Courtney's post about her days messing around with crack pipes and roach hotels got me thinking about the worst night I ever had on the road. Coincidentally, it was also a night spent in Asheville (what is it with Asheville and crappy nights?), although it wasn't the fault of the place we stayed. This happened a few years ago when I was still working at the paper, still living in the apartment in Calhoun, and Hank was still in college and still game for going pretty much anywhere on short notice. We packed up the little green station wagon with the camping gear we had borrowed a couple of years earlier from K's parents and never returned. The tents were a little old, but in all the nights we'd spent on John's Mountain, we'd never once had a problem with them, so we didn't think anything about the fact that rain was in the forecast.
We were heading up for a beer festival in Asheville, Brewgrass to be exact, and during the trip up it rained steadily from the time we pulled out of the apartment building parking lot to the time we pulled up to the campground office. This was actually a really nice campground, one of those where the "secluded" spots actually are secluded and even when full you don't really see your neighbors. It was actually a little on the empty side having just opened a few weeks earlier and was up at the top of a rather large hill/small mountain. Luckily, the rain broke long enough for us to set up the tents and start driving back into town for the festival. It rained for the beginning of the festival and we ended up warming up in the double-decker bus converted into a coffee shop for a while until the rain stopped again. From that point on, it was pretty nice. We were able to enjoy ourselves at the festival (it was an outdoor fest, so it would have really sucked had it kept raining the whole time.)
After we finished at the festival, we got something to eat and headed back to the campground where we were greeted by the heaviest rain of the day. It was one of those rains that reduces visibility to yards and creates rushing creeks where originally there was just dry land in only a few minutes.
We had set up a big tarp over the firewood and had a folding table to hang out around, but it was raining so hard, and the ground was clay so that it was impossible to even remain standing or even get the fire started. It was such a disaster that we eventually gave up and climbed into the tents (one for K and me and one for Hank) and tried to go to sleep.
The tents were leaky. K kept pushing me into the puddle on my side of the tent during the night so I spent most of it awake, cold, and damp, too nice to wake her sorry ass up and let me scoot into a drier position after the fourth or fifth time she'd gradually pushed me into the puddle.
The worst part was in the morning when the sun finally rose and we could see enough to pack up and start going. Hank's tent was gone and in its place was a river that wasn't there when we went to bed. So here we were, cold, wet, covered in clay mud and planning what we'd say to the cops when they asked us how exactly we didn't hear the screams as our friend was washed away and killed as he was swept away into the trees below at a high rate of speed. We finally spotted the tent about a hundred yards down the hill, but still no Hank.
Finally we found him, curled up in the front seat of the car. He'd realized that his tent was a lost cause during the night when it collapsed on him, so he'd gone to the car for refuge, but found only the front passenger door unlocked. He hadn't wanted to muddy up the car by trying to crawl into the back where he could have let down the seats to form a bed-like surface. Instead, he'd gotten some sleep in the seat that couldn't even be reclined because of the stuff stuck behind it. He couldn't even stand up straight for an hour.
Luckily, Hank survived, but everything that had touched the ground (including our shoes) was coated in a thick layer of clay. We scraped and cleaned the best we could, but ultimately packed our wet, muddy supplies and shoes into the car to finish cleaning and drying at home and drove off toward the clear blue southern horizon.
Fun times.
4 comments:
I feel for Hank. I once spent the night trying to sleep in my truck and discovered just how important being able to straighten your legs can be.
That kind of a camping experience makes you want to buy a van, doesn't it?
My parents actually had a conversion van back in the day (it had been sitting on the lot for two years and the deal was unbeatable, so they went for it), but we never even used it that way. I mean the thing was tall enough inside for me to almost stand up and the back seat electrically folded out into a bed that three people could easily sleep on. They kept using the pop-up camper instead. We really should have just stayed in that roach motel that night.
I was gonna say the same, Jacob. At that point, you probably would have been better off in the crack-pipe hotel where Courtney and Mickey stayed. But then you would have either had to pack up the camping gear in pouring rain or leave it there unguarded.
Fun story for us, though. Fortunately, no one drowned in their sleep.
Yeah, this is when I would have gotten all girly and suggested heading to a hotel. I don't like being cold and wet, and trying to sleep through all that is a nightmare!
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