Special Saturday Edition - All Good Preppers Get Their Messages from Fox News!

Chief Blogger’s note: This was intended to be posted on Friday, but my host wasn’t cooperating in the upload. Would suggest reading the posting on Thursday to kind of bring you back up to speed. Thanks!

Happy Black Friday everybody! Hope everyone had a great holiday yesterday. Cousin Fred and I (and, Lassie the barking goat) had a nice meal in our room (they wouldn’t let Lassie into the restaurant).

I had a chance to call the Wife who informed me that she is now banned for life from the casino in Canton for reasons that she would not disclose. It occurred to me then that I needed to get back home to keep an eye on her, but we really need to get this pilot finished and our signed talent all check out of this resort on Sunday morning. So I guess I’ll stick it out.

Cousin Fred and I spent a great deal of time over Thanksgiving Day discussing the best way to go about shooting the pilot. There were a lot of random ideas being thrown about by both of us. Even Lassie, the barking goat seemed to be chiming in occasionally, though truthfully she probably just wanted another piece of pumpkin pie.

Cousin Fred suggested storyboarding as a way for us to visualize how things would look on camera. Problem is, neither of us is much of an artist. So our storyboards were mostly stick figures. I guess that worked since our reality actors are supposed to be naked while searching for the Bigfoot.

But, back to Wednesday. As you may recall we left Lassie with the Hot Tub ladies back at the resort and drove to Montezuma hoping to find anyone who would give us a clue as to where we might find the Bigfoot.

When we escaped the Bowie knife guy, we moved to the trailhead at the far end of town. After grabbing the gear we had brought with us, we started up the trail which seemed entirely too easy to follow.

Obviously, this trail had been cut in for hikers and recreational types so they wouldn’t get lost going up or coming down the side of the mountain. Cousin Fred located what he called a sub-trail. A path, really, that branched off the cut-in trail. His suggestion was that we take that since it was unlikely the Bigfoot would be using or crossing, for that matter, the main trail.

I have to admit, it made sense to me…scary when something Cousin Fred suggests actually makes sense. So, we veered off the main trail onto the sub-trail. There we found several sub-sub-trails branching off the sub-trail we were on.

Cousin Fred, reaching back to “old Moonshiner craft,” had a clever method for marking each trail that we moved onto so we would be able to find our way back down to civilization…well, back down to Montezuma anyway.

After two hours, my lungs were heaving for air. The gear I was hauling felt as though it weighed 100 pounds. I was beginning to feel nauseous and realized that the altitude sickness was creeping up on me. I noticed that Cousin Fred was looking as though he was feeling the altitude, as well. I was just about to suggest we turn around and start back down when suddenly a voice boomed from out of the trees on both sides of us.

“Security alert, security alert! There are intruders among us! Away the security alert force! Trespassers stand fast or you will be fired upon!”

I immediately raised my hands. Cousin Fred did the same. I looked up the trail to see someone toward us. It was a boy. He couldn’t have been more than 14 with a large assault rifle that he was pointing at us.
I was about to say something when a woman and a girl, maybe 16, appeared from one side of the trail. Both had weapons which they were pointing at us.

I heard something behind and turned to see a man with a shotgun coming up the trail from the direction we had just come.

“This is private property. What do you want here?”

I spoke, “I’m sorry if we’re trespassing. I didn’t see any signs or anything. We’re filmmakers,” I showed him the camera equipment. “We’re up here looking for a place to shoot a pilot for a reality show.”

“Oh,” he said. “You’re shooting a prepper reality show? Well, why didn’t you say so?” He lowered his weapon. The others did too.

“Uh, well, actually…”

“Only too happy to show you what we’ve done up here on his mountain. Course, I’ll have to ask you to not reveal our true location when this airs on TV. Me and the family having been living up here for two years now…completely off the grid.”

Turns out, the guy, who identified himself by his first name, Evan, (and that was probably a pseudo) had moved his family to the mountain from Dallas, Texas because he was convinced the end of civilization as we know was coming to an end. He introduced his wife as Betty, the son as Hunter, and the daughter as Ethel Mae. Ethel Mae? They couldn't come up with a better pseudo than that? He told us he bought 80 acres on the side of the mountain years before and had slowly been working to improve the property for a vacation spot.

He said that once he realized that the collapse was coming soon (said that message came to him while watching Fox News at 2AM) he had fortified the acreage and that the place was now covered with booby-traps and such to keep the “unwashed hordes” at bay when the collapse of civilization began.

He was, at once, disappointed and relieved when he learned that the focus of our pilot was on finding the Bigfoot rather than preppers. He said that he was glad someone was finally making an effort to eradicate the Bigfoot, as it had been a constant source of problems for them. Turns out the beasts are partial to turnips, which Evan and family view as a staple.

Cousin Fred and I looked at one another. We had found it...Bigfoot Nirvana! According to our host, the Bigfoot was everywhere on this mountain. We would have no problem finding one.

Evan gave us a map and suggested that we use the trail that we were on before we moved onto the trail that brought us here. He said there was an old line cabin about 100 meters beyond where we veered off that we could use as a base for our filming.

He said the Bigfoot appears with some regularity just before sunset and then after dark.

With that, we moved back off the mountain, Cousin Fred’s system for marking trails moved us swiftly down the mountain and back to Brutus and then back to the hotel for copious amounts of beer and chicken wings.