A Birthday to Remember

When you've had more than six decades of birthdays, singling one out as "the best" is, well, pretty impossible. There have definitely been some great ones, thanks to family, friends, food and cake with copious amounts of lemon frosting. Number 60 certainly ranks high. In fact, it was most certainly a birthday to remember.

We took the 6-hour, 375-mile drive west to Leavenworth, Washington. Nestled in the Cascade Mountains, I'd heard about the Bavarian village when we lived in Spokane but had never visited, until this trip. We arrived during a winter snow warning, making it a true winter wonderland. 

I shoveled out front of the Airbnb (twice) for incoming family members

Kristall's Restaurant

Hot clam chowder is a grand slam on a wintery Washington night

Salty (and I mean really salty) pretzel with mustard dipping sauce

Post-dinner digestion included some relaxation, a golden birthday party for our youngest daughter and even some jacuzzi jumping to snow angel-making, something that really surprised me that my warm weather, cold-hating Texas girl did not hesitate to do. 

Wandering through town the next day was a festive treat thanks to German-inspired pastries, shops, eateries and other sights and sounds.

Photo does not properly capture the massive size of this cinnamon roll

When in "Germany," apple strudel is a must-have 

A dinner run took us to a real throwback of a restaurant - the 59er Diner. I love places like this. For one thing, it offers breakfast all day and night long. For another, it prides itself on its milkshakes. And yet another is that is has its own survival story. I ordered French toast and a milkshake. Go here, to my foodie blog, "Playing With Our Food," to read more about it.

The next day we paid a visit to the Leavenworth Reindeer Farm. A barn, gift shop, field full of caribou, a warming fire and even Santa Claus, this place had it all. It was really cool to wander among a bunch of big-antlered "reindeer." 

Hanging with the grandkids along with Santa in his sleigh

We put Leavenworth in the rearview mirror for a 200-mile drive to my son's house in Spokane. That's where birthday festivities kicked into a high gear. The party included fun presents and, of course, a yellow cake with a decent amount of batter to eat so it would be about the same thickness as the couple of cans of lemon frosting on top. 

A box of Doritos? Yes please!

Dinner featured a family trip to Boomers Classic Rock Bar & Grill. I mean hey, can the combination of classic rock, burgers and fries be beat?

Actually, as good as that combination is, it can be beat? I've been a hockey fan for years. My favorite minor league team is the Spokane Chiefs of the Western Hockey League, a Canadian Hockey League feeder for players to make it to the National Hockey League. I covered the Chiefs during a four-year stint as sports director at CBS affiliate KREM-TV. During that time I got to know a bunch of players and several coaches who went on to coach in the NHL, including Mike Babcock who won a Stanley Cup with Detroit and coached Canada to a couple of Olympic gold medals. I really got to know him during a memorable bus trip with the team into western Canada. Go here to watch a three-part series about it.

Anyway, Lori set things up beautifully. Not only did she get each member of the family their own Chiefs t-shirt but she got each of us our own teddy bear and tickets to the Chiefs' "Teddy Bear Toss Night," one of the most popular games of the year. Here's how it works: when the home teams scores its first goal of the game, fans toss their teddy bears onto the ice. The team then gathers the bears and delivers them to needy kids for Christmas. I had attended a bunch of games in my past as a fan, but never on teddy bear night.

The Holyoak clan is locked and loaded with arms full of teddy bears

Leading up to the first goal of the night, it was cool to see my name mentioned among those recognized for their attendance.

Things didn't go exactly as planned for the Chiefs PR staff. Spokane fell behind but then it looked like the Chiefs scored their first goal. They didn't but a couple of bears got tossed onto the ice anyway and that triggered a cascading waterfall of flying bears as everyone else joined the party. Bears of all colors and sizes rained down on the ice from the expensive seats just behind the glass to the cheaper seats in the upper deck. Since we were about a dozen rows from the ice some of those fell on us which we flung toward the ice below.

 

In all, fans chucked 6,825 bears onto the ice. It was really, really cool! My granddaughter, Lyla, is a big-time stuffed animal lover. The look on her face and the words that came out of her mouth said it all.

Since there were thousands of bears to be scooped up, it took a good 15 minutes for staffers to clear the ice. It was fun to watch the Chiefs players, many of which dove into massive piles of bears. In the end, the team posed for a picture with some of the bears. Though I can't be certain it was my exact bear that ended up in the Chiefs team picture (see masked goalie in the back row, fourth player from the left), it sure looked like it.

Though the Chiefs could not pull out the victory, my 60th birthday was exactly that - one big WIN and a b-day to always remember!

We came, we saw, we chucked our bears and happily left empty-handed

Thanks Lori (and family) for a wonderful 60th

The Best Part of Life on the Compound

Perhaps the best part of life on the "compound" is we get to share our lives with family (our daughter and her family) who live out back. That was driven home in a big way recently thanks to a heartful homeschool assignment by our granddaughter Lyla.

