tales from the road

As you may have guessed, there was plenty that happened on our trip that didn't make it into our travel blog in much detail. The other day, Alfred and I were talking about one evening that was sort of glossed over at the time, mainly because we didn't want to worry our mothers. The particular night we were remembering the other day was the night we spent in the Grand Tetons. We had arrived in the park and attempted to find a campsite (such a common theme of our trip). Since the official park guide paper said that at least 2 of the campgrounds rarely filled up, we were rather shocked and dismayed to find that there were no spots left anywhere. At that point, I had a bit of a breakdown. I was done. Just done with camping, driving, the trip, everything. I don't even remember if Alfred had a breakdown, I just remember being on the verge of tears and hating everything. I believe the two of us exchanged some heated words.

Eventually we agreed to drive down a dirt road into the forest to try to find a place in the national forest to camp. The road wound up a hill and ended up overlooking the valley and mountain range in the distance. It was perfect, except for one slight little tiny thing: there may have been a homicidal maniac camping nearby. You see, we had driven past a rather suspicious looking van and campsite parked in the middle of the woods. Just beyond that was a clearing with an abandoned looking tent (it had blown upside down), another tent with no one there, and a broken down looking camper. Clearly, we assumed that the owner(s) of the van were murderers who had already killed the occupants of at least one other campsite. Plus, this was still bear country. But despite the potential killers, both human and mammal, we decided to set up camp.

After dinner we came back to our tent and were somewhat relieved to see signs of habitation at the camper near our site. By this time a storm was rolling in: there were masses of dark clouds, lightening, and reports of hail from what internet we could get on our phones. So in an effort to take our minds off of the violent-looking weather, impending bear attack, and van-dwelling murderers, we decided to watch a couple episodes of Weeds. We shared my earphones so that no one outside could hear it. And yeah, we spent close to an hour watching TV in a tent on top of a cliff next to a mountain range. Looking back, it was actually kind of awesome.