Good Story
Every time I even remotely think about sitting down to write, my brain almost immediately rejects the attempt. I'm super lazy these days, but I guess I've given myself a perfectly good reason to be. I can only be lazy when the kids are asleep, and that is a relatively small window in my day. Lazy is good.
But today I have something I want to -- no, need to write. It's been on my mind to write for a few days. And no, it's nothing spiritual, although that is where my heart is most of the time, reflecting on the goodness of our great Savior. This is something that happened last summer when we went camping, and if I don't write it down soon, I will forget what happened. It's long, but good, so bear with me.
Middle to end of August (can't remember the exact date, see what I mean?), my parents, our friend Ruby, my brother, and our little family of five headed out to June Lake to do some camping. This is something we do every year, almost, and I'm still not sure why. I guess it's group peer pressure, but the only person who seems to THOROUGHLY enjoy it is my husband. Anyway, this year we decided to go somewhere different. Somewhere with a little less dirt. With three kids 5 and under, you get the idea why. So we headed out to beautiful June Lake on a late Sunday afternoon because my dad will NEVER let us miss a day of church, especially since it's so small, and he and Eric are the pastors, and no one else is qualified to preach (although he and I disagree on this point). Now, leaving late for camping, unless you're camping really close by, is never a smart thing to do, but we tend to ignore smart decisions in this family, often throwing caution to the wind.
Never having been to June Lake before, we didn't know some of the procedures for the campground we were heading to, like the fact that they close down at 8:00pm. So when we pulled in at 10:00pm Sunday evening and everything was shut down and dark, we had NO idea how to find our assigned (and paid for) campsites. We roamed around, even drove around the campground, trying to see if there were any available campsites to snag in the dark (thinking we could always move in the morning). We're toting tent-trailers, and the temperature is supposed to get down in the low 40s at night. Not a good night for roughing it. We needed our electrical and gas hookups for our furnaces.
However, no good spots could be found, so we were forced to camp in the parking lot. No hookups whatsoever. This is bad news for everyone, but especially bad news for our family. Eric snores and has to have a breathing machine or the rest of us will not be able to sleep. My kids sleep with fans (I started this when they were babies), which we brought with us just for white noise. And although we can bundle sleeping bags and down comforters around the girls, Caleb is only 18 months old and doesn't know how to sleep with covers on him yet. In retrospect, I should have tried to make him sleep with me, but even that would have been disastrous. Eric fumbled around with the furnace for awhile. But it's a new (used) tent trailer for us, and he doesn't even know how to work it yet, so he is unable to get the thing working. So we triple-jammy Caleb (three layers), hoping that will keep him warm enough until I can throw a comforter over him when the night really brings on the chill. We dress the girls in their thermals, tuck them in 40-degree sleeping bags, and throw a down comforter over them. They're good, at least. Eric, unfortunately, is forced to sleep in the car. Yes, the car. It's a Highlander, so he laid the back seat flat and was able to semi-recline to sleep, but it was very hard and uncomfortable for him, to say the least.
Right before turning out the lights, I feel our entire trailer wobble, like my dad or Eric had pushed one side of it.
"Dad, did you brush up against the trailer?"
[From his bed in the trailer next to ours] "Huh? No."
"Our trailer just swayed side to side."
[My mom speaks up now.] "I don't think there are bears here, Sara. They don't have bear boxes anywhere."
I'm not thoroughly convinced, but I shut off the light and hop in my sleeping bag. It's about 10:00 pm. A half hour goes by; the kids have all fallen asleep, thankfully; I am just about to nod off when all of the sudden I hear a loud banging sound, like someone is banging on the dumpster nearby. I am jolted wide awake. I listen for a bit and then hear it again. Loud. Curiosity moves me out of my warm sleeping bag, and I crawl over to my window and unzip it in the direction of the noise. To my utter terror, there is a huge brown bear dumping the trash can just 30 yards from our tent trailer. I can see Eric has his flashlight on the bear from his uncomfortable position in the back of the car. My pulse begins racing. We have a TON of food in our tent trailer. We are a veritable jelly-filled donut. Eric has opened bags of cereal in the car. I'm a wreck. The only safety measures I think to take are to lock the door [however little good that will do] and move all the food to the center of the trailer, in hopes that he won't smell what's inside. Yeah, right. Then I just begin to pray [and I don't stop until about 2:00 am].
We've had negative contact with bears and food in the past. One bear broke into some neighboring campers' car a couple years ago when they didn't secure their food in the bear box. It broke the window and took all of their food. All of it. The following morning there were bear paw prints on our car. Bears are known to be incredibly persistent with unsecured human food. I'm not just a little bit scared. I'm terrified. I've got three babies here.
