Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are you favorites,
So like say subscribe and rade it. I'm star and me grates on USh
today listening a watching lim always keep its watching. And now you're hosts Cliff
Berrickman and James Bobo Fay, Hey Bobs. Oh wait a minute, you're
not Bobs, You're Matt Prewitt. Bobo isn't here. He is in the
woods. So you are listening to Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and parentheses Bobo
and Matt Prewitt. So, yeah, Bobo is not here this week.
He is in the woods. He is out doing some Bigfoot stuff and we
look forward to hearing about what he's been doing out in the woods. But
Matt Prewitt, the lovely and talented Matt Prewitt, is our co host,
our guest co host. Right now, Hi, Matt, how you doing
man? I'm great. I just came back from an awesome week in the
Pacific Northwest. I'll have to tell you all about it. That's what we're
doing today. Yeah, So Matt was out here in the Pacific Northwest for
the last X number of days and I thought that that would probably be a
good enough episode. Beyond good enough, I mean a really good episode because
amazing things happened. I mean, how fortuitous that you came out and all
these things went down. Huh Oh, it was really great. I mean,
first of all, it's just great to get back out there because I
think about it all the time, having lived in the Northwest and have so
many friends there and great memories, and obviously if you're into the Sasquatch subject,
there's there's kind of no better place to be, just in terms of
the history and all that. So it was really looking forward to that trip,
especially to see you and to see Melissa. So maybe we could start
at the beginning there, before even squatch Fest. Yeah, so this past
weekend was squatch Fest, but so much more it went down besides squatch Fest.
So I guess probably the beginning of things that we should talk about is
I guess that you were just coming out a few days early to hang out,
and we've been looking forward to that for a long time. I think
you bought your ticket. It's back in like October and November or something like
that. Had all these big plans. Oh, I'm going to take you
out to our big foot spot where we've been getting this stuff and that stuff,
and then all of that was you know, shot the hell basically because
of that crazy weather storm that came through. Man, it was just nuts.
I think I've ranted about that a little bit on the podcast before.
We had you know, pretty high, high level winds that were stained all
sorts of things were frozen, and trees were dropping, and you know,
it was a big It was a big hubbub around here in the Portland area
that where I was. It was really bad because all the trees. But
down in Portland and Gresham and all these towns here, you know, cold
air sinks, so there was a layer of icebated everything, and I thought,
oh god, what a terrible time for Matt and Emily to come out
and visit for a couple of days. But it kind of cleared up by
the time you guys were in town, Oh it did. But it was
crazy to see all that destruction. I mean, it looked like the aftermath
of a tornado, and I know it wasn't. It was just high winds,
but there were massive trees down all over the place and lots of destruction
and looked like power lines down and it was pretty wild to see, so
you you definitely weren't exact writing about any of that, No, and you
saw the cleaned up version on top of it. I mean that's after like
a four or five days of cleanup had already happened, and it was still
pretty nutty. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. But anyway, Matt and Emiley
came into town, you know on Tuesday, is that right? Tuesday?
That is correct? Yeah, And so Tyler my one of my employees here,
he worked for me, so I had all those well, actually I
worked on Tuesday, but he worked for me on Wednesday and Thursday, which
I really appreciate, if you're listening, tire thanks man, really appreciate giving
me that time off. Which is ironic that the employee gave the boss the
time off, but I do appreciate it nonetheless. So we picked them up
and just kind of came back to the house and hung out that night,
didn't we Yeah, because we landed after dark, and so we didn't get
a chance to see the property or see the surrounding areas that particular night.
But Wednesday we definitely did a lot of that. Yeah. I think that
was the first time you've been in my house, even because you hadn't been
out here since twenty nineteen, that is correct, Yeah, and so that
was a whirlwind visit too. I think we just popped by the museum and
then drove a bitter out mount hood back then in twenty nineteen. So you
know, i'd heard you describe the property and what made you decide to move
to that particular place. And if you're a bigfooter, obviously the dream is
always to live in the sort of place where if you wanted to conduct field
research you could just walk out your back door, and you definitely have that
sort of property, and so it was really cool to hop on the side
by side with you and see all the area. Emily and I are both
just blown away. I mean it's beautiful, it's wild. I think you've
posted on social media, but there's these amazing photos of giant black bears and
mountain lions and all that's basically in your backyard. And so you really live
in one of the squatchier places imaginable. Oh yeah, yeah. And then
of course the view out the windows not bad. I mean, Melissa posts
a lot of pictures of that. She's in love with the mountain, and
we have the mountain tip over there on the edge of our valley there,
so we can see it pretty well. And you know, all those game
camera pictures they come from my property. Essentially a couple of them come off
the property. You know, we have cameras and other locations. We have
cameras out down the Clackavius River a little bit, and so a few other
places, you know, for bigfoot reasons. For the stuff on my property,
I just kind of want to know what's walking around in the woods at
night, you know, like what do I need to be afraid of if
I walk up the hill? You know, that's kind of yeah. But
yeah, so we just kind of hung out and then Wednesday, what do
we do Wednesday? I don't even remember. We had all day. I
remember, well, we came to the museum, didn't we Yeah, we
came to the museum, check some stuff out there. We drove around the
property on the side by side, and then Wednesday night we went out to
the willows. Oh that's right, and man it, yeah, I saw
the video. By the way, because everybody knows that we have a membership
for the museum, which is separate, by the way from the membership of
the podcast. So all you podcast folks, we really do appreciate it.
But a lot of people have asked me. Even at squatch Fest, people
are coming up and asking me. He says, Cliff, I'm a member,
but I don't see these videos you're talking about. Oh, that's because
that's a different membership. I mean, I hate to get you from you
know, both both sides like that. But you know, the podcast is
one entity, and then of course the museum is another. So there's two
different memberships going on. But the museum members and North American Bigfoot Center members
get videos every month. They get two videos that would make every single month
about field research and stuff. And we made a video when we went out
to the Willows. The Willows is one of our local Bigfoot spots. It's
down pretty low elevation, which was important this time of year because of the
weather. And so even though the better are the spots that I would consider
to be better, I guess are up higher, they were totally inaccessible,
totally inaccessible, totally snowed in. Keith and those guys tried to get to
one of the spots, but one direction was completely snowed in as of like
Saturday night and we're recording this on a Wednesday, by the way, So
last Saturday night the spot was completely inaccessible from snow one direction and then the
only other way in there were it was like it's like Godzilla walked through and
crushed everything and threw trees over the road. He said, so you couldn't
get into the spot. Turns out, although on a side note, Dave
Dave Ryan from Clackham a sasquatch and he's one of my employees. He got
into the spot yesterday via the Snow place, so you can get in there
now by the way, you just missed it. But so anyway, we
brought Emily and Matt to the Willows, which is a low elevation bigfoot spot
with a number of sightings and this private land is a big chunk of private
lands. And that video just dropped today, so I will Nico has the
file, so I'll upload the file to our Google drive and send you a
link so you can check out the video that you and Emily are in.
Oh, very cool. Now, it was great to see that spot I've
heard you guys talk about. It was really great to meet Nico in person
too. I mean, that was one of the funnier things about this trip,
and I know we'll get into it in the squatch Fest recap, but
man, there are so many people that I've talked to for many years,
some of whom like ten or fifteen years, that I only met in person
for the first time last weekend. And Nico is one of them. You
know, I've been chatting with him for as long as he's been an employee
of years, so it was great to meet him in person. Yeah,
well, before we get to the Willows events of evening, so the museum,
you came to the museum, and of course I know one of the
highlights of you coming to the museum was getting to reconnect with Will again.