Clearing the Way for Elk Along the Hiawatha

The Route of the Hiawatha is one of those places. Once you've been there, you'll always remember it. And why not! It's scenic beauty is amazing. And the engineering to pull it off is mind-boggling. Covering 15 miles, almost all of it slightly downhill, the rail-to-trail features nine tunnels, the longest of which is nearly 1.7 miles, and seven towering trestles. I've biked it a handful of times and even aired a report about it back in my TV anchor/reporter days. And once you learn about the Hiawatha's history, it's just that much more special.

In the early 1900s, the Milwaukee Road sought to expand its offerings from the upper Midwest to the West Coast. But to get there, it had to scout, develop and build a railroad track. After three years, a decision was made and construction began through the rugged Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border in the Northern Rockies. According to the Route of the Hiawatha's website, the estimated cost of the bold endeavor was $45 million. However, the final price tag turned out to greater than $234 million, plus another $23 million later on to convert it for electric locomotives. 

Cross-country service began on July 4, 1909. The following year in 1910, the Big Burn as they called it, scorched some three million acres of forestland. Among its devastation, the wildfire roared across the rail line and destroyed several small mountain towns. One of them, a riotous railroad town along the line was Taft, mockingly named after President Howard Taft. Known for its saloons and brothels, vulgar living and high murder rate, one reporter at the time called it the wickedest city in America. As the flames approached, its residents ignored pleas to evacuate. In the end, the fire killed everyone as it burned the town burned to the ground, never to be replaced. Today, there's only a highway exit sign along Interstate-90.

On the bright side, there were stories of railroad engineers who drove trains loaded with passengers into long tunnels along the Hiawatha, reportedly saving the lives of more than 600 people.

After the fire, Milwaukee made the decision to electrify its lines so workers erected miles and miles of wooden poles parallel to the track to carry nine electric lines. To make a long story short, the Olympic Hiawatha became the last passenger train to roll through the Bitterroots in 1961. Diesel engines later replaced electric trains. The railway company filed for bankruptcy in 1977 and a train crossed its tracks for the final time in 1980, the year I graduated from high school. 

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Fast forward to 2021. I'd worked at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for nearly a decade, writing about its volunteer army and lauding efforts in advancing the mission to ensure the future of elk, other wildlife, their habitat and our hunting heritage. But now it was my turn to be an RMEF volunteer and I couldn't wait. 

That same year, we distributed a short film called "The Letter." It chronicles the story of two RMEF members who were hunting elk high in the mountains near the Hiawatha Trail. They came across scattered bones and discovered the skull of a bull elk with electric wire tightly wrapped around its antlers and attached to surrounding trees and vegetation. It was evident the poor animal became entangled, couldn't move and eventually died because of starvation and/or a predator attack. 

One of the hunters wrote to RMEF headquarters, stating if there ever was a volunteer project that needed to happen, it was along the Hiawatha. Removing that fallen wiring from trees, bushes and the ground would make it easier, let alone less deadly, for elk, deer and other wildlife to move across the landscape. Action soon followed and volunteers hit the slopes above the Hiawatha Trail in 2020, along with our film crews.

When we released the short film with an accompanying feature story in Bugle magazine, year-two of the volunteer garnered more than twice as many volunteers as the first go-round. It also expanded to two days. And I was excited to be there along with my grandson, Kyler. 

After meeting at the Taft exit, we drove a couple of coworkers up the mountain to the work site where we received instruction from U.S. Forest Service and RMEF personnel, divided up into work parties and got to work.

Kyler looking down into a deep draw

The terrain was extremely steep and the vegetation thicker than thick. In short, it was hard, hard work but extremely satisfying as we knew we were making a difference. Kyler met a couple of daughters of a coworker and the three of them spent the day together up in the woods, but always within my sight. With my bolt cutters in hand, we hiked, found wire and started pulling and cutting. As the day wore on, I was glad the trees and bushes were thick since that protected us from the sunshine above.  

A handful of old wires

Photo source: John Hafner

Downed electric pole

Kyler with an old insulator

As we worked, an RMEF film crew and another from Danner Boots, an RMEF partner, captured photos, video footage and did some interviews. One of the crews grabbed Kyler and me to chat, which became part of a short film called "The Affect." After lunch and a couple more hours of work, we headed for home so Kyler could get back for golf practice.

Accumulated wire & the elk skull

Screen shot from "The Affect"

In late spring 2022, I attended conferences for both the Outdoor Writers Association of America in Casper, Wyoming, and the Professional Outdoor Media Association in Kalispell, Montana. RMEF sponsored events at both conferences which gave me the opportunity at the podium to address more than 300 total attendees. I plugged RMEF's latest conservation accomplishments and showed "The Affect."

