CuRVWander: Camping Stories

Below are a collection of short stories that evolved from years of camping experiences with my family and friends. I used to tell these stories verbally but a friend of mine that was working on drilling rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico would send me emails during his off-duty time and ask me to write him a story. I am retelling those stories here. I hope you enjoy.

You're On Fire!

Halloween weekend, big get-together planned on top of Fort Mountain State Park in the Northwest mountains of Georgia. About 20 of us are meeting for a cook out on Saturday afternoon, some of us are going to camp all weekend. Since Halloween is on Friday night I plan to take off work so that I can leave on Friday morning and be off the road before the crush of traffic hits about 3:00pm. It is a two hour drive from where we live, so I can have a leisurely morning and get to the campground plenty early. Cyndee was going to come up later after she got off work.

I loaded the truck with firewood, about 500 lbs worth, threw in the dogs, hitched the trailer and was on my way. Everything was going great, the weather could not have been better, traffic was a breeze, I had the window down with one arm hanging out, life was grand.

I got to the base of the mountain and started the steep climb and tight switchbacks. Keep in mind I am 48 feet long and about 20,000 lbs total weight. The truck is a 3/4 ton with a V-10 gasoline engine and automatic transmission. Most of the switch backs were easily handled in second gear but a couple of them were really steep and dropped me into first gear where rpms sometimes reached 4,000. Everything was working great just as I topped out one of the steeper climbs and onto a relatively flat piece of road. There was a hard double-shift into third, a short pull, and then a down shift into second. I looked in the mirror and saw huge billowing clouds of white smoke, uh-oh. I was in a bad spot, steep road, no shoulder and on a turn. Nowhere to stop except right there. I jumped out and reached for the fire extinguisher I keep in the bed of the truck right behind the cab. As I lift it out and start pulling the pin a car from the opposite direction has stopped just in front of me. A lady on the passenger side comes running out shouting "You're on fire! You're on fire!" Gee, you think? I guess all that smoke and the fire extinguisher in my hand might be a clue that I can see the obvious.

Anyway, I was glad she and her husband were there. They flagged traffic and probably kept me from getting run over while I was getting the fire put out. You probably have it figured out by now, I blew the front pump seal on the transmission and because of the steep angle, it was able to drip directly down on the exhaust crossover pipe (which was probably cherry red with heat) and caught on fire. Luckily I stopped before all the fluid was gone, so no serious damage to the tranny.

Another piece of luck was that a guy in a F-550 flat bed happened by and offered to pull me, and the trailer, up to the next turn-out. Luckily again, it was only a couple of hundred yards away. So I was able to get out of the road while I waited on the wrecker, which with another piece of good luck I was able to call with my cell phone in what I later learned was the only spot on the mountain that can get a signal. It only took the wrecker 15 minutes to get to me. He was on the mountain road when he was radioed to come get me.

I called the ranger at the campground and told him my predicament. He arranged for the camp ground host, who had a fifth wheel set-up, to come take my trailer and the ranger brought his short bed pick up and took all the firewood, dogs and camping junk out of the back of mine. What a deal! The camp host put my trailer on a great campsite, we unloaded the ranger's truck and I was ready to camp. My truck was taken down the mountain to Chatsworth where they had a Ford dealership that would honor my 3rd party extended warranty, more good luck.

Cyndee showed up a little while later so now we had transportation. Normally we would not think of taking a second car, especially on a trip two hours away but because of the extenuating circumstances it was best to do it this way this time. Lucky again.

It took them a week to get the seal kit and fix the tranny. The park ranger stepped up again and offered to let us leave the camper where it was, free of charge, until we could come get it. Hard to believe he is a government employee. We came in the next weekend and said "What the heck, we are here, let's just camp another weekend." It was beautiful weather again but being November we had the place to ourselves. It was great.

Except for the blowing of the seal and roasting the starter cable, it was a couple of great weekends of camping and a lot of good luck.

