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Gold River Canyon's Dead
Gold River Canyon’s Dead is a fictional adventure based upon an actual newspaper story that appeared in the San Diego Union in the late 1960s. While the real event involved an accidental discovery made by some hunters in the upper elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the story of Gold River Canyon is set in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area of the Rockies. As the story unfolds, two middle-aged men are linked together in search of a long-lost mining town they believe to be located in the western Rockies. They are joined by a widowed businesswoman who agrees to finance the expedition as long as she is included. After months of careful planning and cold weather training, the trio take to the trail leading west out of Yampa, Colorado, for what will become a two-year mission of three-dimensional proportions…discovery, danger and death.
316 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2006
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January 14, 2019”She spread out the old map and a modern-day map of the same area, side by side. As she pointed to the town of Yampa and then indicated where it might be on the old map, she pointed to the blotch and X. ‘This looks like an interesting place to look. I would guess it’s about a hundred miles in a straight direction from Yampa. See the kind of circular dot with an X over it?’
Warren leaned over to get a better look, then picked up the magnifying glass and zeroed in on it. ‘That’s not a dot and X,’ he said as a matter of fact. ‘That’s a skull and crossbones.’”
Or as the local Indians refer to it...The Mountain of Death.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This all begins with Warren reading an article about the discovery of a long lost ghost town. He shows this article to Joe Evans, who by the fickleness of fate sits next to him at meals at the boarding house they both stay in. Both are in their sixties. When they add up the scope of their life and the list of their accomplishments, it is less than impressive. In fact, it is downright depressing. So why can’t they do something like this, have an adventure, discover something interesting? They are unlikely explorers, both well past their “best years” and absolutely stone cold broke.
The idea, mildly insane, certainly improbable, begins to take hold on both of them. There is nothing like the fever of shared passion to stoke the fires of craziness. To even keep the dream alive they need to start working up a plan. First step is money. Warren gets a job in a small mom and pop store that has been reduced to a mom store. Emily’s husband passed away, and though she has enjoyed running a grocery store, it just isn’t the same without her husband. Warren shares his dream, and when Emily reads the article, she doesn’t think the idea is crazy. She thinks it is exactly what she has been looking for, to put some new purpose back in her life.
What may have been an impossible dream for Joe and Warren takes on new layers of possibility with an organizer like Emily involved.
This book has me thinking about how many people have no clue of what to do after retirement. My dad used to talk about the guys who would retire from the shingle factory or from farming, and his comment was, they will be dead in a year. Unfortunately, a lot of times he was right. I think more people need to either keep working until physically they can’t anymore or have a real plan to do something worthwhile once they retire. Sitting around all day in a rocking chair, watching Judge Judy reruns, with the highlight of their day being the pepperjack cheese sandwich they are going to make for lunch is not any way to spend the remaining years of your life.
Most people can’t do something as grand as what Emily, Joe, and Warren get up to, but they can start a hobby, or maybe discover how wonderful reading is, or join community activities that let them meet new people. I take an adventure every day, usually to exotic locals, in my time machine...my library. Which reminds me, we need to get back to the place on the map with the skull and crossbones.
Our heroes are not deterred by the skull and crossbones on the map. Really it just means there is more probability they will find a ghost town that hasn’t been pillaged. They start the prep work, and it isn’t quiet, and it isn’t easy. They are basically preparing themselves the same way someone would have gone out into the wilderness 140 years ago. Wagons instead of cars, mules instead of combustion engines, hay instead of gasoline.
What I really enjoyed about the prep work and the trials and tribulations was the fact that Daniel Parks engages his engineering mind. The supplies needed are extensive; the resupply possibilities have to be figured out, and there are many points on the trail where ingenuity is necessary to be able to continue.
Necessity + Ingenuity = The Mother of all Invention
I couldn’t help thinking of The Little House on the Prairie books that I read as a child while I was reading this book. The language is straightforward. Parks is here to tell a story, not to wow you with extravagant literary phrase work. It took a few pages for me to settle into his writing style, but once the adventure began, I had to see what the heck was at that spot on the map in the wilderness of the Flat Tops of the Western Colorado Rockies.
