Posted on 08/19/2016 4:52:44 PM PDT by West Texas Chuck
What is the scariest thing that ever happened to you on a camping trip?
When I was in high school my Boy Scout buds and I were camped in a canyon up in the Panhandle one January, place that is now a state park near Quitaque. Decided to drive to Amarillo and see the Grand Funk Railroad concert, then back to our campsite. Everything was fine when we bedded down in our black-plastic shelters and sleeping bags, it was cold but nothing we had not experienced before. Along about 4am we were awakened by a siren and flashing lights and a voice over a loudspeaker asking if we were alright. Climbing out of our shelter I fell down face-first into about six inches of snow. Never even knew it was falling, snug as bugs in our bags. I think we would have been fine but somebody’s mom got all freakers and called the Fire Department in Silverton and demanded they go rescue us. I drove my ’67 Mustang up the winding road out of that canyon in the dark on a very slippery road and made it to the highway. Sheer drops of several hundred feet on one side, no chance of survival if a wheel was put wrong. That was a seminal event in my early camping experience, will never forget it. We were fine, had provisions (Boy Scouts, remember?) but we got out of there. Been back in that canyon many times since then but will never forget the night of that Grand Funk show.
My wife and I and a friend of mine sometimes go down to Corpus Christi and from there onto Padre Island (north) and down the beach to a suitable camping spot, usually around the 40-mile mark. We built a nice tarp shelter and put up a large tent and She Who Must Be Obeyed and I slept in our tent, buddy in the back of his truck in the camper shell. About 6am of the third morning a helluva storm rolled through, flattened our tent and destroyed the shelter as my buddy and I stood in the 60mph wind blowing sand into our backs like a blaster and tried to hold the camp together. Totally wrecked, gear scattered for a hundred yards. While we were picking up our stuff we looked out over the surf and saw two waterspouts, what a Panhandle boy like me calls tornados, wind one around the other and finally merge into a single funnel. OK, I’m standing there expecting to die, but the worst of the storm had passed and the funnel dissipated and we licked our wounds and headed for the mainland. I mean hell, what are you going to do down there in weather like that? We were lucky the wind was off the dunes and not the Gulf or we would have only had once choice, drive the trucks up on a dune and hope for the best. Got away easy, a few tarps destroyed and a darn good story to tell, but unscathed (except for the sand burns on my sunburned back). Interesting side-note, on another trip in about the same location my buddy had gone down the beach to the jetty at the Mansfield cut to fish, leaving she and I alone. Wife was playing down in the surf while I was fetching a cold one, she without her bathing suit top. Then, I heard it, whoop-whoop, then again whoop-whoop-whoop and instantly knew what it was. I leaned out of the tarp shelter and looked to the south and saw the approaching chopper, probably 5 miles away. I tried to yell and warn her but I knew with the pounding surf she’d never hear so I just stood there and took it all in. Once the Nueces County Sheriff chopper got close enough for her to hear it she freaked, cupped her hands over the girls and ran like hell toward our shelter. I knew it was too late, them deputies had been watching her through their binocs for a ways and I’m sure that ain’t their first sighting of boobies on the beach!
I have a major hard-on for Brewster County, the Big Bend. I have been down there many times and can see the whole place in my head when I close my eyes. A few years ago I was down there, couldn’t get the backcountry site I wanted and had to stay at a place called Rice Tank, right on the Glenn Springs road, the first night. It was a beautiful evening, full moon, still and cool in February, before the Spring Break crazies got there. About midnight I’m standing down on the old gravel road, enjoying some Old No. 7, and I hear something. OK, I always stay by myself, out there in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, for a few nights to clear my head. People that know me say I’m crazy, but it feels good on my soul to be alone with God and the desert. When my nerves get frazzled from being out there I head up into the mountains or somewhere the peoples are, but it was my first night and I was still unwinding. Then, I heard it again. There is a VERY distinctive sound a boot makes when the wearer stubs his toe on a rock on a trail or old gravel road. Then I heard it a third time, no mistake, somebody was walking up the road from the river, right towards my camp. Who in the hell would be walking through the desert in the middle of the night? I thought maybe the Border Patrol, but figured it must be illegals. I high-tail it back up to my camp, grab my Mossberg and go hide behind some creosote bush by my camp. Not sure what was about to happen, had a sidearm, but I figured that slide racking would freeze things long enough for me to get a read on the situation before I started throwing 00 around. Never heard a thing after that. I heard my sound, three times, and there is no doubt a human was out there on that old road. Who? Maybe some crazy hiker dude, who knows, but there are critters out there in that desert that can end your life. Mountain lions and bobkitties, black bear, snakes, illegals, who knows? I still don’t know who I heard but it was definitely foot traffic, and they did not enter my camp. Whew, thankfully. I loaded up the next morning and headed on down toward the river some more, took the Juniper Canyon road up to Robber’s Roost, one of my favorite spots. Way off the road, no through traffic because the only thing up there is the parking area for the hiking trails at the end of the road. No further incidents after that, had a great relaxing time and lived to brag about it to you.