Crazy Lady

This story is a little hard to tell by writing it. There are a lot of little nuances that have to be included so bear with me:

Now that we have our fifth wheel, we have listed our pop-up in the paper for sale. Putting the listing in at the beginning of fall I knew that we would not get much activity on it until spring got a little closer. Surprisingly though we have had several spurts of phone calls. One of those spurts was just this past week, Christmas week.

One call came from a woman who said that she was a retired school teacher and that she was interested in getting a pop-up for doing some winter camping. Winter camping in a tent trailer is a little odd, but people do it. I told her about the trailer and she said she was interested. I told her we could arrange to meet and that I would set it up for her so she could take a look at it. She replied that she does not buy anything without trying it first and asked if she could stay in it for one night in my driveway. It took me a minute to reply because I was making sure I heard what I thought I heard. She must have taken my silence as a cue because she went on to explain that she bought a house from a blind lady one time and everything was fine until the first night, and then rats came out of the walls. She said the blind lady did not tell her about the rats but then again she did not expect that the blind lady could have seen them to tell her about them. I should have hung up right then, but I didn't.

The next thing I knew I was telling her how to get to the house from her south-of-Atlanta location. This was early in the morning and she said she would see if she could get to me by 5:30pm. I told her that should be no problem as it was only about an hour and a half away. She replied "Uh-huh" and hung up. I thought about calling her back so I checked the caller ID and discovered that she had been calling from a Firestone tire store somewhere south of Atlanta. Very odd. I thought that was the last of it.

About 4:00 in the afternoon the phone rings, this time I check the caller ID and it shows as a pay phone. I shouldn't have answered, but I did. It was the little old school teacher and she was calling from one of the landmarks I had given her, a Publix shopping center on Old Milton highway. I described to her how to leave the shopping center and which direction to take to get to my house, about a three minute drive. But she could not see any of the other land marks I was describing. I had her describe what she could see and she did not give me anything of substance I could go by. She sounded a little confused and unsure about where to go so I offered to drive up to the Publix and let her follow me back to the house. She jumped at that offer. I asked her what she was driving so I could spot her but she just replied that she would simply stand right in front of the Publix so that I would not miss her. I shouldn't have gone, but I did.

So I get to the Publix and no little old lady standing in front. That's when it hit me that Old Milton has two Publix on it. The other one is about six miles away, in the opposite direction she should have gone had she come the way I described. I shouldn't have gone to see if she was there, but I did.

Sure enough, there she was standing right in front. She was a thin, little lady with gray hair, gray teeth and dressed in wool from head to toe. Wool stocking hat, wool coat, wool scarf, and wool pants. She has at her feet a fair-sized canvas bag and some blue plastic Wal-Mart shopping bags. I should have driven right on by, but I didn't.

I stopped and she approached, I presumed, to say hello and tell me that she would get her vehicle and follow me. She didn't, she opened the door and jumped right in my truck. I asked her if it wouldn't be better if she took her car to my house but she said that would be a little difficult since she came by bus! I would have liked to have seen my face. I am sure my jaw dropped and I bet my eyes bugged out. After giving her all the driving instructions and talking to her about a tow vehicle, she never once indicated that she would be coming by bus. She let me believe that she would be driving up and I guess she figured that I lived close to a bus stop or that I would come get her. I guess she figured right because she was now sitting in my truck with a big grin on her face and a not-completely-in-touch-with-reality look in her eye. I should have put her out right there, but you know the answer by now.

So, we are driving back to the house and she starts asking me questions about what I do for a living. I tell her that I work with very high temperature plastics that are used in cars and electronics. She says "Oh, so your a genius. Let me get my notepad out. You don't mind if I take notes do you?" Okay, so I had suppressed the serious nut case alarms going off in my head up to this point, but they were too loud to ignore now. I changed the subject back to the camper and what she has to tow it with. She said she had a truck like mine. "Really?" I said. "Well, not exactly. It is a little smaller" she said. I then tried to get her to tell me the make or model but she said that she didn't pay any attention to stuff like that. "Oh boy" I said to myself.

