Kingston to Arrey NM (continued)

I was abrubtly sidetracked writing the last post... I'll continue it here.

Dick worked in California and was known as the "dumb farmer". He was assigned projects that no other construction worker/engineer could handle. He even worked on the fixing part of the Golden Gate Bridge.

As Dick told us stories and his personal history, he would would offer new things to Taran and I. Here's how it progressed:

- The Tenting area is behind the Gazebo.
- Feel free to use the barbecue to cook up your dinner.
- You can sleep in the Gazebo if you want...it's off the ground and has a roof.
- You can sleep in the rec room - there's a mattress in there.
- Do you like cake? There's some cake in the fridge in the Rec Room
- How about Ice Cream.? There's some in the freezer in the Rec Room...help yourself.

It turned out to be a great deal at 7 dollars.

The most amazing story he shared with us involved GOLD. Legend has it that many years ago the Spanish mined the mountains in the region for gold. They used local Indian labour (slaves) to extract it. Once it was ready for shipment out of the region, they released the Indians. Apparently many of the Indians decided to "get even" and attacked many of the mines that held the gold. According to Dick, "there's gold in them thar hills". He and a group of his friends purchased 'mining claims' and are aggressively looking for gold. The average age of the group of friends is 70. One guy was getting ready to weld new parts onto the back hoe. The other fellow we met had just come from the "site" and had been dynamiting holes in the rock.

According to Dick, President Johnson (if I recall properly) had secretly extracted tons of this type of gold to finance the Vietnam War. Also according to Dick, JFK was killed because of this gold (not sure what the whole story is there though).

An interesting experience to say the least!