One month later, I again made plans to attend the Hiawatha wire pull. Kyler was unavailable so I invited a friend (Dennis Normand). We had a good time together. Once again, it was steep, the vegetation was thick and there was more than enough work to do. At one point, I saw some wires still attached to posts high above the ground. I used some tall branches to pull down several of the wires. I got ahold of another wire and it held me as I bounced in the air but we just couldn't reach others that were still taut. That's bad news because they'll eventually fall and become a danger for animals below.

Unlike the year before, our 2022 work crew made its own interesting discovery. We found out about it at lunch and hiked there afterwards. That's where one of our RMEF volunteer teams came across another scattering of bones with a bull elk skull's antlers entangled in wire. It looked like it died tethered to a small tree and surrounding vegetation. I took a series of photos, one of which appeared in Bugle magazine.

Another pickup bed full of wire removed off the landscape

While I couldn't make it to the 2023 wire pull, I have plans to return. After all, there's still much to do. There are miles and miles of wire to remove from a landscape where RMEF volunteers are contributing to its history by helping to clear the way for elk and other wildlife.

Photo source: John Hafner

End of an Era: Bye Bye Heartland Park Topeka

I was recently flipping through the TV channels when I noticed a National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) event was being broadcast. I stopped and was glad to see that week's stop was at Heartland Park Motorsports (or Heartland Park Topeka as it used to be called). But the more I watched, the announcers and drivers they interviewed kept alluding to "Heartland's history," "the final time" and similar terms or phrases. I went online and read that a property tax dispute is putting the track out of business. Heavy sigh!

Heartland Park Topeka opened in 1989 as the first major racing facility to be built anywhere in the U.S. over the previous two decades. It has multiple configurations ranging from a 2.5-mile road course to a quarter-mile drag strip. I arrived in Topeka in the fall of 1988 as a young sportscaster out of college covering mainstream sports like football, basketball, baseball and the outdoors. But auto racing? That was something I just wasn't that familiar with.  

That changed in a big way over the next decade as all sorts of racing series with a bunch of different racing acronyms rolled into town: SCAA (Sports Car Club of America), AMA (American Motorcyclist Association), ARCA (Automobile Racing Club of America), ASA (American Speed Association), IMSA (International Motor Sports Association) and several NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing) regional series including the NASCAR Truck Series, bracket races by local groups and, of course, the NHRA.

Covering an IMSA race (1989)

But there was much more activity than just that. There were also go carts, other types of racing and a range of private events. Plus, big racing names rolled in and out of town, mostly without the public ever knowing anything about it. They would rent out the track out for a day or a week, test run their racing machines and then go on their way. On one occasion, we got word that Mario Andretti was at Heartland Park. Small in stature at 5" 7", he cast a big shadow over the racing world as the only driver to ever win the Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500 and the Formula One World Championship. When I was a kid, my brother had a slot car track and I remember we said one of the cars was Mario Andretti. It was a bit surreal to interview him.

Though I didn't ever get it confirmed, there was also scuttlebutt that Paul Newman also rented out the track. I'm sure there were other well-known folks, too, that none of us even in the media knew about.

And then there's Dale Earnhardt. I had a memorable encounter with him on a race weekend at Heartland Park. It was so cool to meet him in his prime. And especially cool to have an exclusive post-crash, one-on-one with him as the rest of the local, regional and national media members ran toward us. I got the scoop because as soon as we were done talking, the Intimidator hopped in a car, drove right to the airport and flew out of town. Details here.

Other NASCAR names I covered included the Waltrip brothers, the Labonte brothers, team owner Rick Hendrick and a bunch of others I don't remember that probably went on to hit it big. One living legend I more than remember is Kenny Schrader. Shoot, at age 68 he recently won a race in Canada so he's still getting after it. Anyway, I can't remember how it happened but he showed up at Heartland Park with a two-seater and I ended up sitting next to him. It was a couple of days before the actual race but he gave me a joy ride I won't soon forget. We screamed around Heartland Park's road course with some impressive G-forces. Since there were so many turns in the course, it seemed he drove most of it with only two tires on the pavement. When we got done and pulled off our helmets, I asked him what percentage of effort he gave for our loop compared to race day. "About 65 percent," he said. Man, we were flying. I can only imagine what going full speed on race day would be like. 

I remembered filming several sports challenges there. (The Pepsi Sports Challenge was a weekly segment where viewers would call, email or write a letter challenging me or our sports staff to a particular challenge.) We did a mini drag racing challenge there and maybe a couple of others. My weekend sports anchor, Tom Thompson, and I also shot a commercial spot for the sports challenge at Heartland Park. After shooting video on the drag strip, we asked if we could drive our Ford Rangers around the track. They didn't care so we did a loop around the road course. Very, very cool!