Our heroes are beset by extreme weather, landslides, skulls and skeletons, Monopoly madness, bear attacks, and a very pungent smell that keeps stalking them from beyond the firelight. This is all before they reach The Place of the Skull. If you need a little inspiration to put some giddyup into your life, then let Gold River Canyon’s Dead grab you by the britches and yank you right out of the polished planks of your favorite rocking chair.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Warren leaned over to get a better look, then picked up the magnifying glass and zeroed in on it. ‘That’s not a dot and X,’ he said as a matter of fact. ‘That’s a skull and crossbones.’”
Or as the local Indians refer to it...The Mountain of Death.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This all begins with Warren reading an article about the discovery of a long lost ghost town. He shows this article to Joe Evans, who by the fickleness of fate sits next to him at meals at the boarding house they both stay in. Both are in their sixties. When they add up the scope of their life and the list of their accomplishments, it is less than impressive. In fact, it is downright depressing. So why can’t they do something like this, have an adventure, discover something interesting? They are unlikely explorers, both well past their “best years” and absolutely stone cold broke.
The idea, mildly insane, certainly improbable, begins to take hold on both of them. There is nothing like the fever of shared passion to stoke the fires of craziness. To even keep the dream alive they need to start working up a plan. First step is money. Warren gets a job in a small mom and pop store that has been reduced to a mom store. Emily’s husband passed away, and though she has enjoyed running a grocery store, it just isn’t the same without her husband. Warren shares his dream, and when Emily reads the article, she doesn’t think the idea is crazy. She thinks it is exactly what she has been looking for, to put some new purpose back in her life.
What may have been an impossible dream for Joe and Warren takes on new layers of possibility with an organizer like Emily involved.
This book has me thinking about how many people have no clue of what to do after retirement. My dad used to talk about the guys who would retire from the shingle factory or from farming, and his comment was, they will be dead in a year. Unfortunately, a lot of times he was right. I think more people need to either keep working until physically they can’t anymore or have a real plan to do something worthwhile once they retire. Sitting around all day in a rocking chair, watching Judge Judy reruns, with the highlight of their day being the pepperjack cheese sandwich they are going to make for lunch is not any way to spend the remaining years of your life.
Most people can’t do something as grand as what Emily, Joe, and Warren get up to, but they can start a hobby, or maybe discover how wonderful reading is, or join community activities that let them meet new people. I take an adventure every day, usually to exotic locals, in my time machine...my library. Which reminds me, we need to get back to the place on the map with the skull and crossbones.
Our heroes are not deterred by the skull and crossbones on the map. Really it just means there is more probability they will find a ghost town that hasn’t been pillaged. They start the prep work, and it isn’t quiet, and it isn’t easy. They are basically preparing themselves the same way someone would have gone out into the wilderness 140 years ago. Wagons instead of cars, mules instead of combustion engines, hay instead of gasoline.
What I really enjoyed about the prep work and the trials and tribulations was the fact that Daniel Parks engages his engineering mind. The supplies needed are extensive; the resupply possibilities have to be figured out, and there are many points on the trail where ingenuity is necessary to be able to continue.
Necessity + Ingenuity = The Mother of all Invention
I couldn’t help thinking of The Little House on the Prairie books that I read as a child while I was reading this book. The language is straightforward. Parks is here to tell a story, not to wow you with extravagant literary phrase work. It took a few pages for me to settle into his writing style, but once the adventure began, I had to see what the heck was at that spot on the map in the wilderness of the Flat Tops of the Western Colorado Rockies.
Our heroes are beset by extreme weather, landslides, skulls and skeletons, Monopoly madness, bear attacks, and a very pungent smell that keeps stalking them from beyond the firelight. This is all before they reach The Place of the Skull. If you need a little inspiration to put some giddyup into your life, then let Gold River Canyon’s Dead grab you by the britches and yank you right out of the polished planks of your favorite rocking chair.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
June 8, 2019
What a Great Adventure by a Great Storyteller
I was sorting books for our library book sale one year when I came upon this book. It was in a stack of maybe 7 other books that looked to be good. Being that volunteers get first choice, I took them all home. I took this book out of the stack and handed it to my husband, “I think you would like this. It looks good.” He took the book from my hand and began reading it. When he was finished he handed it back to me, “This book was really good. I think you would like it since you like adventures.” I began reading it.
