Monthly Archives: July 2016

Missing Campers

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Site #3 was reserved for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. When I went to bed on Friday night, the site was still empty. As I moved through the campground on Saturday morning, I saw a tent and a car on the site. The campers with the reservation had arrived.

After I saw the campers moving around, I walked over to check them in.

They were a young couple; I’d be surprised if they were out of their 20s. They were nice. They seemed normal, vaguely athletic.

In passing, I mentioned that they must have gotten in late the night before. The woman said they’d missed the turned into the campground, drove right passed it, then drove a long way on the main road before they’d realized they’d gone too far and turned around. Although it is very dark in the area, there is a decent-sized sign at the campground entrance. It seems like if they knew the campground was less than a mile from their last turn, they’d have been driving slowly and looking carefully for the campground sign. But maybe they didn’t know they were close. Few visitors to the area use paper maps, and few visitors know how many miles they’ll be traveling between one landmark and another. Maybe this young couple, like so many other visitors, was relying on their GPS system to get them where they wanted to be. People don’t realize GPS systems rarely work on this mountain.

I noticed their car was something of a beater. It wasn’t shiny. A large patch of paint had peeled off the hood. I noticed the car because most of the people who pay to camp on the mountain have newer, shiny cars.

I saw the couple again a few hours later at the parking lot. When the car pulled in, my co-worker made an unkind statement about it, maybe because it was particularly noisy. Those are my campers, I hissed. Be nice!

I took their parking fee and gave them my usual rundown of what they needed to know regarding the location of the trail and the restroom. As I was doing this, my co-worker noticed the hood of the car wasn’t closed all the way. He pushed down on it a couple of times. The couple didn’t seem surprised or upset to hear the hood wasn’t latched.

The young man was driving the car and ended up parking it at the front of the lot where my co-worker and I could see it. As they parked, my co-worker made a comment about the car coming here to die. Beaters are much more common in the parking lot than in the campground, so the car must have sounded really bad to get so much attention from my co-worker.

After the couple walked the trail, they had a lot of questions about other hikes they could do. My co-worker and I each pulled out a map and showed them routes of nearby hikes that are popular. Then they left.

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon when I returned from the trail: the tent was still up on site #3, but I saw no car and no people there when I checked-in the campers on site #2.

On Sunday morning when I checked the campground for late night arrivals, I noticed there was no car on site #3. Wow! I thought. Those people must have gotten up really early to hike.

When I got back from the parking lot on Sunday afternoon, there was still no car on site #3, but the tent was still there. The seemingly deserted campsite was getting a little weird to me. Of course, maybe the people had returned while I was working at the trail and had left again before I got back to the campground. But while that scenario was possible, it wasn’t the way my campers usually behave. Typically, no one’s gone on a hike before 7am. People that gung-ho about hiking probably go to a wilderness area or do dispersed camping in a remote location.

I went up to site #3 to see what condition it was in. The tent was there, but not a single item was on the picnic table. Nothing but the tent was on the ground either. I didn’t look in the tent—that seemed out of bounds—but I was getting more and more worried about the campers.

Late in the afternoon (but well before dark), the people from site #2 drove over to my campsite. They were tired and had decided to leave early, but wanted to give me their comment card before they hit the road.

I asked them if they’d seen their neighbors from site #3 during the day or even the night before. They said they hadn’t. They’d never even laid eyes on the people, they said. They laughed and said they’d joked the tent on site #3 was a setup so they’d think they had neighbors and keep quiet.

The man from site #2 asked me if I’d been walking near their campsite around eight o’clock the night before. I said I had not. The man said they thought they’d heard a footstep nearby the night before, but they’d definitely never heard the neighbors’ car. He concluded that maybe it was an animal they’d heard.

After the people from site #2 left, I got more worried about the people from site #3. I hadn’t seen them or their car for over 24 hours. I remembered the old clunker of a car they were driving.  I remember their lack of maps. I remembered the woman telling me how they drove past the campground and went a long way in the dark before they’d realized their mistake. They seemed ill prepared to deal with being lost or having their car break down.

I wasn’t quite worried enough to make the twenty-five mile round trip to where my boss was stationed. I figured the couple would wander into the campground that night, and I’d feel silly if I had prematurely raised an alarm. I kept the door of my van opened until dusk. I kept my ears open too, listening for the sound of an engine on the other side of the campground, but I heard nothing.