Oh man, that was so great. I don't know if we talked about
it on the main podcast. I know we've talked about it in members episodes
before. But you know, when I lived in the Northwest, I was
introduced to a friend of cliffs named Will Robinson. And he's a very bobo
esque character in the sort of the fact that he's had a wild past and
wild background and just unbelievable stories which just happened to be true. And so
not only is he great in the field, and super reliable and great to
be around. But he's wildly entertaining and has the funniest stories, and so
really hit it off with Will. When I lived out there, spent in
I don't know, maybe a year and a half going out in places in
the field with him, and so hadn't seen him since twenty ten. So
it was great to be at the museum and then Will came over and hung
out and got to meet my wife, and so that was so much fun,
beyond just finally getting to see the museum in its current form, because
I hadn't seen it since it formally opened. When I was there before,
only the gift shop was open. There was nothing in the back, there
were no exhibits up. So you've done such a great job with the place.
It's really amazing. It was so cool to walk around there. So
gett to reconnect with Will again. I mean, you used to go out
with Tyler and Will kind of a lot like pretty frequently, and I know
Will was telling some stories and whatnot. Did Will remind you of any stories
that you had actually experienced that maybe you forgot about, Oh yeah, he
did, because we did spend a lot of time together and certain things that
happened in some of those locations that were really memorable, and I wasn't as
diligent about keeping field notes all the time back then as I am now,
and one of the things i'd forgotten about there was an area on the southern
side of the Olympic Peninsula that we went to a few times, and the
first time that I had scouted there with Tyler Bounds, we had some amazing
vocalizations and then later had other experiences there. But Will reminded me. He's
like, do you remember that one night we went out on this other side
road and he said, you did a big, huge howl and then a
massive tree snapped and fell as if it were pushed over in an immediate response.
And I was like, oh, yeah, I do remember that.
I'd forgotten about that particular incident because the other things were more like vocalization responses
and things like that. So that was a good memory, Like, oh
yeah, I do. And then I went back in my email and I
could see some discussions about it from back then. That was back in twenty
ten, but I just hadn't thought about that particular incident among the many others
in a long time, so that was a nice reminder. Yeah, that's
cool. And you know what, Will must like you a lot, because
it takes a lot to get him out of the house, so it was
neat to see. It was good to see Will for me, you know.
I mean, I haven't seen Will in probably a year, and he
lives like four miles from it or something, so it was great to catch
up with him and have him come in and hang out. And he hadn't
seen the museum for quite a while either. But it was just good to
see for old friends again, like Will and how do you guys connect again?
It was cool, It was really cool. You know what's funny is
I'll try to truncate the story because I tend to get long winded when telling
funny stories. But there was one particular time that Will and I and Tyler
Bounce had gone out in an area kind of outside of Seattle, somewhat near
like Snikwalmi Pass, and we had this thermal imager, which back in the
day it was the I think the precursor to the fleer H three twenty four.
It was something in that fleer H series. But to record, you
had to actually hold down the record button. You couldn't just click at once.
It would only record as long as you were holding it down. And
so we were looking around scouting, making some sounds. We had established this
sort of small camp, primitive camp, and this big, heavy animal came
through. It was breaking a lot of stuff, you could hear, very
big and heavy, and so we're scanning with this thermal and then we see
this big heat signature. Long story short, we recorded this for like an
hour and a half, almost having to take turns passing this thing back and
forth while our hands were cramping from holding this button down, and towards the
very end, like we got a little bit better of a view of it.
But Will was looking at it the last portion and he thought he saw
arms reach out and extend. So we got pretty excited, you know,
oh we might have gotten footage. We were so excited, like we were
really howling at the moon, like screaming at the sky like Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Predator like ah, you know. So we went to look at the footage
on my computer and I didn't have the right drivers for this Fleer unit.
So riled up about this, I drove all the way into town and kept
like parking in the parking lots of hotels and motels until I found when they
had a free Wi Fi so I could connect to it with my laptop from
the parking lot download These drivers flew back to camp look at these videos,
and it turned out to me an Elk. We could see it clearly once
we blew it up on the thing. So we drove up to snookwalmy pass
to the top there and went into some gift shop and they had these little
quartz rocks, like polished quartz, with Elk emblazoned on them. So each
bought one and determined that these would be our like Elk brotherhood tokens for the
night. We got fooled by an Elk and so he told me. I
said, dude, I still have mine. It's on my desk. I
look at it every day we record. And he was like, dude,
I put mine out at Cliff's favorite squatch spot. I found an Elk wallow
and I buried it under the and that's why Cliff has so much activity there.
What year was that, by the way, that that happened, Do
you remember that was twenty ten? Twenty ten, because I remember you guys
called me or texted me during all that, or so one of you guys.
It probably Will, I'm guessing. I think I called Bart because Bart
had the same unit, and so I had to be like, hey,
man, where do I find these drivers that will convert these video files where
I can view them? And of course I think we got one. Man,
I think we got one. So it was I had to do the
call of shame afterwards, you know, right, stay tuned for more Bigfoot
and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these messages.
Well. Yeah, so catching up with Will was pretty awesome, and it's
of course there's a pleasure to see Will whenever. I can love that guy.
But the museum, So let's talk about the museum just for a few
moments, since you had never really seen the exhibit hall before, beyond photographs
or something that you might have caught in a presentation or something like that.
We had just put up, just put up the new Ape Canyons stuff,
and we're not even done with the ep Canyon stuff, but like a lot
of it is up at this moment. Did anything strike you and leave a
lasting impression on you? Oh? I would say just all of it,
especially cumulatively. I mean, having pursued this for so long, you know,
things are so much different now with the Internet, and so I don't
want to be like the guy that's like back in my day. But I
think people should understand, especially younger people. Because a lot of people our
age are older, they will understand. But for young enthusiasts or researchers,
proponents, et cetera. It was so hard to track down even books back
in the day, because a lot of them were out of print, and
they certainly weren't all distributed in places like libraries or bookstores, and so you
had to spend a lot of time on eBay and find used copies. And
if you wanted to see a lot of the the best evidence, you had
to accumulate like five or six books to get pictures of this track or that
track, or you know, this bit of trace evidence, like this handprint
that handprint, on and on and on, and it was a process.
And even back in the day of early websites, it wasn't like all that
stuff was cataloged on websites, and so to build a familiarity with a lot
of this evidence took a lot of years and a lot of searching let's say,
like information foraging, and then having to purchase all this stuff and review
physical copies, and so it would have been unfathomable to me in my twenties
to think that, like I could walk into a place and see all of
this stuff in three dimensions in person, because you know, you have the
originals of so many of these pieces of evidence. Now some of those originals
are on display, and if it's not the original, it's a first generation
copy, so it's as detailed a copy of a handprint or a footprint as
you can imagine, or these other partial body impressions all in one place.
And maybe people take that for granted because they can just walk in and that's
just their world because they're younger or newer. But man, it's really a
remarkable thing to be able to see all of that in person and have that
three D almost tactile experience where you could reach out and nearly touch all of
these things, let alone all of the multimedia displays, so various pizzas of
video, thermal imaging, vocalization recordings, et cetera, et cetera. And
then there's all the sort of the cultural iconography. You know you've got a
lot of great representations of you know, artistic depictions and then the way that
the Sasquatch has been portrayed over the decades and other elements of pop culture.
