May 14 thru May 16 2013 In the Pine woods of east Texas our assignment
for this work trip was to continue the cleanup of the heavily damaged
Lake Ratcliff Recreation Area in the Davy Crockett National Forest. The
area remains closed due to high wind damage to the forest and there is
still a lot of work to be done before the Park service can reopen the
Recreation area to camping and general use.
Our leader there as usual was Ray 4, the other two Woodsmen of the
Apocalypse, Chuck, and Riley (just Riley) were with him. The rest of the
tamer crew was Derly, Mike, John, Robert, Charlie, and Andy .
This particular trip was dedicated to splitting wood, a lot of wood that
was downed trees that had already been cut into pieces that would fit
into powered splitting machines. Ray explained that the 2 machines would
do all the work for us. We found out quickly he erred in telling us
that. For a day and a half we split wood as fast as we could and then
distributed it around the camping area for later use in some good old
campfires. Ray and Chuck also dismantled several camping sites that we
no longer useable. The two teams of wood splitters had quite an
argument about who split the most wood. We did not have an impartial
judge so there was no declared winner and we did not settle the age old
question of "How much wood would a woodchuck split if a woodchuck could
split wood" or something like that!
About mid day of the second day the rains came and work was halted, fun
began and a good time was had by all. Again Riley came thru with his
famous "Stories Around the Campfire".
The Rec area may be opened by this fall after several years of closure. The Trail Tamers will return when Ray 4 calls.
by Andy, crew member who lived it
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