Back to the NHRA, and just so many memories covering those races. Early in Heartland Park's history, I remember shooting video with an intern (Brian Green). I was behind the camera sitting on the ground and he sat immediately to my left. We were maybe 65 yards up the track from the starting line behind those three-foot-tall cement dividers you often see between the lanes on a highway. Anyway, as the car in the nearest lane was passing us, about 15 feet from us, the engine blew. Yeah, it suddenly got really warm from the explosion. After the car came to a stop and I quit shooting video, I turned to look at Brian. Oh man, he had oil spewed on him and his eyebrows were singed. But we were both laughing. Shortly thereafter, cameras were no longer allowed to shoot so close to the track.

Crew members walking the starting area during a rain delay

I anchored scores of sportscasts and did a bunch of live shots from Heartland Park. Over that time, I met and talked with so many legendary NHRA drivers. Among them were John Force, Shirley Muldowney, Don the Snake Prudhomme, Warren Johnson, Scott Kalitta (I also golfed with him. He later died in a 2008 crash.), Kenny Bernstein, Joe Amato, Bob Glidden, Tom the mongoose McEwen, Eddie Hill, Pat Austin, Dick LaHaie, Ed the Ace McCulloch, Gary Ormsby and on and on.

In 1989, Ormsby won the Top Fuel championship. In 1990 at Heartland Park, he became the first driver in NHRA history to break the 4.9-second and 295 mile-per-hour barriers. I still remember it. He died from cancer on August of 1991. In the final match race before he died, he defeated Lori Johns at Heartland Park. 

Chatting with Lori Johns in the NHRA pits (1989)

There were many other national speed records set at Heartland Park. And so many other memories too. Among them, I remember watching a funny car I think they called the Bionic Pickle. When drivers got the go ahead, the driver hit the accelerator but the car's green body shot straight up as high as the four-story drag tower before helicoptering back down to the track below. I remember watching jet cars as well as a massive jet truck, as large as the front of a diesel truck, roar to life and go screaming down the track. 

Fans supported the Heartland Park races so well that the track had a run where it hosted two national events a year. In 1996, the Western Auto Nationals roared into town. As part of the pre-race publicity, the NHRA reached out to a local car dealership which made a bunch of its cars available for the media to hold its own drag racing event. Several of the NHRA drivers were there to give us tips on getting off the line, among other things. A bracket competition was set up and we started racing head-to-head. When it got down to the final, it was me against a guy I don't remember where he worked but he would always show up at the track wearing some sort of colorful racing outfit and was decked out right down to his racing shoes. Okay, so imagine if I showed up to cover a football game as a member of the media wearing shoulder pads, a helmet and cleats. Or imagine being a media member showing up to cover a basketball game wearing a tank top, shorts and high-top shoes. That's how this guy was. And boy, did he talk the talk - all racing lingo, all the time.

I remember after I got into my car that I received some last-minute advice from my NHRA driver before the final run. I was told to "please, please beat that guy" because he annoyed the drivers as much as he annoyed some of the rest of us. When the lights went green, we both stomped on the gas. I think he was a hair ahead of me off the start but as we gained speed, I caught and eventually blew by him. I was yelling for joy as we crossed the finish line. And so, I was later told, were all the media folks back at the starting line.

As we drove our cars back to the drag tower, an unexpected trophy presentation took place. They actually had a trophy for the press race champion, something they'd never previously done at Heartland Park. First, they gave me a nice wooden plaque with the title of the race and the date, July 3, 1986. But then presented me with a Wally. Wait! WHAT!?! A WALLY? The NHRA started presented its event winners with Wally trophies in 1969. They are a brass-plated metal trophy measuring 18 inches tall and weighing 12 pounds, mounted on a solid walnut base named after NHRA founder Wally Parks.

Now, the Wally presented to me wasn't the same size, measuring a foot in height and weighing eight pounds, but it was an exactly replica. Man oh man, when the runner-up saw that I received a Wally he was B-I-T-T-E-R! As for my Wally, to this day it sits in a very public place in my home.

My champion's plaque

My "Wally"

Oh the memories! As I watched that final NHRA Heartland Park telecast near a conclusion, it came down to Justin Ashley and Whitney Force in the top fuel final. I really, really wanted Force to win it. She's the daughter of  John Force, the king of the burnout and 16-time NHRA funny car champion who also won many times at Heartland Park and a guy I got to know on a first-hand basis from interviewing him so many times. In the end, Ashley edged Force by .005 of a second to take the title. So much for a full-circle moment.

Justin Ashley with his "Wally"

So now the curtain closes on Heartland Park. Am I nostalgic? Yes. Am I sad? Yes. I'm so sad that such an awesome state-of-the-art, record-breaking racing facility has to fall silent. And I'm especially sad that race fans are losing what they enjoyed and supported for nearly three and a half decades. Oh wait, I'm one of them!