But to see all that in one place is like, that's the kind of
thing I dreamt of, you know, that I wish would have existed a
long time ago. So it's pretty remarkable that you've done that, You've pulled
it off. Well. You know, I get a lot of comments from
people, bigfooters in particular, like, you know, civilians, not so
much. The civilians they go, what handprints. I've never even heard they
had handprints, But you know, the bigfooters of course, that know that
there are handprints in various other body parts out there. They come in they
say, you know, I've only seen pictures of this in books, but
to see this thing in real life, right there in front of me,
it really gives a whole different perspective on this thing. And I remember back
in the nineties when I saw my first footprint casts. You know, the
first footprint cast I ever purchased was the Freeman knuckle Print. I got that
from Krantz because for a very brief period of time in the early days of
the internet, Krantz was selling cast replicas. I sure wish I would have
got more from him at the time, but I just couldn't afford it,
you know. The only one I could really afford at that time was like
twenty dollars for the knuckle prints, you know, So that's what I got
first. And then I saved some money and I got the Patterson Gimlan right
foot cast. He sold that on his website as well. Through there's another
grad student helping them with that, but I guess it doesn't matter at the
point. But anyway, when I first got the cast, it kind of
blew my mind. It's like Wow, in the book, it's one thing,
but in person, it's an entirely different thing. And I think that's
one of the neat things about the museum here is that I can put it
out in front of everybody and there's no glass between you and the artifact.
It's just right there, which is why I use first generation copies, because
I don't want, you know, the public to get their grubby hands on
the originals, but you know, that's right there in front of you.
We do have some originals, of course in the museum but it's under glass,
you know, as they should be protected. But it's a different story
to see these things and really get in there close and personal, which is
what I want people to do. I want people to get as close as
they can to these things and really look at it to see if they can
pick out the fine details of the anatomy, maybe some skin, skin texture
or something like that in there. And it's something I'm kind of pleased with.
You know, the artistic stuff and you know, the chotchkes and the
you know, the bigfoot you know, beers and whatever else. That's all
cool because that anchors it. For the civilians, the people who are not
bigfooters, it's like, oh, I've seen that beer, you know,
I've seen the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot brew or something like that. That connects them
to the subject in some sort of way. The iconography, as you said,
but this the evidence that I think is most important. So if you're
a bigfooter at all, I think that you'll get more out of the museum
than just you know, the lay person I think. But oh yeah,
because again just seeing images. It's hard enough to even collect all the images
of everything that's in that museum. Like I said, you'd have to have
multiple books, and some of which are rare, some of which are out
of print. But then even if you buy the books, it's like,
okay, well, the picture in the book is a black and white picture
that's like, you know, two by three inches or whatever. So you
really, like you said, you get a much stronger sense of the scale
and the scope when you're right there in person with it and you go,
oh wow, you know, even something you know, like the larger track
examples like layered meadow for example, Like you could see that picture a lot
of times, but when you actually are confronted with that big footprint, you
know that track, it's it's quite different to go, oh man, that's
a that's a pretty big piece of evidence literally, you know. So it's
great to be in there and see all that stuff. And you hosted an
excellent event on Thursday at the museum for museum members, and so that was
really cool because it was evident that all of the people who are supporters and
members of the museum have that sort of like reverence for it, for not
just the institution, let's say, but for the evidence. And so it
was really cool to be surrounded by so many people to whom it meant equally
as much. You know, it was very important to them too, So
that's always a great thing to be a part of those sorts of discussions because
I love that stuff so much. You know, if I lived around there,
I could probably see myself just hanging out in there and being a fly
on the wall listening to people's conversations, because it's just cool to be around
people who also value it to that same degree. Well, if you lived
here, I'd employ you well as far. And one last thing before we
jump off the museum and talk about some other things. Well, actually two
to two last things. Number one the eight Canyon stuff that was brand new.
We put that up literally the day before you arrived, I think,
or actually we were putting up while you were here. At the same time.
We have that huge panoramic shot of Ape Canyon, like an eight foot
mural of the Ape Canyon stuff. And then the two new displays, one
about the history of Ape Canyon and one about the rediscovery of Ape Canyon or
the cabins in the mind sight at least, and then of course never before
seen anywhere in the world. Mind you those historic photographs that are now on
the wall of the NABC. What about those things? I mean that when
I saw that, I almost wept. I mean it was mind blowing for
me. And I'm in the midst of all this stuff. What did you
think of that stuff? Oh? That was amazing. You know, I
didn't know those images existed. I thought that I had seen because I had
some really poor scans of some of those early articles from twenty four and even
the scanned images I have are really low resolution, and now there are no
good ones. That's why even the originals are just terrible. Yeah, that
there are no good ones. Yeah, it was. It was just crazy
to see what you got your hands on there because they are high resolution.
They are really cool pictures and you know, I don't know, I guess
we've talked about him, but like there's one, for example, of fred
Beck recreating the shot that he took at the thing that I never knew that
picture exists, and so to see it in that context, and really cool
pictures of the cabin with it being in the state that they claimed it was
in terms of you know, pieces missing where the chinking had been knocked out
and an arm and supposedly reached through and holding the rocks that struck the cabin
or that were on the roof like that was unbelievable. And then to your
point about you know, you guys were hanging them up. And so while
we're on that, I do have to say, like meeting your employees Nico,
Dave, Tyler and Keith, like everyone was super nice. It was
kind of all hands on deck as they were getting the museum ready for an
event, and they were all super cool. Really enjoyed each one of them.
Yeah, I could not do with that. I mean, we're a
team here at the NABC. I maybe the smiling face on the in the
figurehead or something like that, but I could not be doing it without all
the employees here. They are really the backbone of this place, you know,
and I just cannot express my gratitude for everything they do for us.
You know, I really do deeply appreciate them now. And they're all just
friends too. Not only do we work together and you know, share a
love for the subject, but they're all just good friends. Yeah. But
those those photographs are from a woman named Sandy Moyer, and those only surface
like I don't know, maybe October or November or something. Mark Murcell,
of course, is the guy who uncovered them or was in contact with Sandy.
And if I have this right, and maybe I don't, I don't
know if I have this right. Wilma Welch Sandy Moyer, the woman who
has these photographs and her family's collection, is the great granddaughter I believe of
Wilma Welch, or no, the Wilma Welch's sister. Now most people out
there are saying, well, who the heck's Wilma Welch. Wilma Welch was
the first person that the miners spoke to after the event. I mean,
they got the cabin was attacked, they got their stuff, They went for
the longest seven mile hike they ever went on in their entire life to get
out of there because they're scared. They piled in their car, went to
the Spirit Lake Ranger station in hopes of finding Bill Welch, the Spirit Lake
Ranger. He was stationed there at Spirital and Wilma was Bill's wife basically,
And so they went up to Wilman and said, hey, where's Bill,
And it's always out in the barn or something, and Will came and saw
them, and his comment to the newspaper was I've never seen a group of
grown men so scared in my life, you know, So there's that.
Of course, Bill was very skeptical. He didn't think the whole thing happened.
He didn't believe in the mountain devils as they were called back then and
such. But these photographs were in the Welch family collection, and they were
taken by one of the reporters, I believe the reporters from the Seattle Post
Intelligencer, probably Slim Lynch, I believe his name was, or he may
he may have had a camera guy with him, a photographer with him at
the time. And again, all of my facts should always be checked because
I'm kind of going by memory and that sort of stuff, and my memory
is not the best. So but of course Mark is sitting on top of
these are many more photographs too. By the way, we just kind of
put the most important ones I thought out there. There's four out there.
