s’mores. Steve supplied the graham crackers and the marshmallows but did not understand the cracker to chocolate ratio required for proper s’mores. No one could understand that after years and years of camping during geology lessons, Steve had never eaten a s’more. Thank goodness Richard had a never ending supply of candy and was able to produce the required chocolate and Steve learned the secondary joys of toasting marshmallows.

Murdering continued throughout the night. This murderer, the third to be chosen, was particularly sneaky.

Chapter Four
The Last Leg
We woke to find that there were two murders during the night. Who was this killer striking in the night? Steve and Shelley accused Christine and were all killed instantly. It was finally revealed that Larry was this slow methodical killer. It is always the quiet ones that you have to look out for.

For the last day, Julia traded places with Marlene in the paddle boat.

Looking

Justin got a chance to take the rudder.

Rowing

Our boats were attacked by another group of boaters with water guns. We were not prepared and got drenched. We all vowed vengeance. We hiked to a spot on the river that had some great fossils. The nautilus fossils were the best.

After lunch, we took a swim in the river. Justin tried to help geology by rearranging the rocks along the cliff and Tony told his joke. What do you call a hula-hoop with a nail in it? A navel destroyer.

The afternoon float was punctuated by several water fights between the boats. Any vessel that could hold water was employed to soak the other boaters. Oars were used to splash and we all agreed that Steve cheated when he took a 5 gallon bucket in hand. Billy got the prize for being the biggest weenie. He used Christine, Donna, Marlene and Monica as a human shield.

Julia had been promising us a peak at her secret wedding place. It is a beautiful spot on the Raplee Anticline and she will be spending the wedding night in the John Wayne cabin, a dilapidated shed used in a John Wayne movie. We also finally got a look at the famous Mexican hat which looked just like a ...

Scenery

The time came to get off the river. The family was now a well oiled machine demonstrating the best of the fire line technique.

Roping  Camping

We used that same technique to load the trucks and trailer.

Sitting  Pushing

Watching  Talking

The boats were taken out of the water and Brad unceremoniously dunked Robin in the water. At last she was speechless.

The family honor was avenged when the boat people with water guns were attached by Tony wielding a 5 gallon bucket. They had no hope, paddle as they would they were a sorry bunch of drenched river rats before they got out of the range of Tony.

The final murders were marred by the fact that Christine took the spot Scott had scoped out and she had to move over to make room for him.

Then what has been described as “the most selfless act on the entire trip” occurred. Christine hefted the groover and handed it to Billy to pack in the trailer. She may never be able to wash the germs off her hands and we all appreciated the sacrifice she made. 

We drove back to the site we put in to retrieve all our vehicles. Julia made a successful hand off of the tip money. Always a tender subject. Schew . . . schwoo . . . and whew. Marlene was exposed as a closet kleptomaniac after the long looked for bag that Robin was missing was found in the trunk of her car. There were many last minute pictures, lots of hugs and kisses, even though we all badly need a shower and the family reunion for 2009 was almost at an end.

The final act took place at a gas station outside Mexican Hat where Shelley bought Julia her traditional snowball snack which she gives to herself as a reward for a successful camping trip.

Julia

Indeed, the reunion was a great success. Thank you, Julia, for all your hard work.