Those are a few of my experiences, some of the more interesting ones. I’m betting I ain’t the only one who has a tale or two worth telling. Talk to me. What have you seen and done, what was interesting about it and where were you when you did it?
We were camping at a state park in northern Michigan. Pretty much a redneck place reminiscent of Charlie Daniels Uneasy Rider. It was a clear, still, Upper Peninsula summer evening
About 2am, some idiot fires up his V-8 van with no muffler a couple campsites over.
Scared the you know what out of me from a dead, hard sleep. I sat bolt upright and listened to this guy rev his engine for a couple minutes before he left. The air was so clear, I could hear the engine noise for at least twenty minutes.
I camp a lot, usually 15-20 nights a year but haven’t had too many bad scary experiences. We had a bear roll through camp in the Smokies, but a stray dog who had wandered in our site ran off the bear.
I love storms in tents. Once, we were under a pavilion when a 90mph front rolled through.
Another Bear story - So we are in Colorados Rocky Mountains, about 1967 - bears have been reported in the campground, I go to bed in the back of the station wagon, my older brother, about 12 years old, takes the trash across the road, he walks back across the road and before he gets to the car, WHACK the bear knocks the trash can over and starts digging for dinner.
Had a few bear, big cat and even moose encounters. I obviously survived or I couldn’t post this. Once we went camping, had lots of food, but no utensils or can openers.
Sleeping bag zipper got stuck.
We were camping in the Colorado mountains. In the tent, asleep in a moonless, pitch black night. I woke up in the middle of the night only to be staring at a ghost, a round, white object about two feet from my face. Scared me to death - until I realized it was my toddler’s white diaper. He was sleeping on his stomach, butt up.
When I was a kid my dad took us camping quite a bit. One time some other campers showed up and settled in a couple of hundred yards down the creek. They broke out a gun and began shooting. Towards us. Dad is screaming to us “GET DOWN!!!” You could hear the bullets whizzzzing by overhead. Hitting trees, etc.. Dad sidled around and got down there to them. We almost died, they almost died...
Backpacking in the Sierra’s in college, made camp with friends, we all went to sleep. Dead of night, silent, awakened by an explosion. We all shot up, looked at each other, and heard another explosion. Now we were out of our bags, totally freaked out.
Then nothing. Total silence.
Went back to sleep with one eye open. Next day on the trail, came upon a gigantic redwood tree across the trail, so big we couldn’t climb over it but had to go into the forest to walk around it - sucker must have been 200 feet long. But the scary part was that the base, up to around 40 feet tall, was still in the ground, perfectly fine, and at least 20 feet in diameter.
The whole tree had just broken in half - there was still wet sap in it. That was the explosions of the previous night - the first was the break, the second was this monster tree hitting the ground.
Thing is, it was solid - it wasn’t rotten. And it was on flat ground at that point, even though it was the side of a mountain. And there was no wind the previous night, it was the middle of a hot summer.
Man were we freaked out!
X-Files!
My son and I were camping out in a famrmer’s woods with his permission in around Wilmore, KY. That night it was stormy and we could hear creaking, groaning and cracking of the trees. We got up in the morning and did some hiking and canoeing later in the afernoon. We didn’t get back to the campsite until after dark. When we got there a huge limb had broken off a tree and landed on our tent. By God’s grace we are alive to tell the story.
A bear could barely scratch his back with a .22 pistol.
Camping in bear country without being sufficiently armed is a family suicide mission...in all due respect to your tough daddy.
Dayum, that’s harsh :)
I hear ya, we were from Oklahoma and I don’t think my dad realized what might happen. But we all lived, thankfully.
We were out in the woods west of Seattle, my wife and two kids, and set up the tent in a rainstorm. Then when we got settled in, it started to blow thunder and lightning. Then a bolt struck a tree next to our tent, broke it in half, and briefly set it on fire, before the rain put the fire out.
What was our choice? Take down the tent in the driving rain and drive home in a thunderstorm, or spend the rest of the night in the tent? We stayed in the tent. I think I even got some sleep.
Camping in Santa Fe NM, we met a middle aged woman who said she was stranded and needed a ride into town. She seemed very normal at first but during the ride to town she seemed very “off her meds”. We dropped her off and figured good deed done. That night we awoke in our tent to hear her walking through the campground we were at calling our names. Luckily, she didn’t know exactly which tent we were in. Creepy.
Bear in ten lakes basin,bear bagged the food,the bear had that figured out.
At a scout campout we put some fresh cow flop is the troop bully’s hand while he was sleeping. The plan was to tickle his nose so he’d unconsciously smear it all over his face, but we got the giggles and he woke up. I was scared all night that he’d beat the crap out of me. He’d did.
At a nearly deserted campground in upstate NY, waking to the sound of a chainsaw in the wee hours of the morning having just recently watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I thought I ran out of beer. Whew . . . that was a close one.
I got marooned for a day and a half in the Canadian Rockies when a freak storm dropped about a foot of snow on the ground. In August.
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