One shows Wilma on the porch of the ranger station at Spirit Lake, and
I think that's important because she's specifically mentioned in one of our displays. And
of course these photographs came from her family, and her family was so gracious
as to allow the NABC to post them and publish them, you know,
at our Inner Museum, and we are very grateful, very grateful with them.
The other photographs, of course, as he mentioned, one was Fred
Beck recreating the shots that he took at a sasquatch standing nearby when he was
getting water out of the nearby spring of course that spring. There's great photographs
of that from September that I'll get to in just a moment. And then
there's another picture of two gentlemen on the roof of the cabin next to the
ventilator cap. And those two men see the ventilator cap was damaged during the
attack, and then rocks started coming in from the top because you know there's
a fire inside the cabinet ventilation cap. So that was the rangers Jim Huffman
and Bill Welch on top next to the damaged ventilator cap. And then there's
another picture of Leroy, Perry Smith and Fred Beck at the cabin. And
of course you can see the chinking between the logs of the cabin that was
knocked out upon the initial hit on the side of the cabin. Maybe you
threw a rock made the sasquatch hit the outside of the house, you know,
because that's what they still do that behavior nowadays, so it makes sense.
Yeah. So those are the four historic photographs that we have on display
right now, and there are several more, but those are the most pertinent
to the story, and those are the ones I wanted to post more than
anything, so and we're very, very lucky that Sandy Moore and her family
have given us permission to display those. So there's new stuff up at the
NABC directly related to Abe Canyon, and we couldn't be happier. And of
course later this year we're going to have an event with Mark Marcel talking about
the Ape Canyon stuff and all the new developments in this past six months.
Because also on display we have an entire display not only devoted to the story
of Ape Canyon, but the other display that I put right next to it
was the story of the rediscovery, because I think that the rediscovery and the
slewthing of all these things is just as interesting as the actual event. And
the final chapter has not yet been written, but the final chapter on the
exhibit board was from well it's probably these photographs, honestly, because they came
out in October November, but in September the group of young men who were
direct relatives of the miners or one of the miners rediscovering the Mind sight.
Now, that was out on Facebook. Most people know about that, but
those guys the gentleman there. I met Jacob this past weekend. We'll get
to that, but also Braden, who I have not yet met, and
his brother. I believe his name escapes me right now. I'm so sorry
forgive me. They gave me permission to post photographs that they took of the
actual mind itself. So a lot of cool new stuff, and I'm so
glad that you and Emily had a chance to see it, like we were
amongst the first eyes to see these things. And I'm really really proud of
what we've been doing at the NABC with the Ape Canyon stuff because this is
one hundred and three anniversary, one hundred years ago this happened. I think
that's so cool. Oh, it's very cool. And like I said,
I think for younger people or newer people, I hope they appreciate it because
it's hard to explain or articulate to people like how unbelievably rare it is.
To have all that in one place, and especially for Sasquatch nerds or students
or fishing out it was whatever word you want to use, like myself to
be confronted with things that like, oh, I didn't even know that existed
these images or this part of the history, Like that's really cool. It's
all sort of Sasquatch one oh one to some degree for someone who's new to
walk in and say all that, but even for long time sort of hardcore
Squatch nerds, which I can say that because you know, Bobo's not here,
because there's there's nothing he takes exception to more than being called a nerd
not a nerd. He gets more mad about that word than anything else I've
heard. But you know, even for us nerds, it's like you walk
in the in ABC and you're going to see things that you've never seen,
that you didn't know existed, that you didn't realize that had been documented to
that degree. So it's all super cool. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these messages. God,
we're only on Wednesday, man, we better hurry it up. We're
halfway through the podcast. So that night, I really wanted to take you
out to one of our spots we've been pulling prints all this time, man,
but it was just snowed in. We could not do it, but
we had to have access to the Willows. There's been a handful of reports
out of the Willows, like actual observations. I mean, Nico was talking
to a guy when the guy saw a sasquatch behind Nico and by the time
Nico turned around, it was gone. So I mean, yeah, there's
activity on this property. And of course, knowing the location, well duh,
of course there's activity on this property. So we thought, okay,
well that's a good spot to go. So and it's a big chunk of
private land. Our museum members know it as the Willows. So we had
a chance to take you out there. And what do you think about all
that? Oh? It was rad It was nice too that you know,
it was pretty clear for the most part when we first got there because the
moon was sufficient enough we almost didn't have to use any lights to walk around.
Even in some of the areas that retained some of the rain somewhat flooded
because like you said, it's a low lying bottoms area. For the most
part, we didn't even have to use any headlamps or anything like that because
it was moonlit and so it was that perfect Pacific Northwest, big creepy trees
you know, with moonlight cascading through. Looked almost like the nighttime scene of
a horror movie to some degree, and so it was like the perfect setting.
But then the rain slowly crept in and it got a little bit colder.
But man, what a spot like. I would have loved to see
it during the daytime too, but it was esthetically perfect at night. It
was everything you could want from a squatch hotspot, so to speak, except
for too much rain. Man. The rain drove us out of there,
unfortunately. Yeah, once the rain picked up and started that, it just
it didn't relent, and we got out of there in time that I think
you or Nico had pulled up the radar on your phone and so there was
a huge wave of heavy rain coming, so we got out there before that
hit. But it was cool. It was nice to be out there,
and those conditions too bad. We didn't hear anything, but at least we
got a night out in the field. That's always super cool. Yeah,
and you know that was Wednesday night at this point, and I needed to
get back because I think we're out there only like ten or eleven or something
like that. It wasn't very late, but I had to get back because
the next day I had to go pick up Ken Gerhardt from the airport.
Ken, of course, has been a guest on the podcast before, and
I think anybody listening to this podcast probably knows who Ken is, but just
in case you don't, he's kind of a cryptozoology author and researcher. He's
you know, I'm a big footer, I think, Matt, I think
it's fair to describe you as a big footer. But Ken's kind of a
generalist. He's into all sorts of stuff. He sure likes the bigfoot subject,
but he's really into lake monsters and that sort of thing. He's even
written a book on flying humanoids of all things, which I don't even know
what those things are. Probably a handful of other books to that. I
this is not coming to me right now. Ken's a good friend and a
good researcher, and he was coming into town, of course, and he
needed a place to stay, so, you know, so he gave me
a call and because he was speaking at squatch Fest Friday and Saturday, so
he needed a place to stay, so he flew in early on Wait,
is that Thursday? No, he was there Thursday, right, No,
everyone came in on Thursday, that's right. Yeah, So I had to
drive to the airport on Thursday morning to pick up Ken, which is always
a pleasure of course to hang out with Ken, and we brought him back
to the house. Got back to the house around eleven or something like that
probably, and at one o'clock Michael Freeman shows up to the house because he's
also spending the night there. I guess I had kind of a flophouse for
the weekend. And then so we hung out there for a bit, went
to the museum, and then three o'clock Doctor Meldrum shows up with Brandon and
Cynthia Tennant, who was there right. Brandon, of course makes T shirts.
He has a sasquatchprints dot com. He makes our Bigfoot and Beyond t
shirts. By the way, if you liked a Bigfoot and Beyond T shirt
that are for sale at sasquatchprints dot com click link in the show notes.