In the meantime, a loud noise jolts me again, but this time it sounds like my parents' furnace to the left of me. Now I'm annoyed. It is seriously high-pitched, like a whistle, and it comes on intermittenly (about every minute or two), lasting about 30 seconds before shutting off. There is absolutely no chance of finding sleep now. All I can think about is how freezing I am and how toasty warm my parents (and Nathan and Ruby) must be in the trailer next door, and I get to pay the price for their warmth by hearing this blasted whistle every two minutes.
At 1:00 am a man comes out to the parking lot, presumably from the campground, and starts talking loudly on his cell phone. I'm thinking, "Who does he need to call at 1:00 in the morning???" He didn't stop talking until 3:00 am. Yeah. The funny thing is, I worried a little less about the bear at this point, figuring he'd get the guy before he got us.
By this time I have to use the restroom, and it is chilly, but I hestitantly leave the comfort of my sleeping bag again to find our little indoor porta-potty. There are more details here from which I will spare you. After using the porta-potty, I grab the flashlight to investigate the noise. I can hear it's not actually coming from my parents' trailer to my left. It's coming from the right side of our trailer. A little investigation reveals it's OUR furnace, and it's doing absolutely nothing but blowing out icy cold air. So all this time I thought my parents were staying nice and warm, while I suffered from the noise of their blasted furnace, when actually it was our blasted furnace which was on (because Eric had turned up the thermostat to 80 degrees, trying to get the furnace to kick on, and forgot to turn it back down to shut it off), but now it wasn't doing anything but blowing out seriously cold air. I fiddled with the thing, but couldn't figure out how to get it to shut off. In desperation I finally called Eric on his cell at about 5:00 am to get his help. He told me about the thermostat, and I climbed back out of my bag to turn that stupid gauge down. We chatted about the bear, too, now laughing in disbelief in the early morning hours.
Needless to say, it was a night of sheer terror, frustration, and no sleep. It definitely sticks out as probably the worst night of my entire life, but it's funny how later you look back on nights like this and just have to shake your head and laugh.
And no, nothing ever happened with the bear. It just wandered off into the campgrounds and left us alone to freeze in the parking lot at June Lake. Oh, and in the morning, there was a note on the June Lake Market door that had been left for us the night before of where our campsites were. Yep.
But today I have something I want to -- no, need to write. It's been on my mind to write for a few days. And no, it's nothing spiritual, although that is where my heart is most of the time, reflecting on the goodness of our great Savior. This is something that happened last summer when we went camping, and if I don't write it down soon, I will forget what happened. It's long, but good, so bear with me.
Middle to end of August (can't remember the exact date, see what I mean?), my parents, our friend Ruby, my brother, and our little family of five headed out to June Lake to do some camping. This is something we do every year, almost, and I'm still not sure why. I guess it's group peer pressure, but the only person who seems to THOROUGHLY enjoy it is my husband. Anyway, this year we decided to go somewhere different. Somewhere with a little less dirt. With three kids 5 and under, you get the idea why. So we headed out to beautiful June Lake on a late Sunday afternoon because my dad will NEVER let us miss a day of church, especially since it's so small, and he and Eric are the pastors, and no one else is qualified to preach (although he and I disagree on this point). Now, leaving late for camping, unless you're camping really close by, is never a smart thing to do, but we tend to ignore smart decisions in this family, often throwing caution to the wind.
Never having been to June Lake before, we didn't know some of the procedures for the campground we were heading to, like the fact that they close down at 8:00pm. So when we pulled in at 10:00pm Sunday evening and everything was shut down and dark, we had NO idea how to find our assigned (and paid for) campsites. We roamed around, even drove around the campground, trying to see if there were any available campsites to snag in the dark (thinking we could always move in the morning). We're toting tent-trailers, and the temperature is supposed to get down in the low 40s at night. Not a good night for roughing it. We needed our electrical and gas hookups for our furnaces.