The next day was my day off. I got out of bed before 4:30 and dressed and prepared for my trip to Babylon. I needed to do laundry and wanted to finish before the heat of the day settled. It was still dark when I left, but I made a special point to drive up to site #3 and look for the car. No car, although the tent was still there. Now I was worried! I was 96% sure the couple hadn’t arrived after dark and left again before daylight.

I waited until 7am to call my boss. He knew exactly what people I was talking about. They’d contacted him the night before. Their car had broken down. They’d had it towed to Babylon and had been waiting for the repairs to be completed. They’d called my boss in the hopes that their belongings wouldn’t be discarded. My boss told them not a problem (which would be his catchphrase, if he were a character on a sitcom.)

By the time I got back to my campground on Tuesday, the tent was gone.

I’m glad those people weren’t dead.

Seeing New Things

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Mr. Carolina loved seeing places he’d never seen before.

He wasn’t too interested in cities, but the beauty of nature really got him excited. Faced with a new landscape, he would shout, I fuckin’ love seein’ shit I ain’t never seen before! Sometimes, if I were driving, he would maneuver his upper body out of the van’s passenger side window Dukes of Hazzard style and shout his joy into the wind.

I had the honor of driving him into New Mexico for the first time. Mother Nature put on a fantastic weather display for us. The sky turned the deep purple blue of a bruise at its peak. Lightning zipped across the sky, and the rain came, heavy but brief.

I fuckin’ love seein’ shit I ain’t never seen before!

I introduced Mr. Carolina and those other traveling kids to my favorite natural hot spring that night too. New Mexico offered a lot of new nature to see.

The next day, driving from town back to the hot spring, we saw a rainbow unimaginably vivid. It looked like what one would get if one handed a box of crayons to a second grader and asked him/her to draw a rainbow in the sky. This rainbow had an extra zing, a certain energy to the colors that made it a rainbow among rainbows. I was driving, and I still regret not pulling to the side of the road and taking a good, long, uninterrupted look.

I fuckin’ love seein’ shit I ain’t never seen before!

It’s going on four years since I traveled with Mr. Carolina. I don’t even know where he is these days, but I’ve never forgotten his joy in experiencing the new. So many times since we parted ways, I’ve come up on a new, beautiful landscape and gotten excited. While the beauty I see every day doesn’t necessarily diminish, there’s a jolt to seeing something fantastic in nature for the first time.

I fuckin’ love seein’ shit I ain’t never seen before!

I went out on a short trip the other day and took a route I’d never been on before. I saw so many new things. In a tribute to Mr. Carolina, here are some of the landmarks I laid my eyes upon for the first time.

Unnamed waterfall next to a gravel road.

Unnamed waterfall next to a gravel road.

 

Rock formation.

Rock formation.

 

Rock and tree.

Rock formation and tree.

 

Giant sequioas.

Giant sequioas.

 

 

Independence Day Parking Lot Circus

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The Saturday of Independence Day weekend was normal holiday busy. I sold 87 day passes, and my co-worker sold 77. Everybody in the parking lot was friendly, no one complained, and nothing particularly interesting happened.

This is the busiest day of the season, I told my co-worker. It’s all downhill from here. I was wrong.

The Sunday of Independence Day weekend was the real clusterfuck.

I arrived at the parking lot an hour earlier than usual because I wanted to be sure I had a place to park. We got busy almost as soon as I arrived.

The problem wasn’t so much that many people wanted to park in a small parking lot at the same time. I’ve handled that before. I know that if people keep moving, the great circle of parking lot life brings cars in and takes cars out so new cars can park in their places.

The problem on the Sunday of Independence Day weekend was that people were being stupid and selfish.

One would think a parking lot attendant would not have to tell drivers not to park in the roadway. However, on the Sunday of Independence Day weekend, people were parking any old where. Twice I ran down the road that loops through the lot to tell people the parking halfway in the roadway was not acceptable.

Other people had parked partially on the pavement, just barely giving cars room to roll by. Even though the vehicles weren’t in the middle of the roadway, the way they parked barely gave big pickup trucks and SUVs room to get through. I don’t think giant motor homes could have gotten through at all.

