Of Boyscouts, Turkey Hunters, Widow-Makers and Coyotes
My house reeks of wet backpacking gear this evening as everything is laid out to dry. Tent, sleeping bag, pad, backpack, everything is damp and wet from the evening of relentless rain.
Last night (May 19th), a couple of girls from a Yahoo Backpacking group I belong to and I decided to go down to
Just as we reached Nelsonville (a half hour North of Zaleski), the skies lightened up and the rain stopped. It wouldn’t last long as we somehow managed to get ahead of said storm. Gabby and I reached the parking lot and started getting our packs together. Cathy pulled in about 20 minutes later and got all her things together. We donned our rain gear (by now, the storm had regained the distance between us not to be outrun again), heaved our packs and headed for the trail.
It was a peaceful hike in and I realized just how out of shape I was. Slogging through the mud, with a full pack on, and going uphill was quite a first night out in a long time. Sections of the trail had fog hanging above it giving it a mystic look. Everything looked green and alive.
We hiked in a mere 2 miles to camp ‘C’ and saw what we had feared. 2 guys took the good campsite at the front (we contemplated squatting on their land and sharing booze as they had an amazing fire going for the rain we were getting) and the next group down was a group of boyscouts. The further down the camp trail we went we were losing elevation and didn’t want to deal with flowing water and such.
So…. We decided to scope out an area off of a forest service road just before the campsite. We would be stealth camping tonight. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.
We pitched our tents (obviously where someone had done the same previously) and set up a tarp I had brought and sat down to make dinner. Gabby and Cathy ate Mountain House meals while I ate a
We stayed up talking and I was hearding a moth of some sort (my Ms Doolittle moment) that was just coming out of dormancy until about 11:30. We then retired to our tents. We stayed relatively dry considering the rain we were getting. I was quite impressed with our ingenuity. My hair was wet from the hike in because I was overheating and it was raining so I promptly put my hat on for the evening. My hair didn’t dry until the drive home. I did make note that my clothes were damp from the condensation inside my rain gear, but once I crawled into my sleeping bag, things started drying out. I was pretty chilled until I was finally dry.
At about 12:30am or 1am, I had a flash back to last Oct. of a lost hiker entering our camp. Only this time I heard many foot steps walking by our tents. Then I see headlamps shining on our tents and hear voices of kids. Another boyscout troup from 
Shortly after, we start hearing gun shots from the nearby turkey management area. E-Gads, they were bad shots. That went on for about a half hour to an hour. THEN… a pack of coyotes, probably a couple miles away, woke me up with their howling; twice actually, again just as dawn was breaking. I didn’t sleep much this night…. 
We broke ourselves out of our cocoons probably at around 8 or 8:30. I ate what I had brought for dinner, for breakfast. I had thankfully regained my appetite. We managed to get everything packed up and Lisa and I headed out, while Cathy continued to hike the southern loop of the backpacking trail. On our way out, Lisa and I made note of all the groups coming into the forest, all heading for the camp that is 6 miles in (where I stayed for my solo last year), I’m sure. The backpacker parking lot was completely full when we got back. We were actually glad we wouldn’t be on the trail that night because it would have been packed.
It was definitely a great experience to be out in the rain like that. It was a great way to start my backpacking season.
And to date in my life, I’m keeping count, 0 ticks.
No pictures on this one. Too much rain could have led to the destruction of my digital camera.