However, no good spots could be found, so we were forced to camp in the parking lot. No hookups whatsoever. This is bad news for everyone, but especially bad news for our family. Eric snores and has to have a breathing machine or the rest of us will not be able to sleep. My kids sleep with fans (I started this when they were babies), which we brought with us just for white noise. And although we can bundle sleeping bags and down comforters around the girls, Caleb is only 18 months old and doesn't know how to sleep with covers on him yet. In retrospect, I should have tried to make him sleep with me, but even that would have been disastrous. Eric fumbled around with the furnace for awhile. But it's a new (used) tent trailer for us, and he doesn't even know how to work it yet, so he is unable to get the thing working. So we triple-jammy Caleb (three layers), hoping that will keep him warm enough until I can throw a comforter over him when the night really brings on the chill. We dress the girls in their thermals, tuck them in 40-degree sleeping bags, and throw a down comforter over them. They're good, at least. Eric, unfortunately, is forced to sleep in the car. Yes, the car. It's a Highlander, so he laid the back seat flat and was able to semi-recline to sleep, but it was very hard and uncomfortable for him, to say the least.
Right before turning out the lights, I feel our entire trailer wobble, like my dad or Eric had pushed one side of it.
"Dad, did you brush up against the trailer?"
[From his bed in the trailer next to ours] "Huh? No."
"Our trailer just swayed side to side."
[My mom speaks up now.] "I don't think there are bears here, Sara. They don't have bear boxes anywhere."
I'm not thoroughly convinced, but I shut off the light and hop in my sleeping bag. It's about 10:00 pm. A half hour goes by; the kids have all fallen asleep, thankfully; I am just about to nod off when all of the sudden I hear a loud banging sound, like someone is banging on the dumpster nearby. I am jolted wide awake. I listen for a bit and then hear it again. Loud. Curiosity moves me out of my warm sleeping bag, and I crawl over to my window and unzip it in the direction of the noise. To my utter terror, there is a huge brown bear dumping the trash can just 30 yards from our tent trailer. I can see Eric has his flashlight on the bear from his uncomfortable position in the back of the car. My pulse begins racing. We have a TON of food in our tent trailer. We are a veritable jelly-filled donut. Eric has opened bags of cereal in the car. I'm a wreck. The only safety measures I think to take are to lock the door [however little good that will do] and move all the food to the center of the trailer, in hopes that he won't smell what's inside. Yeah, right. Then I just begin to pray [and I don't stop until about 2:00 am].
We've had negative contact with bears and food in the past. One bear broke into some neighboring campers' car a couple years ago when they didn't secure their food in the bear box. It broke the window and took all of their food. All of it. The following morning there were bear paw prints on our car. Bears are known to be incredibly persistent with unsecured human food. I'm not just a little bit scared. I'm terrified. I've got three babies here.
In the meantime, a loud noise jolts me again, but this time it sounds like my parents' furnace to the left of me. Now I'm annoyed. It is seriously high-pitched, like a whistle, and it comes on intermittenly (about every minute or two), lasting about 30 seconds before shutting off. There is absolutely no chance of finding sleep now. All I can think about is how freezing I am and how toasty warm my parents (and Nathan and Ruby) must be in the trailer next door, and I get to pay the price for their warmth by hearing this blasted whistle every two minutes.
At 1:00 am a man comes out to the parking lot, presumably from the campground, and starts talking loudly on his cell phone. I'm thinking, "Who does he need to call at 1:00 in the morning???" He didn't stop talking until 3:00 am. Yeah. The funny thing is, I worried a little less about the bear at this point, figuring he'd get the guy before he got us.
By this time I have to use the restroom, and it is chilly, but I hestitantly leave the comfort of my sleeping bag again to find our little indoor porta-potty. There are more details here from which I will spare you. After using the porta-potty, I grab the flashlight to investigate the noise. I can hear it's not actually coming from my parents' trailer to my left. It's coming from the right side of our trailer. A little investigation reveals it's OUR furnace, and it's doing absolutely nothing but blowing out icy cold air. So all this time I thought my parents were staying nice and warm, while I suffered from the noise of their blasted furnace, when actually it was our blasted furnace which was on (because Eric had turned up the thermostat to 80 degrees, trying to get the furnace to kick on, and forgot to turn it back down to shut it off), but now it wasn't doing anything but blowing out seriously cold air. I fiddled with the thing, but couldn't figure out how to get it to shut off. In desperation I finally called Eric on his cell at about 5:00 am to get his help. He told me about the thermostat, and I climbed back out of my bag to turn that stupid gauge down. We chatted about the bear, too, now laughing in disbelief in the early morning hours.
Needless to say, it was a night of sheer terror, frustration, and no sleep. It definitely sticks out as probably the worst night of my entire life, but it's funny how later you look back on nights like this and just have to shake your head and laugh.
And no, nothing ever happened with the bear. It just wandered off into the campgrounds and left us alone to freeze in the parking lot at June Lake. Oh, and in the morning, there was a note on the June Lake Market door that had been left for us the night before of where our campsites were. Yep.
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