Yeah, there you go. But the Lincoln the show notes, you know,
and then he also makes all the NABC shirts and he's just a good
friend, great artist, a lot of fun. I love that guy.
So yeah, I mean talk about big for Royalty man like Meldrum and Freeman
and Garrett Hart and Pruitt and all sorts. It was like it was like
a you know, like a gravitational center of nerds man. It was awesome.
Once we got to the museum and started hanging out, then my very
good friend and constant field partner from back in the day, Tyler Bown,
showed up, who also you know, worked on finding Bigfoot previous guests on
the podcast, so it was amazing to see him, like I've spent so
much time with him, feels like yesterday. And then we did the math
and realized we hadn't seen each other in person in eleven years, which is
pretty crazy. So that was nice. Tim and Dana hallirand from the Bigfoot
influencers you know, the book project and their podcast, they were there.
There's quite a few people like converged in that place, so it was cool
to be surrounded by so many friends, you know, let alone the Bigfoot
Royalty like you mentioned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do really enjoy
these events, they're pretty stressful. And you know, a normal event,
so yeah, pretty it flows pretty smoothly. But this one was nuts.
Man. With so many people, and of course with so many dignitaries in
town, people were going, oh, there's an event, cool, I'll
be there. It's they go, well, shoot, man, I mean
I got to make sure I have enough seats for the ticket holders, you
know, like like all these you know, deadheading people are coming out.
It's like, I'll be there, and it's like, well shoot. So
I actually had have uncomfortable conversations a few times, like hey, I'm glad
you're here, and you're more than welcome to be here, but you know,
when we start the event, you got to make sure that everybody is
seated before you have a seat. And everybody was super cool. They totally
understood, you know, because we sold tickets to this event and only to
members. By the way, it turns out, I put them out to
the museum members first, as always at a discount, because that's what part
of the membership is when you get cool stuff, they always get discounts on
it. And then when the sales slowed downs sufficiently, then we put them
out to the podcast members. So some of you listeners out there actually were
fortunate to score tickets for this event. And then we did this last year
when Meldriuman was in town, and we tried it again and I think it
went better this time. We also sold virtual tickets for five bucks. It
was a five dollars ticket to watch a one plus hour or Meldrum presentation with
a Q and A at the end, and it seemed to go off without
a hitch. I don't We didn't get any complaints. And see, because
last time, you know what it was last time is we sent out emails
to everybody who bought a ticket for the virtual event last time, and then
we asked for their feedback. And then Nico went back through all those emails
and then listened to everybody's suggestions and made sure that we did them to make
this a better event. And I think we got it. I think we
got it this time. Everybody seemed really happy and you know, for a
five dollars ticket, what are you going to complain about? Really? But
you know, I think we got it this time. And so we had
the forty forty five people in the room and I think we sold I mean
not a ton of tickets, probably about forty tickets. We had people listening
from all over the world. Litt alone the country, but all over the
world. We had people in Europe and Australia who bought tickets for the Zoom
event. It was really neat. It was kind of a fun thing to
do, and we were only going to sell you know, probably not much
of the more than forty or fifty tickets anyway for those Zoom events, just
because we don't want to clog up the internet tubes. You know. I
don't know how that worked, but just in case. That's the problem when
we start naming names, it's like, well, we'll leave someone out,
but lest we forget. We also had researcher author Tom Powell, and oh,
of course, of course, yeah, yeah, I forgot. Yeah,
Tom dropped by. He didn't. He saved for a little bit of
the presentation, but you know, he his wife's a doctor and he always
likes to meet her when she comes home and that sort of thing, so
he had to split early, I guess. But yeah, just what a
great event, man, what a great event. I really enjoyed doing these
things, although it is hectic as all get out for me, especially when
so much Royalty is in town. Oh yeah, so much fun though,
so great to see so many people. And again, your patrons are so
awesome. I feel like I made a lot of new friends there. There's
some people I had communicated with, like you know Mitch at Bigfoot Treasure,
got to meet him in person. There's one of your patrons, a guy
named Rook who was super cool. Shout out to Rook. We hit it
off. Very smart, very funny guy. Just a lot of great people
there was. It was awesome. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you
know, it's just part of the part of the benefit of being a member
to a Bigfoot and Beyond or the members or of the museum is that you
get access to events like this because you know, with these special events at
the museum, they're only I can only sell like thirty or thirty five tickets,
so it's really a private, intimate event in a lot of ways.
And you know, he don't Did you catch Meldrum's presentation at Squashfest, by
the way, No, I was at my booth and I didn't get to
see anyone's presentations unfortunately. Well from what I heard about that one, he
did a different one at squatch Fest, which is good because the one that
he did at squatch Fest, I believe I've seen before because he put that
paranthropist skull up against Patty's head, which I think is a really really important
slide to see, I think in a lot of ways. But so he
did a presentation at the museum where he kind of just touched on various topics,
like he has thoughts about this, thoughts about that, and some slides
and a lot of interesting things to say. And I really liked that kind
of presentation. You know, it's kind of a reading a book where every
chapter is about a completely new thing, you know, really that kind of
modgepodge sort of mishmash of stuff. I think it was a great event,
And of course we came back to the house afterwards because the next day was
Squatchfest, and man it was it was just non stop. I mean by
the time we got the squatch Fest around noon or one or something like that,
and we hit the ground running, had to set up everything, and
then they opened the doors at four or five or something for a few hours
and then the onslaught began. It was nuts. Yeah, I love those
kind of events though, you know, the coolest thing for me about Squatchfest
both days, the first Friday and Saturday, was getting to see so many
friends I hadn't seen in so many years because they all sort of congregated under
the same roof. And then there were so many people that I'd communicated with
via phone calls and things like that over the years that I'd never met in
person, like Shane Corson or Todd Hale, you know a number of these
people that was like, oh, so cool to finally be even though we've
been having conversations for in some cases, like I said, twelve fourteen years,
which is pretty funny. But yeah, it was a great event,
very well run, lots of cool people there, but definitely hardly a moment
to breathe, very busy. It is one of my favorite events just because
it is so close and it is so well run and so many people show
up. I mean two probably three thousand or more people. Three or four
thousand people came through the doors over the weekend, and of course we were
there Friday and all day Saturday. Tend to whenever that was on Saturday,
was it eight or six or something, I don't even remember. So this
one big mushy mess in my memory. I don't have a really strong timeline
for winner who were where things came by the table there, but man,
all sorts of interesting people pop by. And I'm not even really a people
person in that sort of way, but even I enjoyed talking to some of
these people, Like I got to meet Jacob, Jacob Mitchell and one of
the co rediscoverers of the Ape Canyon mine. Talked to him a little bit
about maybe coming on the podcast and telling the story of that, and also
coming by the museum for that Mark Mercell ape Kenyons special events. I mean,
he is Bigfoot royalty now, whether he wants it or not. Too
bad, buddy. If Jacob, if you're listening, you're you're doomed.
You're part of the Bigfoot community now forever. I also I also hung out
with the grand great granddaughter or granddaughter of Fred Beck. Her name was Brenda.