At least three times I ran toward the parking lot entrance waving my arms and shaking my head, trying to convey NO! and STOP! when big motor homes tried to pull in. I was afraid a big RV would not be able to pass the vehicles stupidly parked halfway on the pavement. Most of the motor homes that come into the parking lot are rented, and most people driving rented motor homes don’t drive them very well. I didn’t expect an inexperienced driver of a motor home to be able to back the thing up if moving forward proved impossible. It seemed better to just keep the motor homes out.

The problem with people blocking cars began right before 1pm.

In all of last season, I never saw anyone block in a stranger’s car. I saw it happen once earlier this season, when one car parked at an angle, a little too close to a stranger’s car and made it just barely impossible for the second car to back out. On the Sunday of Independence Day weekend, some people just quit giving a fuck and began parking their cars so other people couldn’t get out.

The first guy who reported his car blocked was a large Latino man. He told me he wanted to slash some tires. When I repeated this to my co-worker, he made a good point: If the man slashed the tires of the car blocking his, when the owners of the blocking car returned, the flat tires would deep them from moving the car out of his way.

The second person to complain of a blocked car was a senior citizen, bird watching white lady. She told me and my co-worker her car had been blocked and asked if we wrote tickets. When we said no, she asked if we had guns. I’m not sure how she thought a gun would help, since there was no one in the car blocking hers to wave a gun at.

Later in the afternoon, a man with an East Indian accent told me he’d parked behind another vehicle and asked me if that was ok. I told him it wasn’t ok to park behind another vehicle if he didn’t know the people driving it. He said the vehicle was parked on a log, and he didn’t think it ever left the parking lot, and he was only going to be gone about an hour. Was it ok if he parked behind it? My co-worker was gone for the day, so I was not able to leave my post at the front of the lot to see what in the hell he was talking about. (Parked on a log?) I assured him the driver of any vehicle parked in the lot had the intention of leaving and it was NOT OK to park behind any vehicle. I told him if the driver of the vehicle he’d blocked returned first and wanted to leave and couldn’t, the driver will want to fight you! He said again he’d only been gone about an hour, and I told him again it was NOT OK to block any car. I don’t know if he moved his vehicle, but no one else complained about being blocked in, so I suppose everything worked out.

In the midst of the stupid parking and more cars than the lot would hold, a different man with an East Indian accent reported that one of the cars in his party wouldn’t start. He told me they needed jumper cables. I told him he should ask around the parking lot for a set. I was afraid if I loaned him mine, they’d get lost in the hubbub and I’d never see them again, or the people would blow up their car and try to blame my equipment. Besides, I really didn’t have time to leave my post collecting parking fees to dig them out.

Some time later, a young man with an East Indian accent came up to me as I was directing the driver of an incoming car and said, Our car really really won’t start. I advised him the nearest payphone was about ten miles away at a private campground. He said they were staying at that campground. I asked him if their group had another car, and he said it did. I told him they should probably go to the campground in the other car and use the payphone to call roadside assistance.

During a slight lull in the stupidity, a man with a Spanish accent approached me to ask if anyone had turned in any keys. I told him no. Turns out a large extended family was milling about because the keys to one of their vehicles had been lost. There were questions about what would happen to the truck if they left it to go home and get a spare key. There was checking with the campground next door to learn if the keys had been turned in to the camp hosts. (They had not.) Finally, a couple of very young women came back to the parking lot, keys in hand. The heroes! I’m not sure where they’d found the keys–on the trail, maybe. The entire family was relieved and finally headed out.

Not long after that key situation was resolved, a woman approached me to pay her parking fee. Unfortunately, she told me, my husband locked the keys in the car. Do you have one of those things? I assumed she meant a slim jim, and I said I didn’t have one. I said the nearest phone was ten miles away. She said, Well, I didn’t bring my AAA card with me. (What kind of idiot gets into her car without her AAA card?) I told her she should ask around the parking lot for someone who knew how to jimmy the lock. She laughed nervously, but that worked at least once in the past.

When I left the parking lot after 3:30, there were still lots of people milling about, cars arriving and cars leaving. I hoped the people figured out the self-pay system.

I sold 122 day passes that Sunday and lost a little more of my hope for humanity.

This note--written on the back of a day pass--was found on the day after the events of this post took place. It pretty much sums up the day.

This note–written on the back of a day pass–was found on the day after the events of this post took place. It pretty much sums up the day.