Client Adventures
Client: Dave Hall
Dave has been fishing with friends and family for several years and loves to reminisce about all the adventures he has experienced. He has enjoyed fishing all over the United States (including in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, California, Missouri, and Alaska) and Canada. The largest fish he ever caught was a trout measuring 29½ inches long in the Roaring River in Missouri. His favorite fishing trip was floating on the Madison River, where they enjoyed breathtaking scenery, beautiful streams, and catching a lot of trout!
Dave’s top three dream fishing expeditions:
1. New Zealand for brown trout
2. Patagonia for brown trout
3. Marlin fishing with a fly rod
Client: Duane & Patti Voss
We have been driving our sand rails and playing in the sand for 42 years now, and our “Big Sand Box” is Little Sahara State Park in Waynoka, Oklahoma (which is approximately 60 miles northwest of Enid, Oklahoma). This unique and occasionally dangerous sport has taken us to Glamis Sand Dunes in California; Dumont, California; St. Anthony, Idaho; the Kiamichi Mountains in Oklahoma; Grand Lake, Oklahoma; and Rush Springs in Montana. We usually go with a group of friends and relatives and ride up and down the dunes or ride the trails.
Duane and I have both won drag races and hill climbs. A hill climb is one where the officials pick a designated spot on the slope of the dune, you stop at that spot, and your car cannot roll forward or backward. From a dead stop, you take off and drive as far as you can up the dune and hope that no one else can go farther! The sand rail that goes the farthest up the dune is declared the winner.
Duane loves to tell a story about a man who built a sand rail with a larger engine and bigger tires than mine. Near the end of the competition, it was his sand rail against mine. The man took his turn first and just dug a big hole. I was next and had to fill up his big hole. And not only did I move up the dune, but I also drove over it! Who said women can’t drive?!
If you have ever driven on dry, loose sand, you can imagine the challenge it is driving up a dune. Sand rails usually have large rear tires with paddles on them. Paddles are rubber protrusions sealed to the tire, about an inch to two inches high and the width of the tire. These tires assist you in traveling to the top of the sand dune instead of digging a big hole.
This is a sport we never get tired of, and we've made several friends from various states. We have also enjoyed watching our friends’ children grow up at the dunes, and now their grandchildren are enjoying it!
Duane also had the opportunity to drive one of our sand rails for a commercial that was filmed for Discover Oklahoma in the 1980s.
Clients: Bruce & Joyce Johnson
Bruce and Joyce Johnson started boating together on Keystone Lake in 1990. It was the beginning of a nearly 25-year adventure on the water. Trucking the boat to Three Forks in Muskogee in 1992 opened their eyes to “unconfined” boating when they traveled the full length of the Arkansas River, out onto the Mississippi River, and down to Greenville, Mississippi. They were married on their boat in 1992. Joyce retired from teaching that fall, and Bruce semi-retired from his plating business that same year. The next time they trucked the boat to Three Forks, they didn’t stop until they hit New Orleans.
Their first extended trip was the “Small Loop”—from New Orleans across the Gulf to Mobile Bay, north on the Tombigbee to the Tennessee River and on to Knoxville, Tennessee. A backtrack down the Tennessee ended at “Land Between the Lakes,” where they picked up the Cumberland River and headed for Nashville. To return home, the rest of the loop included parts of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, then back to the Arkansas. They had seen a lot of beautiful country, but none prettier than the Arkansas. They spent the next two years traveling more than 8,000 miles on the Arkansas, researching the history, anchorages, and facilities on the river and produced the Arkansas River Cruise Guide. It was just in time for the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Arkansas River waterway.
The fall of '97 found Bruce and Joyce in Fort Lauderdale, poised to make two trips in the following years to the Bahamas and a trip across the Gulf of Mexico. After that, they started traveling more by motor home until they finally decided to get out of boating for a while.
It didn’t last long. They bought a trawler in New York in 2008 and drove it nearly 1,000 miles on the intracoastal from Norfolk, Virginia, to Jacksonville, Florida, and then up the St. John's River to Sanford. Two years later, the boat was renovated and ready to travel in earnest. They went back to Norfolk and began a three-year exploration of Chesapeake Bay and the rivers that flow into it, going as far east as Delaware Bay and Cape May, New Jersey. This year, they once again decided to travel more extensively in the motor home and sold the boat.
Bruce and Joyce believe that traveling more than 29,000 miles by water has provided them with a totally unique perspective. Nowhere else could you see the Delta Queen rounding a bend and coming straight toward you, go through 17 locks on the Arkansas, travel alongside a tow pushing 42 barges, experience the Industrial Canal in New Orleans, dock in downtown Nashville, or see Jamestown on the James River, Yorktown on the York River, and Washington, DC, on the Potomac the way the colonists first saw them—by water.
It’s been a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
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