Immediately, the author had me captivated. What a great story teller! I thought.
This adventure story grew out of a San Diego newspaper article that Daniel Parks had read back in the late 60s. Some deer hunters had been in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and had come upon an undiscovered ghost town. Years later the Daniel Parks decided to create this story around that article.
The main character in this book, Warren, was living in a boarding house in San Diego, CA. One day when he picked a book off his shelf a news article slipped out and fell to the floor. He picked it up and took it down to the dining room to reread during dinner. Setting it down on the table by his plate, another roomer, a middle aged biker named Joe, picked it up and began reading it.
“What is this?” Joe asked. Warren told him about the ghost town that deer hunters had found and suggested that there might be gold or silver or other relics there. Now that got my attention, even Joe’s. I used to read about lost gold mines when I was younger. I especially liked the one about Superstitious Mountain and how people disappeared while searching for hidden gold. I saw myself taking this trip, probably before even Warren and Joe had. After dinner Warren took the article and headed back to his room. Joe wasn’t going let this go. He went up and knocked on Warren’s door.
Once Joe had talked Warren into making this trip, they began preparations, even finding a woman who wished to go with them and who helped finance the trip.
While still making preparations, they visited the town of Yampa, Colorado where they had decided to begin their trip. They talked with the owner of the town’s trading post and showed him the trail they wanted to take. He warned them, “There’s something up in that neck of the woods that you need to know about…Some of the folks who have gone there in the past few years never showed up again.” That didn’t change their minds, but I would have had second thoughts.
They began their trip in the spring. The first several days were fine, but then some time later they began to feel that they were being watched and then followed. They even found strange footprints. They also noticed that the forest was devoid of animal life and their sounds. It was just too quiet. Then they began making discoveries that unnerved them.
Since I was reading this in bed at night, I was beginning to wonder if all of our doors were locked. I decided then that it was best to read this book during the day and realized that I had to find another book for bedtime reading. This was also when I would have said to my fellow travelers in the book, “Let’s turn around and go home.” And if they didn’t listen I would have added, “Well, I am leaving.” But then I would have realized that I could get killed and even eaten if I had left on my own. Either way I would be dead, I thought. Going on an adventure is one thing, but this didn’t seem like a harmless adventure to me, and well, many true adventures are not without real danger.
One of the scenes that I liked in this book had to do with their first walking into the ghost town. I liked the way it was written, and it felt nostalgic. Warren stood motionless: “It was like standing in the middle of a cemetery…very quiet with the living overlooking the dead…Suddenly the things that are ordinary became unusual. A small, tattered piece of cloth curtain fluttering in the breeze on the inside of a broken window, or a sign hanging from a rusted chain making a soft thud as it blows up against a nearby post. You almost expect ghostly figures to appear in windows and stare out at you.” The reason I liked this was because it made me think of my own trip to the ghost town of Bodie, CA where I saw a window with a tattered curtain, and I thought of how it was more than likely sewn by a woman who wanted to make her rustic house look more like home. What was her life like? What were the people’s lives in Gold River Canyon like?
Notes: When I finished the book I checked to see if Daniel Parks had any other books like this one. Nothing. He was a new author. I put this book in my glass door bookcase that my husband had built for me years earlier, and it sat along beside my other favorite books.
I had also learned that Daniel Parks worked at Robber’s Cave just south of us. Since my husband and I both shared and loved this book, I thought of us taking a trip to see Robber’s Cave and maybe get the book autographed. We never made that trip.
I was sorting books for our library book sale one year when I came upon this book. It was in a stack of maybe 7 other books that looked to be good. Being that volunteers get first choice, I took them all home. I took this book out of the stack and handed it to my husband, “I think you would like this. It looks good.” He took the book from my hand and began reading it. When he was finished he handed it back to me, “This book was really good. I think you would like it since you like adventures.” I began reading it.
Immediately, the author had me captivated. What a great story teller! I thought.
