We have kept ourselves very busy and much fed over the past couple weeks. I do believe that I will have eaten more hamburgers this summer than any other summer in my life. When you are looking for food during the summer the easiest and most convenient places to go are BBQ’s. We have attended our fair share of BBQ’s and I have a feeling that we are just getting started. We’ve also “tracked” into the Copper Mill catering a few times. We found some lovely ladies who so kindly gave us some lasagna and extra rolls after an EFY event. The EFY staff members seemed a bit perturbed but we found the right people to talk to. I believe the staff members words were “Really guys?! Really?” Yes really, my dear and it was quite delicious.
I ask your forgiveness for talking so much about food but it is definitely an important part of every day for me and how we come across it can be quite interesting sometimes. Now, onto the subject of our neighbors in the woods. We have run into quite a number of peculiar folk in the canyon. We first met a guy while we were looking for a camp site that was living in his car. He kindly put down is cheese and sausage that he was cutting to shake our hands. Though he was young, his burly beard and goofy hat led one to think otherwise. His clothes led me to believe he was in the Conservation Core and after a bit of chatting my assumption was confirmed. Apparently he only sleeps in the canyon during the weekends. During the rest of the year he “hangs out a lot with friends and plays guitar at people houses”. I've since seen him around town a few times. He is from Oregon.
At the beginning of last week a random tent (a large one I might add) was positioned about 70 yards from our secluded spot. At first I thought this was a little strange but nothing out of the usual. Although as the days past we never saw any cars parked in the mornings or in the evenings. I might add that we leave quite early in the morning and go to our camp after dark usually. So we figured this mystery person or persons got up to camp really late and left really early. Then a windstorm came and turned the tent on its side. After two days nobody had gone to any effort to tilt the thing back onto its feet. There was a bulge in the tent; that was what kept it from blowing all the way across the woods. Eric was so kind to kick it to verify that there was not a dead person. While that cannot be confirmed nor denied I am lead to believe from his description of squishiness that it was most likely just some bedding and nothing else.
Last Friday night an interesting occurrence happened again in the woods. We got to our parking spot to head to bed at about 2 AM. As we were getting our gear ready we heard this yelling and chattering in the distance. We didn't think much of this either, but then there was banging... We heard lots of random sounds that sounded half like a drum and half like a bunch of monkeys banging on metal objects. This didn't just happen for a moment. The sounds continued so Eric looks at me and says “wanna go check it out?” To which my reply was obviously yes. So here we go, trekking up the road, headlamps on our heads and backpacks on our backs looking like we we’re hitchhiking to Bear Lake or something. As we go nearer we ventured off the road and turned off our lights as to not be so obvious in what we are doing. The banging was then louder and the sounds of voices was clearer although not any more understandable. We slowly crept closer through the tall grass and then into some woods. By this point the sounds were so clear that we knew we must be right on top of these strange people. Although we were very close there were no lights and no signs of movements. I was worried that we were close enough for our footsteps to be heard over the banging and what now seemed like chanting. At this point reason took over and we decided that we had better go back before we made the druids or whatever they were mad at us. Our camp was not far away and they could have easily followed us there. So we slowly crept back and headed off to bed. The chanting and banging continued until I was asleep. We still aren't sure what was going on in the forest that night. We changed camp sites to a place that required more hiking. Eric found this place earlier while he was exploring one afternoon. He said he found some candle there still burning but with nobody in site and no signs of people being there recently. So naturally we thought that it must be a good camp site and we therefore stayed there for two nights.
As you can see I've once again failed to take more pictures so that is something to work on for next time. I hope you enjoyed the duckling.