Well we drive up to my house and I show her how to set up the camper. She takes lots of notes. It is going to be a cold night, down in the high twenties, and she does not have anything except an extra sweater in the canvas bag. I go in the house and get a couple of electric heaters and a goose-down sleeping bag. There is no way I want some goof-ball old lady freezing to death in my driveway.

I let her use our bathroom at about 6:00pm and that is the last we see of her for the night. Cyndee and the kids keep peeking out the window to see if they can see her or any activity, but there is none. I don't sleep good that night, every time I close my eyes I see a gray, frozen corpse dressed in wool in the camper that my family had so happily used.

Next morning she is at the door at 8:15. Said she had a good night and had taken some notes she wanted to ask me questions about. She asked a couple of questions one would expect, like where could she get a heater like the one I put in the camper for her. But then she got lost in trying to find other questions she had written down but was now unable to find. Then she surprised me and said that she would like to make me an offer on the camper. She said she would call Monday or Tuesday, just as soon as she got back from where she had bought her truck. Seems she wanted to go to the dealer and have them put in writing what her truck was capable of towing. Now, any other time I would have thought that to be strange, but under these circumstances this is about the most sane thing she could have done. Maybe somebody else will tell her she does not have any business pulling a trailer so I don't have to.

I load her up and take her back to the bus stop. She was genuinely excited about her winter camping and said she could not wait to get started. As best I could tell she had already started. I think I was the first night in what may be a whole string of her going from one camper for sale to another.

I get back to the house and take a look in the camper, not knowing what to expect. To my surprise I could not tell that she had even been in there. I could not tell if she had used one of the beds or if she had just slept on the couch. The sleeping bag was EXACTLY as I had left it for her. She had not even touched it. I just shook my head, closed up the camper and put it back in the garage. It is now Wednesday and she has not called, big surprise.

Chalk this one up to entertaining. But I won't be granting anymore sleepover requests.

Girls Gone Wild

It was a guys camping weekend. Five of us from work, all over 40, just kicking back playing cards, grilling steaks, hamburgers and sausages, with chips and beer. It was a mixture of tents and RVs as well as a 21’ boat.

Somewhere during the planning stage, I thought it would be a good idea to get my 14-year-old son to come along. He had never been in an environment of just a bunch of older guys belching and scratching while telling stories about times he had no clue of. You know, just our without-the-wives-persona. Something Chad had never experienced. I thought it would be a “growth experience” for him.

The weather could not have been better. It was September in north Georgia and the daytime temperatures, and lake water temp, were perfect for skiing and tubing. Nighttime temps were low enough to enjoy a campfire and the comfort of a blanket while sleeping. We could not have planned it better if we had complete control over Mother Nature.

On our Saturday outing, we searched out a rope that we heard had been hung from a tree leaning out over the water in a secluded cove. Using little more than dead reckoning from some obscure verbal directions, we were feeling cocky after having found it. Of course it took us couple of hours to find it, but that does not matter. We did the Tarzan thing until everyone’s arms gave out. That meant about three minutes for the old guys and thirty minutes for the 14-year-old.

This is when the guy that owned the boat said he knew of a cove where we could go for entertainment that would not exhaust us quite so fast. The locals knew the place as cocktail cove. We were told this is where the big boats hang out and the beautiful people go to be seen. So, let’s motor on over and see what’s happening.

Well, it was as advertised. The place was full of boats, little boats, big boats and boats in-between. In addition, a significant number of them had large numbers of women that looked like models right out of the pages of the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Why the heck did he wait so long to tell us about this? Think of all that time we wasted skiing, swinging on a Tarzan rope, eating, drinking and other non-essential things like sleeping. Some of the million dollar yachts had 10 and 12 women on them, a pontoon boat close to where we anchored, had 4 on it. They were serious party animals too. We saw the funnels with clear tubing used with perfection to pour full cans of bear down their throats in a single swallow! Watch out, they will be shedding clothing in no time!

About then a helicopter appeared on the horizon on the other side of the lake. It was making a beeline right for the cove, and it was low. The pilot made a quick sweep past the cove, passed just over the shoreline and then made an incredibly steep bank and drifted right over one of the yachts with a multitude of women on it. Now this is not your run-of-the-mill helicopter. It was one of those Donald Trump ‘copters. Jet turbine engine, eight passenger, fancy paint, bristling with electronics, and now, hovering so low over the yacht we could see diamond tufted leather interior. The women responded, they all came up on the top deck and started waving, wiggling and jiggling. This went on until the pilot noticed that one of the yacht-goers had produced a camera, and as quick as wink the helicopter was gone.

In the meantime, we noticed that the girls on the pontoon boat had company. Although these girls were not of the caliber of the women on the yachts, they were getting attention never the less. A little skip had pulled alongside the pontoon boat and some middle-aged guys started handing over pieces of paper to the girls. We figured they were invitations to a local party bar or something similar. Then we started to see Mardi Gras beads and cameras come out. Now the eye candy antennas were at full mast. Something was about to happen.

Chad, being a relatively new entrant to genetically induced girl watching, did not have such a fine tuned antenna. Therefore, the five guys with decades of experience were constantly updating him. Telling him when to steal a glance or, out and out stare. There is no way we wanted him to miss a thing. Then it happened, a deal had been struck for the appropriate number of plastic beads required to get the pontoon boat women to lift their swimsuit tops for photographs. Three sets, six boobs unleashed in broad daylight. The guys were taking in the sights and did not notice that Chad was not leaning over the railing of the boat like the rest of us trying to close that 100’ gap between the pontoon boat and us. It turned out that he had turned his back on the pontoon boat and sat down in the floor of the boat, below the rail. He did not see a thing.

They were not the greatest looking women, but they were not that bad. Oh well, I guess he was not ready yet. However, some time later I asked if he had recounted his story to any of his buddies, and with a sheepish grin, he said yes. But I think he left out the part about not looking. I thought that maybe he was put off completely by the whole experience so I asked the ultimate question of; “If the old guys were to go out again, would you want to go?” Without hesitation and with eyes wide he said “Yes”. Well alright! Dad and the other old guys are not completely lame after all.

Watch This

We regularly stay in Corps of Engineers campgrounds. The sites are a comfortable distance apart so that you can have a little privacy, but you are still close enough to your neighbor to see the whites of their eyes. In the evenings when the sun has gone down and everyone is beginning to enjoy the break from the heat of the day, you can hear low voices drift in from different camps. For the most part you can not understand the conversations, but every now and then you will catch a word or phrase on the evening breeze.

Most of the time you just tune out what is going on around you. It is usually the day's fishing story, you know, "I caught one that was six inches ..... between the eyes!" or about the wipeout while water skiing "I skipped more times than a flat rock thrown on a pond." But every now and then you hear something that makes you perk up. My kids have one in particular that they key in on. It is the simple two-word phrase; Watch This! If they hear this their heads pop up. It does not matter if they are staring deeply into the campfire, half asleep in the hammock or mid-sentence of their own discussion, they start looking for where those two words came from. Why? Because somebody is about to do something stupid.

Jeff Foxworthy, most noted for his stand-up comedy routines dealing with "You might be a redneck if......", also does a piece on this subject matter. I can not claim to have stumbled on to this phenomena first, but I think I can add a story to the list.

A camp site just across the road from us had a multi-family gathering, they had a shore-line spot that sloped down to the water. We tucked into the woods directly across from the shoreline sites. The crew at this neighboring site had a fair amount of equipment and appeared as if they camped fairly often. They had acquired quite a few of the "little things" that make camping a little more luxurious. There were rope clotheslines for hanging the shirts without sleeves (torn off that day) and long pants that they had swum in the lake with. Tarps tied from every tree in the campsite for shelter and shade to sit under while preparing and eating their meals, truck tire inner tubes for swimming, electric air pumps (could not see them but could definitely hear them), a whole stack of coolers, jet skis, and a pile of firewood that would last most people a month.

But of all the stuff they brought I guess they forgot to bring kindling or an ax to shave kindling off the large chunks of firewood. Now I do not know this for sure, I was not there, but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. The reason I think this is because just after dark we were sitting in our camp when suddenly there was this bright orange glow all around us. At first I thought we were about to be hit by a meteor, but it turned out that our neighbor had just lit off their gasoline-soaked campfire. Nobody would plan on lighting a campfire this way right? Everybody knows that the gas burns off so quick that it is really tough to get a full-sized log burning well enough to keep going after the gas is gone, right? And besides, this is seriously dangerous. You would do this only if you were really desperate, right?

They were all standing well back from the fire, commenting on how good those marshmallows were going to be in a little while (when they could get close enough to roast one). Things settled down after awhile and got quite again. The orange glow faded, we could close our eyes without seeing flames through our eyelids, and we thought that was the end of it. Not so.

Slowly the muffled words became low voices and low voices turned to curses. The gentleman that seemed most perturbed had bushy black hair, a full beard, skinny as a rail, no shirt and levis too big to stay up without constant attention. It seems that after using "dang near half a can of gas", the fire was going out. The little kids looked pitiful as they stood there with their big cow eyes and sticks with cold marshmallows on them. Then it happened, "Watch This, I'll get it goin'" said the skinny guy.

That was it, the magic phrase had been spoken. My two kids were at full attention now, they did not know exactly what he was going to do, but they were sure they wanted to be watching when it happened, and from a safe distance. Sure enough, the guy pulls out a metal, one-gallon gas can. It was one of those with the screw on spout that can be bent for making it easier to pour into things like lawn mowers.

He headed straight for the dying fire. Notice I said DYING fire, not dead fire. There were still flames, although they were rapidly shortening. The shirtless, skinny guy stood directly next to the fire, holding the gas can about waist-high and began to trickle a little gas on the fire. A few drops worked pretty good. I guess he thought a steady stream would work better. Those flames crawled right up that steady stream, heading straight for the can. The skinny guy started raising the can higher but keeping the stream flowing. As the flame climbed higher up the stream the skinny guy just kept raising the can. Now, since he did not have a ladder, I do not know what his plan was when he hit the limit of his reach. It did not take long to see that he did not know either. You could see by the expression on his face that when his arm was fully above his head he only realized at that instant that there was a problem.

THINK FAST! Drop the can. No. Run. No. Ahh, tilt the can and stop the stream. Good idea. Too late, flames had already reached the can. Since the can was at least half empty there were quite a bit of fumes in there and they did their thing as soon as the flame crawled inside. Nice little ball of flame, kind of like when the circus performer blows alcohol out of his mouth and torches off the cloud just above his head. Pretty colors, you could hear people say oohh, aahh just like it was the 4th of July.

But does this little explosion make our bushy-headed camper let go of the can. Ohhh nooo, he now has a firm grip on it and is doing what can best be described as an Indian rain dance around his campsite. For every whoop he lets out and every spin he does, there is a liquid stream of fire being distributed around his camp. His buddies are no help. Some are laughing too hard to help, others are running for their lives. The little kids have lost all interest in marshmallows, they want their mommies.

Finally I guess the can gets to hot to hold onto and he lets go. Too late, the woods between his campsite and the lake are on fire. And even though he has released the can, he can not stop spinning and jumping. Fortunately for all of us, there had been recent rains and the fire did not spread. It took his buddies longer to stop laughing than it did for the fire to go out. The bushy-haired guy pulls his levis back up on his hips, tucks his head down and disappears into his camper without saying a word.

It took my kids a long time to go to sleep that night. Every time they heard the slightest noise from that direction they wanted to check and see if something was going to happen again. I think our neighbors had enough camping for one weekend, they packed up and left early the next mooring.

CuRVWander

Pages

Camping Stories

No comments:

Post a Comment