I got to meet her, and of course Betty Mitchell as well,
the granddaughter of one of the miners, like the Marion's not Marion Smith,
Leroy Smith. So yeah, I met a lot of Ape Canyon folks because
all those Ape Canyon miners were living in that area Longview and Kelso at the
time, and their roots run deep. I think one of the relatives told
me that so and so, you know, Aunt whatever, Aunt Sandy or
whatever her name was, had seventeen children or so. I mean, you
can imagine how many of those miners relatives are running around that area. If
one of them a few steps up, you know, dad, grandma,
great grandma had seventeen children, you can imagine how many of those folks are
that DNA in them, the Ape Canyon DNA. So that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I met someone again, Like you said, sometimes when you meet
that many people that are brand new, the new folks sort of blend together
a little bit. So I apologize I don't remember the specific person, but
I met and spoke with someone who had backpacked into Ape Canyon before the Mountain
blee. So this would have been, I think, as this person was
describing it, either the late sixties or early seventies. But it seemed like
they were motivated at the time of trying to figure out where the thing fell,
you know, because it's not clear in the story whether it retreated into
the canyon to Box Canyon, or whether it was hit and killed and fell
into or at least injured and fell into the canyon. But I did meet
a gentleman there who's like, oh, yeah, I've always been following that
story. And in fact, we backpacked into Ape Canyon back in the day,
you know, trying to find the thing, which I thought was pretty
cool. Yeah, And you know that there's a group of folks that I
guess it's a fun you know, like people like go they like to go
caving, or they like to go mountain climbing. There's group of folks that
kind of do a combination of both of those scenes and just walk down riverbeds
like and people. There's a group of folks that did the Ape Canyon thing.
They hopped in Ape Canyon at the very very top, you know where
the glacial trickle comes down through that little area by Pumaspute and goes between that
cleft and the keyhole there that is such as famous photograph and the Bigfoot books.
The giant rocks. By the way, you have no idea how big
those rocks are till you see them. They're They're huge. They're you know,
eighty feet tall, and that big cleft is right there. They repelled
down there and then kept on going basically, so there is a group of
folks that have done that once or twice, and what an adventure that must
be. It doesn't look insurmountable. It looks like you probably want ropes and
all that jazz and you know, and some skill, but otherwise you will
almost certainly die. But people have done that before, so there obviously isn't
any big skulls hanging down there, or they would have been seen by now.
Of course that was such a long time ago to there'll probably be nothing
left. But yeah, I'm not a bit surprised to me back, you
know. Supposedly I think it was Rod, I think grandson or son of
I think it was grandson of Fred Beck, who lived with Fred for quite
a while in his life, from like thirteen to adulthood. I think he
claims to have gone to the mine site in the early seventies, I believe,
and looked inside, and apparently the miners had left their gear there.
But I don't know what we'll find out more about that. Mark has an
interview lined up with this gentleman to learn a little bit more about what he
saw. Now that the mine has been rediscovered, maybe we can verify a
few things of interest, which I think would be kind of cool. Yeah,
but it's not just an eight Canyon sort of show here or an event.
Of course, I spoke to other people. Some guy named Dane came
up to me and told me he saw sasquatches kind of near Camus, Washington.
And it turns out that I know more or less where that was,
and by the power lines, by some various distinct turns in the road on
Highway five hundred. And that's of interest because I've got some friends who live
up there above Camus, kind of in the Ireland area, and I go
to their house sometimes for dinner, and I drive right by the spot.
So I'm kind of interested in that. Had probably give Dane to call in
the next, you know, a couple of weeks or something see what was
going on with that guy. And of course that Rook guy that you mentioned
earlier at the at the he's a nerd. He knows one of my favorite
bands, Sparks. In fact, he listens to the podcast and we've already
give him on shout out, so you don't get another Rook, don't get
greedy. But he commented to me one time about how I knew about Sparks,
and he was blown away because he's also that level of nerd that he
knows about Sparks, that band. But he came up to me and he
gave me a DVD about They Might Be Giants, because that's kind of another
nerd band, if you know, in my opinion. And also he gave
me a compilation DVD full of Don Knotts movies. Amazing. I love me
some don Notts and so thank you Rook. I appreciate that band. That
was really cool. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Will be right back after these messages. I'll tell you something funny.
You already know this, but the audience doesn't know it. So of course,
had so many amazing interactions over these two days, like really personally very
valuable to me to see so many friends from back in the day. But
perhaps one of the stranger interactions is, you know, I was broken away
from the table for a second and an older gentleman came out to me and
just randomly said, he goes, hey, you know this is all BS,
don't you, And so I just kind of laughed and I was like,
okay, well, you know I might know a few people who think
otherwise, but you know, hope you're enjoying yourself at the event. And
he said, no, my uncle Ray started all this, Ray Wallace,
and I was like, oh, yes, I'm familiar with who your uncle
is. And he said, yeah, so this is this is all nonsense.
He's he did all of it. And so I was just being friendly
and smiled, and I said, well, you know, I'd really love
to know how your uncle Ray was able to plant so many sighting stories in
print media, like, let's say, in North Georgia back in the eighteen
hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. And he smiled at me and he said,
well, I guess some damn fools will believe anything. So I just smiled
back and said, yeah, I guess they will take that. He was
friendly enough, but then I saw he came over and talked to you.
So it was kind of interesting to meet a member of the Wallace family.
But it was just funny that I was afterwards. I was like, did
he could just come up to everyone and say, hey, you know this
is all bs wright or was I the only lucky one? You know?
Well, you didn't say that to me. I spoke to him at some
length, and I just killed him with kindness. You know, it's not
his fault. His uncle was a hoaxer, you know, So I just
killed him with kindness and time. And I said, hey, man,
would you mind if I took a picture with you? He goes, I
don't want no picture with nobody. It's like, all right, man,
that's cool too. I guess that's nice to meet you, crotchety old man.
Thank you very much for coming by the table. Appreciate that. Yeah,
he was funny. He was smiling the whole time, and I was
too, So it wasn't it wasn't like contentious. It was just a funny
conversation, you know. It was like, oh that was weird. Oh
yeah, yeah, also cool. It's like I'm familiar with who your uncle
was. Like, that's that's kind of cool. Like there's some history there.
Yeah. I asked them a little bit about the Stompers, and he
wasn't aware that where they were or anything like that. But I've got a
line on those things, and of course I sure would like to get them
from the museum, don't get me wrong. But I also understand and through
various contacts, I've almost acquired them a few times. But I mean the
family wants to keep them because they're family heirlooms, and I fully respect that,
and I fully understand that, of course, but I keep wondering,
man like, would they let me put them on and run through the mud
and take a couple of casts, you know, That's what I really want
to do. I mean, if I can't have them on display at the
museum as pieces of historic you know, like just historic artifacts, I'd like
to at least make some casts out of them and see what those those footprint
casts look like, and to compare them to some of those early ones,
you know, like the fifty eight Tipmos or the fifty nine Titmus ones,
and you know this sixty three Hodgson casts and that sort of stuff. You
know, because a lot of those early Bluff Creek things are hoaxes. They
are Ray Wallace hoaxes. So to have footprint casts from that would be very,
very useful. And of course, just a few weeks ago, I
put this on Twitter. I might did I mention this on the show?
I'm not sure somebody brought in a footprint cast that they had, but like
in their dad's or uncle's garage or something like that, and they wanted to
know what I thought of it. And it was immediately recognizable as a Ray
Wallace hoax. Immediately recognizable because well, the Wallace hoaxes have a very particular
look to them, you know. And I told them as much and whatever,
and I put it on I put it on on Twitter. I think,
yeah. And then and some bigfooter gave me flack like I was elevating
hoaxers and and you know, giving them the attention they don't deserve and stuff,
and I think, and I think you got this all wrong, man.
