Tree and bears and…uh…falling!

We went camping. It was fun. The end.

Seriously though, if you want to get the most out of this, let me introduce you to my companions, in alphabetical(ABC) order.

Ty Evans: He is a cool guy, and very wacky.
Mark Furler: He is tall and loves this sort of thing.
Paul Furler: He is Mark’s little(young not short) brother.
Kenny Knapke: Some random sexy guy who pretends he is a cat.
Marcus Kyprianou: He is cool, but he couldn’t go cause of band-camp so I dont even know why he is on this list.
Rachel Roman: She is also a random sexy person, but she is not a cat.

Anyways, us five went camping. We left early Monday morning, around noon I think. We drove for like half the day down to West Virginia where we went to Blackwater Falls park or something. We stopped at a grocery store to buy some camping food: hamburgers, fish(eww), sausage, smore-stuff, popcorn, eggs. Anyways, we went to the campsite and made some hamburgers and fish. While Ty, the master chef, was cooking, Rachel noticed that, not only was Paul’s zipper unzipped and his button unbuttoned, but also his boxers were poking out. If you could see the look on his face, you would be laughing as much as I am right now. The camp-site was kinda funny, because people are morons. They drive God knows how long with thier families and/or friends, and then ride bikes around in a circle in the camp area. Anyways, after dinner we went to sleep cause it was late.

The next morning everyone woke up at like 7:00 and ate breakfast. Except me; I slept until 10:00. I would’ve slept later, but Rachel decided it would be fun to sit on my and pull my neck-hair until I woke up. So I woke up and we left to go “hiking”. There is a reason for the quotes. We start on this nice easy trail, walking through the peacful woods. After like 20 minutes of walking, our leader Mark leads us off the trail. This is where it gets FUN . We leave the trail to the left, down a steep slope. It is not too steep, but steep enough that if you step in leaves of any kind, you slip. I decide it would be fun to run down the slope with some mad crazy Kitty pounce action. After a few minutes I decided to stop so that everyone could catch up. So I climbed a tree to look up the hill for them. On the way up, I look in the direction we were headed and about 20 feet from my stopping point there is a cliff. It is not too high, so we find a tree and climb down. Paul and I take off down the hill with our walko skills. Have you ever played Sonic? It is kinda like that, but real. Pretty soon, we find another cliff. I don’t feel like waiting, so I jump for a tree and climb halfway down the cliff, cause that is where the tree stopped. Then I had to slowly climb down the rocky cliff face, because I am stupid. Once I reach the bottom, everyone else walks from the side telling me there is an easier way a bit off too the side. So off we go again down the hill too the river. Rivers are fun because there are giant rocks that you can jump on and try not to get wet. I slipped twice though, but only my feet got wet. We went and looked at the waterfall a bit, then headed back up the way we came.

We continued on the original path until we reached another point of divergence. I continued walking along the path only stating “I am looking for the fun way down”. So I go running down the hill again, only to be stopped by a wall of solid green leaves. Actually, I was stopped by a tree, but I wouldn’t have been able to continue anyways. Paul catches up with me, so we start to find a way down. Paul decides it would be easiest to follow the rocks of a dried up stream. At this point I figure out the leaves belong to a tree I have named the “Monkey Trees” because they have a distinct property. I can swing from them like a monkey. So Paul is walking along the stream, and I am swinging/hopping along in these trees. There is a cool bridge type thing of some old logs crossing over the stream bed, which Paul walks under and remarks “Awesome! Kenny come down here!” I decided to ignore that and walk on top. *CRACK* the bridge type thing snaps and I am suddenly hanging onto a monkey tree branch in front of Paul who instantly begins laughing. At this point I feel like showing off, so I tell Paul to wait for everyone. Then the perfect opportunity presents itself. Two monkey tree branches the perfect distance away and apart. I launch myself at them and land perfectly. Almost. I launched with too much velocity which caused me to continue on to the next monkey tree. It snaps and I fell about 6 feet and landed on my back on a rock. It was ok though, because I could still walk. Down we continued until we reached the river again. Here we take a break and do some fishing and eating and talking. After an hour or two sitting around in the middle of the river on a big rock, we decide to continue. This time we go up the other side of the river. It turns out to be so steep we cant stand on it. Instead we have to use the monkey trees to hold ourselves up. After climbing a few hundred feet like this we reach the base of a cliff. Have I mentioned that I am afraid of heights? Ty and Paul climb up somehow. I decided to learn from the past so I looked both directions for an easier way up, but alas there wasn’t one. By the time I returned Mark had helped Rachel half-way up and Ty was taking over. For some reason I decided to grab the back-pack that had been left at the bottom and start to climb. This is the scariest thing I had ever done in my life. I slowly made my way up with the help of Mark and Ty.

Finally setting foot on not solid, but not vertical ground I started to cry. This is the first time I had ever felt so afraid. It is like a paralyzing fear, consuming your entire thought process. We had to stop a few times with many helpful phrases muttered to me, not to mention very much cursing of the mountain. An hour or two more of climbing and we finally reached the road. I was so happy, until I realized how far from camp we were. Luckily there were miles and miles of trail that went around the huge gorge we just crossed. So we walked all the way back, crossing another waterfall on the way. Ty cooked us all some more food, and we went to sleep exhausted. Now, as we were falling asleep, I heard some growls and a trash can being knocked over. Then I went to sleep. In the morning, this morning to be exact, Rachel tells us she saw a shadowy figure cross the tent last night, and some of our camp-neighbors tell us that a bear came through camp last night, attacked 2 trash cans, and took the lid off of a third. It then walked right through our camp and out the other side. We packed up everything and left, not because of the bear, but because we had only planned to stay 3 days. We drove home forever, making a stop at a lake to swim and fish, and a stop at a Wal*Mart for some soda. I get home, shower and begin writing this. Good-night.