This adventure story grew out of a San Diego newspaper article that Daniel Parks had read back in the late 60s. Some deer hunters had been in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and had come upon an undiscovered ghost town. Years later the Daniel Parks decided to create this story around that article.
The main character in this book, Warren, was living in a boarding house in San Diego, CA. One day when he picked a book off his shelf a news article slipped out and fell to the floor. He picked it up and took it down to the dining room to reread during dinner. Setting it down on the table by his plate, another roomer, a middle aged biker named Joe, picked it up and began reading it.
“What is this?” Joe asked. Warren told him about the ghost town that deer hunters had found and suggested that there might be gold or silver or other relics there. Now that got my attention, even Joe’s. I used to read about lost gold mines when I was younger. I especially liked the one about Superstitious Mountain and how people disappeared while searching for hidden gold. I saw myself taking this trip, probably before even Warren and Joe had. After dinner Warren took the article and headed back to his room. Joe wasn’t going let this go. He went up and knocked on Warren’s door.
Once Joe had talked Warren into making this trip, they began preparations, even finding a woman who wished to go with them and who helped finance the trip.
While still making preparations, they visited the town of Yampa, Colorado where they had decided to begin their trip. They talked with the owner of the town’s trading post and showed him the trail they wanted to take. He warned them, “There’s something up in that neck of the woods that you need to know about…Some of the folks who have gone there in the past few years never showed up again.” That didn’t change their minds, but I would have had second thoughts.
They began their trip in the spring. The first several days were fine, but then some time later they began to feel that they were being watched and then followed. They even found strange footprints. They also noticed that the forest was devoid of animal life and their sounds. It was just too quiet. Then they began making discoveries that unnerved them.
Since I was reading this in bed at night, I was beginning to wonder if all of our doors were locked. I decided then that it was best to read this book during the day and realized that I had to find another book for bedtime reading. This was also when I would have said to my fellow travelers in the book, “Let’s turn around and go home.” And if they didn’t listen I would have added, “Well, I am leaving.” But then I would have realized that I could get killed and even eaten if I had left on my own. Either way I would be dead, I thought. Going on an adventure is one thing, but this didn’t seem like a harmless adventure to me, and well, many true adventures are not without real danger.
One of the scenes that I liked in this book had to do with their first walking into the ghost town. I liked the way it was written, and it felt nostalgic. Warren stood motionless: “It was like standing in the middle of a cemetery…very quiet with the living overlooking the dead…Suddenly the things that are ordinary became unusual. A small, tattered piece of cloth curtain fluttering in the breeze on the inside of a broken window, or a sign hanging from a rusted chain making a soft thud as it blows up against a nearby post. You almost expect ghostly figures to appear in windows and stare out at you.” The reason I liked this was because it made me think of my own trip to the ghost town of Bodie, CA where I saw a window with a tattered curtain, and I thought of how it was more than likely sewn by a woman who wanted to make her rustic house look more like home. What was her life like? What were the people’s lives in Gold River Canyon like?
Notes: When I finished the book I checked to see if Daniel Parks had any other books like this one. Nothing. He was a new author. I put this book in my glass door bookcase that my husband had built for me years earlier, and it sat along beside my other favorite books.
I had also learned that Daniel Parks worked at Robber’s Cave just south of us. Since my husband and I both shared and loved this book, I thought of us taking a trip to see Robber’s Cave and maybe get the book autographed. We never made that trip.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 5, 2019
Daniel Parks is a great storyteller. This book kept my interest from beginning to end.
But I will say what I thought was just simply an adventure story turned into science fiction and I try my best to avoid science fiction. But even with that in mind I couldn’t put the book down until the end. So there.
Daniel Parks, please write more adventures, science fiction or not.
But I will say what I thought was just simply an adventure story turned into science fiction and I try my best to avoid science fiction. But even with that in mind I couldn’t put the book down until the end. So there.
Daniel Parks, please write more adventures, science fiction or not.
December 21, 2010
Daniel Parks is able to touch your deepest soul with his characters. The journy this group of misfits go on is worth the trip.
Highly recomended
Highly recomended
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews