The best camping trip, ever!

This is going to be a long one, but I've made a lot of pictures to go along with it. So, it should be just as awesome as you all have come to expect...maybe even more so.

After I had lived in Salt Lake for a little while, some friends and my brother decided we should go camping. We piled a bunch of food and stuff in our cars and took off. Everyone designated me as lead car even though I still didn't know the wilderness areas very well. We took off up a canyon with high hopes of finding the perfect spot.

I grew up in St George, Utah. St George is one of those little towns where if you drive up a canyon you will run into some dirt roads. Follow a dirt road and you will find another smaller dirt road. Follow that dirt road and next thing you know you have stumbled across a beautiful camp spot with a stunning view of the valley below, usually in less than twenty or thirty minutes of driving. This had happened for me a thousand times.

Salt Lake is not like St George. We drove for a good twenty minutes. Nothing. I expected this. I thought it would take us a little longer to get away from civilization and find a nice road to nowhere. Twenty minutes later and still nothing.

My older brother was sitting next to me, giving out great suggestions. "Maybe that's a dirt road...nope. Are we there yet? We've got to find something soon." Then he squeaked.

My brother had the hiccups. I was already annoyed at being the leader when I didn't know where I was going and frustrated at our lack of success. This sound made me angry.

What you must understand is my brother doesn't make sweet little hiccup sounds. Imagine something more annoying and then times that by three hundred. Seriously, if you take a dolphin...

 ...and mate it with a pterodactyl...

 ...the crime against nature love child's screams would be somewhat less annoying than my brother's hiccups.



...which continued for the next hour and a half. I tried to get him to stop.

Me: "Rawr! Did that scare you?"

Bother: "A little, but...screeeeeech uuurp!"

Me: "Drink some water!"

Brother: "I'm thirsty, not dirty. EEEEEeeeeeerp skaaaaaw!"

Me: "Try some Dr Pepper then."

Brother: "Glug glug. Sreeee....eeeeeeeeeep!"

Me: "Hold your breath."

Brother: "Gasp.............scruuuuuuummmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!"

I eventually gave up trying to get him to stop. The hiccups were relentless, my ears violated with every eeep and skreeep. I turned up the radio. Did not help. I rolled down the windows. Nope. I started to loath the sound and loath my brother for making the sound. He would stop just long enough to give me hope and then erupt again in the tormenting noise.

I finally reached the limit. I stopped the car. My friends pulled up next to me as I was about to murder my older brother. I didn't care that he was bigger or stronger. It had been nearly two hours of his screeeching and I would take it no longer. He had to die.



About that time, he finally stopped and the insanity bled away from me to something just above detest. It was almost dark now and we were running out of time. We came across a reservoir a few minutes later. I don't like designated camp spots much, but we decided it was a good idea at this point. We paid the fee, pulled into a spot, and started dinner.

Dinner went surprisingly well. We made some quick dutch oven food in the dark, good food. We ate in the dark by lantern light, happily joking about the adventure up till then. We laid out a tarp and threw our sleeping bags on it, looking forward to some rest and stargazing.

That's when it started to rain. We dragged a tarp over us and huddled together. It would have looked something like this:

My friend, Jyro, is in the middle. We were getting comfortable, warming up in our sleeping bags, when Jyro suddenly cried out.

I sleep with a flashlight in my bag with me...you know...in case you gotta pee. I pulled out the light and handed it to Jyro.

That was a mistake, a big mistake. He flashed it around and found a skunk. Skunks are not a big deal. I will have several posts later as to why skunks do not bother me. They freaked Jyro out though. He sat up and spent the next hour frantically keeping track of the skunk's movements.

We tried to calm him down. It did not work.

It seemed like forever, but he finally calmed down enough to let us sleep.

Once Jyro fell asleep, I was able to relax and let myself drift slowly to....WHAT THE CRAP?! A horrible sound came from a ditch not far from where we were sleeping. It was deep and low, vibrating with creepiness. My friend, Adam, and I bolted awake.

I turned to Adam.

I had gathered twigs from that ditch earlier. There had been nothing but dry sage brush. This is more or less what happened next:

We slept after a while. I kept waiting for the sound to repeat, but it never did. We checked the ditch in the morning and found nothing. We may never know what woke Adam and I. We may not want to know. All I do know for sure is this was one of the best camping trips ever.