JAMIE LAMPROS/Standard-Examiner correspondent Reed Holmes, with wife, Brenda, searched for years before finally finding the hay trailer his father, Pete, once owned. Dad's hay trailer back home BY JAMIE LAMPROS_ Standard-Examiner correspondent MARRIOTT-SLATERVILLE The old hay trailer was sitting untouched on a remote 3,000-acre ranch in Pine Valley, Nev. The ranch was 1 1/2 miles in from the road, a place that probably never would have been discovered by someone just driving by. "I'm sure I would have just kept on going if I hadn't been told about it," said Reed Holmes. Instead, Holmes was told by an acquaintance of its whereabouts, so he set out on a journey to retrieve the trailer. "When I got there, I talked to the family and they said I could take it," Holmes said. "I asked them what I owed them and they said nothing." Ironically, it was Memorial Day weekend, a fitting time to find something that once belonged to Holmes' father. For years, Holmes has been searching for the original 1956 two-ton F-600 truck and trailer that belonged to his dad. It's a sentimental thing for Holmes, who remembers sitting in the truck with his dad when he was just 6. His father, Orville "Pete" Holmes, was a hay contractor, hauling hay out of the dry farms in southern Idaho. Reed would often sit in the middle and shift the truck on those trips. As he got older, he got to drive it out to the fields, even though he could barely touch the brakes. Nine years later, however, farmer's lung took Pete Holmes' life. His wife eventually put the truck up for sale. Holmes said the sale was hard on him because it meant that his father was really gone. Holmes eventually got on with his life, getting an education and marrying his wife, Brenda. The two have raised three daughters. Then came the long drives. "For 10 years we would go on all of these rides," Brenda said. "Some of them were three, four, six hours at a time and they were never on the highway. They were always off-road." Brenda asked her husband why he liked to take such long drives. "He told me he was looking for his dad's truck," she said. "I guess it wasn't as romantic as I thought. All that time I thought we were just bonding." Holmes never found the original, but he did settle on a truck he found in West Point and made an exact replica out of it. For three months, he worked on restoring the truck and made sure every detail matched his father's. He was able to match everything, right down to the license plates. Then he found the trailer. "I've still been looking for the original truck and had almost given up, but when the trailer showed up it convinced me to keep looking," Holmes said. "It was in such a remote place I don't think I could have found it from outer space with a satellite." The family got together to celebrate one recent weekend. Everyone had on a T-shirt with the family name and a picture of the shiny red truck on the back. "This brings back so many memories," said an emotional Marilyn Walters, Holmes' sister. "I remember riding on this trailer in July and waking up the community for the city celebrations. It's very nostalgic."