Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - 06:04 AM

Report #1:
"Creek Camping"
Caleb W.
03/03/03

The wilderness survival camp out, like many others, was full of adventures, excitement, and rain. One of the requirements for the Wilderness Survival Merit Badge is to build a shelter and sleep in it for one night. Everyone was exited and making plans for the shelters on this bright and nearly cloudless day. I started out donating supplies to a huge circus tent type structure that Caleb C. and some others where building. Then the fateful moment happened! I had noticed that a short distance away, Sean and James D. where building their shelter. Sean was not very happy about James' design and so I decided to be a good scout and help out. I walked over and offered them a hand and somehow I ended up trading places with Sean. James and I finished the shelter pretty quickly, with the exception of the time spent turning it around (the open side was towards the wind). Then it happened. James crawled inside and discovered -- get ready for this -- a giant, enormous, collossal, mound full of -- are you sure you want to know? Okay -- ANTS!!!
 But fortunately (or it seemed like it at the time) we had another plan. There was a fork in the nearby creek with one branch going on upstream and the other going up a hill to completely dry ground. The hill was shaped so that we could sleep quite comfortably in it. We constructed the shelter. Let me remind you that it was a nice sunny day and there was hardly a cloud in the sky -- until nightfall!!! You can probably see where this is going: dry creekbed, clouds in the evening, rain the night before... the list goes on and on. Stupid us. We laid out our sleeping bags and were about to get in when we heard a drip, drip, drip noise on the tarp above us. Let me point out that it was Sean's idea (funny how he got out of the deal) and James' design (mostly) and that I was relatively innocent. Sort of. Maybe. Okay so I completely ignored James' warnings. So what? The point is we managed to get out before the torrents of rains came pouring down on the creek bed that had been dry before. But we squeezed into Caleb C.'s tent and slept happily ever after. Until the ghost stories. But I wasn't scared by them. Much. Except for the scary ones.