I think, uh, I think that you need to recognize this as,
whether we like it or not, as part of bigfoot history and we
need to learn from things like that. I'm not, you know, elevating
hoaxing and putting them on pedestals. That's nonsense. I think this particular person
took it and completely incorrect and looks at this in a very weird way.
So I don't know. I thought that was kind of weird. But whatever.
People, I'll never understand them. Well, I saw that tweet,
and given the person who said that, I would say, this is what
Carl Jung would have called projection. Okay, fair enough, fair enough.
Hey, well, so how did you think your presentation went? Oh,
I thought it went very well. I was I didn't really know what to
expect, because there is such a proliferation of, to put it charitably,
mystical interpretations around the subject. And you know, that's that's always been an
undercurrent of that, but of course that's grown and grown and grown and become
more prevalent over the last really over the last ten years, but especially I
would say, like maybe the last five years. And so my presentation was
a bit more grounded and trying to say that, you know, can we
look at this through the narrowest constraints possible and construct a viable model based solely
in what we know, you know, the established knowns of science as we
as we currently understand it. And if we can build a story within that
narrowest set of constraints that serves to answer all these lingering questions, then that's
more likely to be true than whatever model, you know, we construct,
or whatever story we tell to use other words, that constantly invokes you know,
the unknown, the unusual, the extraordinary, et cetera. And so
whenever you're talking about something that's really biologically grounded like that. The concern is
always like, well, if there are mystical or metaphysical proponents, they might
take offense to that, but that didn't seem to the case. Everybody was
very receptive, and in fact, one gentleman who I am fairly certain holds
a different perspective, had reached out to me and said that he found it
very useful to think and speak in those terms about likelihoods and that it was
grounding, and so that was very nice to hear, because again, I'm
not trying to combat other perspectives. I'm not trying to defeat other perspectives.
I'm just trying to say I was asked to speak, and so I'm going
to offer the perspective that I hold at this time that I think is sufficient
for me to explain this particular mystery thus far. And maybe you'll find it
useful too, and hopefully a lot of people, do you know if I've
heard it said, And so I try to make it my philosophy too,
Like you don't change people's perspectives by attacking them, you change their perspectives by
offering them a better one. And so my presentation was really aimed at like,
here is the simplest explanation, the most parsimonious, totally rooted in the
known, within the narrowest set of constraints that I can come up with,
and if we can make that work, then that's probably close to the truth.
So I'm very glad it was well received and got a lot of positive
feedback thankfully. Yeah. Well, I didn't hear any bad comments about any
of the presentations, and I heard some really glowing ones of Michael Freeman's stuff,
and I know he redid some of his presentation as well. And one
gentleman, actually Michael, Michael's a good friend. We talk maybe once a
week or more. He was telling me that somebody came up to him who
had actually worked with Peter burn in the Bigfoot research project, and he said
that he had he had always assumed, based on what Peter said, that
his that Paul Freeman, Michael's father was a hoaxer, and it was all
based on basically what Peter said. And basically after watching the presentation and weighing
some of the things that Michael was saying, he kind of walked away saying,
you know what now that like now that I'm kind of out of that
sphere of influence. I don't think that anymore. I mean, the evidence
that's put forward has been very would be very very difficult to fake, especially
for someone with Paul's abilities, you know, or lack thereof, perhaps,
you know, because Paul was a smart guy, but he was not educated.
You know, he was not educated in say anatomy, for example.
And he's a good tracker to get outdoorsman and all that sort of stuff.
But but tracking a bear, tracking a deer is not super relevant to tracking
a sasquatch and a lot of way, I mean it is, and there's
directly and don't get me wrong, there's overlap for sure, but it's a
different beast all together in more ways than one. So yeah, this gentleman
who had actually worked with Peter Burn kind of walked away and said, you
know, I think I was just under the spell like that he said it,
and therefore I believe it. And I think that's where most of the
big community is, you know, with Renee to Hindon and Peter Burn and
whoever else out there, you know, talking talking smack about the footprints and
how that doesn't make sense or this doesn't make sense It really just shows how
they don't fully understand how the feet interact with the ground and whatnot. So
I know Michael felt really good about it, and I know a lot of
people had really glowing things to say about Michael's presentation. You know, honestly,
it's probably because Michael worries a lot, you know, about about his
father's legacy and how he's going to be perceived, because you know, with
the last name like Freeman, you post anything on Facebook and then people attack
you for whatever it is. It doesn't matter because you're dad's a hoax sure,
and all this other stuff. And he's thinking, you know, I
think I would know that, man, I live with the guy. But
at I think that he was worried about the reception of his stuff so much
that at the end, I think it finally got to him. And Michael,
you're listening. This is just my guess. You can correct me if
you're wrong, if I'm wrong. But right before and he goes, you
know what, screw this, I'm just gonna have fun with it, and
he let go. He let go of all that, and apparently that came
through to the audience. So I couldn't be happier for Michael for having a
good time on stage, because that's what it comes down to. That's what
I do when I talk. I try to have a good time on stage
because that's what I learned from being an elementary school teacher for so long that
if I'm not having a good time, the kids aren't having a good time.
And that's why I treat all my presentations like, yeah, I try
to talk about serious stuff, and I try to make it, you know,
informative and educational and all that sort of stuff, but also I try
to have a good time otherwise why am I doing this? You know?
And I do think my presentation went pretty well. There's a few things I'm
going to change for next time because it's a brand new presentation. I haven't
done it before, basically looking back at twenty twenty three and talking about some
of the highlights at the museum and the things I have going on. But
I want to emphasize some because after the presentation, several people came up to
me and says, well, Cliff, you know, if you've you know,
you're getting all this stuff at the spot, what about putting game cams
out or what about trying this or what about trying that. Then in every
case, I had to go, dude, you don't think I'm doing that.
You think I tell you everything? Of course I don't, you know,
and they kind of you know. Then I went away, like presentations
are one thing. There's certain information that is for the public, and there's
certain information that I hold type to my chest. So yeah, you know,
I'm open to all ideas, but you know, you can you can
probably bet that I'm a step or two ahead because I don't. I don't
share everything with the audience. Why would I, you know, that's it's
private research stuff. But yeah, I think it was a great event,
and one last thing because I know we're kind of running out of time here.
I would never forgive myself if I didn't mention one of the highlights of
the weekend. So I'm talking to this guy and then somebody came up behind
them and I saw that they had, like, you know, a bill
in their head, like a dollar bill or something in our hand, and
I'm thinking, oh, this is great. Hey man, I got to
take care of a customer. Thanks for blah blah blah, And I thanked
him kindly. I said, hey, what can I do for you?
And This guy's name is Shane, and he goes, Hey, I have
a favor to ask you, and I'm thinking, sure, what is it?
What can I do for you? I'm happy to help with that whatever
is reasonable, you know. He goes, I want to propose to my
girlfriend. And I went, oh, really, And he said he wanted
to pay me, want to give me a hundred bucks or something. I
said, no, dude, I'm going to I'm doing this for free.
I love love. I'm just I'm in love with love itself. I think
it's the most important thing in literally in the universe, you know. And
so he goes, yeah, so this is what I want you to do.
You know. He gave me a sign that he wrote and he says,
marry me with a question mark. And he says, and she's a
huge fan of you. She asked me about Bigfoot on my on our very
very first date. She asked, like, do you believe in Bigfoot?
And I think it's an appropriate, appropriate question to ask on your first date,
because like, if the answer is no, you really need to think
hard about that second date, you know what I mean. But I know
a lot of couples, you know that for me personally, you know,
it may not work for me if Melissa had doesn't didn't believe in Bigfoot.
So anyway, so the deal was she was going to come around the corner
with Shane and her name was Brittany by the way, Brittany Shane. So
she was going to come around the corner and then I and she's apparently a
big fan of Finding Bigfoot show, so I was going to say, hey,
Britney, because she why would I know her name, you know,
and then I would show her the sign and then she would probably be confused
from it. It's like why does Cliff want to marry me? And then
she'll turn around and then Shane would be on his knees with the ring,
and that's exactly what happened. So they both came around and go hey,
Brittany, and she looks at me and smiles and like and like, I
show her the sign and then then I kind of nowed because I already have
a wife, you know, so I kind of nowed, like, hey,
look at that dude down there on the knee and she turns around and
there's photographs of it and stuff, and of course she said yes, because
how could you not say yes? A need to getting proposed to it a
bigfoot thing, you know, and and just happily ever after. So Brittany
and Shane more powered. Gee, guys, thank you for allowing me to
be part of it. You know, it's again, love is the most
important thing, period And to help kind of push you off the docks into
the unknown together like that is an honor and one that I will not forget.
So thank you very much for allowing me to part of your forever happily
ever after and just good all the luck in the world to you guys.
So yeah, they were so great. They came up to the table and
you know, Brittany's originally from Georgia, and so we talked about some citing
reports that had occurred in Georgia because you knew I was from there. And
you know, it's funny, it's like, as I get older and hopefully
wiser, If not wiser, I'm at least, you know, so much
more enveloped in and motivated by gratitude the older I get. And so seeing
so many of my old friends people hadn't seen it forever, it was really
overwhelming because just the conversations and like, do you remember this, you remember
that, Like, God, I'm just so grateful to have had so many
cool adventures with so many people. I got pretty teary eyed, like a
dozen, maybe two dozen times over the weekend. But if I had seen
that go down, I definitely would have cried. So thank you that I
was spared having to cry in front of a bunch of strangers. But congratulations
to them, because that is that is just awesome and they were really sweet
people, so kudos. Oh, I got choked up. I'm not gonna
lie. I'm a very sensitive guy. I'm a crier in general, you
know, like little things, you know, set me up, like movies
and just sweet kindness and heroism on certain flavor of heroism really does that to
me. And this definitely kind of choked me up for a minutes, Like
just to know that I'm fortunate enough to always be part of their history.
It's just like what an honor? What an honor? I agree? And
this is the point where we need someone to go. You guys are total
wombs, dude bo, but where are you when you need when we need
you. Something that we haven't mentioned yet, which is probably one of the
most important things that happened the entire weekend is previous guests on Bigfoot and Beyond.
The dudes who found the snowprints over on Bluff Creek. They were in
the neighborhood. They came to the museum on Thursday and then afterwards wanted to
go for a hike. I guess, But basically, the long and short
of it is that these two of those three dudes saw a sasquatch. That's
Doug and Todd and carry three folks that were driving up to squatch Fest from
California. They observed a sasquatch, you know, just a few miles from
my house, you know, basically, you know, up there kind of
kind of up towards Lolo Pass Road in that general direction, on the adjacent
to Bull Run. They were on a trail. And we'll tell everybody else
about that in the members section because we're kind of running out of time here.
I hate to be a tease like that, but you know, that's
what we do here and Bigfoot it Beyond. We tease things. So anyway,
we went, You and I a Matt of course, and Emily went
to the site with the witnesses on Sunday after we got home, and great
things happen in fact, I went back on Monday as well, and we've
got a bunch of stuff to tell you about that, but let's do that
in the members section. So I don't know other than that, Matt,
what else we want to say. I just want to say, you know,
I met so many people that came up and said I love the podcast,
and I talked to a great mini listeners and people had so much positive
feedback and I'm so grateful for that. And you know a lot of them
were coming up to me and saying that, and you know, cliffs table
was busier than mine, obviously, but I would always incurage, Hey,
go go tell Cliff, you know, like cause I'm just the producer and
occasionally talk. But I was like, oh, you got to tell Cliff
that you know that you guys are listening to it, and so I know
Bobo will listen to this episode. But man, you know, it's we
put in so much time, in so many hours on this, Like you
know, I work on it every single day. We do this every week
and it's been almost five years, which is crazy. It doesn't feel like
it. But every time I upload an episode, I'm like, oh,
wow, this is episode like number two hundred and fifty something or whatever,
and plus the however many sixty bonus episodes, and so you just sort of
get in that streamlined repetition of the production cycle. And of course I do
see a lot of very nice things online, but I kind of avoid social
media. But when someone's standing right in front of you and they're smiling from
ear to ear telling you how much they love it, how much they enjoy
listening like it means the world to me. I'm just so grateful for every
one of you who express that, and so thank you listeners, very very
much. You're the sweetest people. And I know that Cliff and Bobo none
of us could do it without you, So no, absolutely not. And
it's a good reminder because man, it is not easy to do this podcast.
You think, like, oh, I do just talk to your friends
once a week. It's not easy at all. Man. We're trying to
book guests that we think are interesting, we're trying to fend off people that
aren't. We're I mean, you've heard me kind of complain before in a
sort of way. It's not easy to wrangle everyone's schedules. I mean,
I'm extraordinarily busy. Matt is a course that are back and call. But
even he's got a life. He's got a wife, he goes to the
woods, he has family and stuff, and Bobo's just Bobo and everything that
entails. It's not easy to get everybody together even once a week to do
this, let alone trying to coordinate with guests and when they're available, and
I just kind of forget. I mean, I've said it before in the
podcast. I forget that there are even people listening. I know that's weird,
but it's true because I'm just It's like when you're on TV. You
don't think about the people who are going to watch the finished product when you're
filming it. You're just doing what you do. And so once a week,
I sit in front of a microphone and talk to Bobo and Matt.
And that's what I do, and that's my job. It's one of my
three jobs that I do every single week. And you know, I forget
sometimes. So when I get out to these events and I see people were
either wearing the Bigfoot and Beyond shirts or they come up and they say,
I had to listen to you all the time. I'm on my third listen
through of all the episodes, and it's like, holy smokes, I forget
that. What I mean, it's weird, but I forget that what I
do matters at all to anybody. And it's a good reminder because it's not
easy to do this, and there's been lots of times I just want to
pull my own eyes out because of the podcast. But to know that it
matters to people, it does make a difference, and it does help me
keep going instead of like choking on my own tongue not doing this any longer.
So anyway, I really do appreciate that, and I know if Bubbo
was here, he would say something very similar, but probably in a slightly
more rough manner. Thanks dude. All right, Well, with that,
we still have some talking to do. Man, why don't we shut this
down and we can go talk about the sighting report and then the follow up
and the evidence that has been gained since then. Absolutely, And so folks,
if you're not already a member, there's a link in the show notes,
as there is in every single episode. It's five dollars a month.
You get an extra episode every week. We put those out on Thursdays.
People really love it. We post a lot of fun stuff to Patreon's community
chat features so you can talk with the other members. There's always an ongoing
conversation about various Sasquatch related things, so it's a lot of fun for just
five bucks a month. And there you go. So I guess if I
were Bobo, I always say, keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to
this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard,
please rate and review us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Bigfoot and Beyond
podcast. You can find us on Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond that's an N
in the middle, and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag Bigfoot and Beyond