The is one trip in particular that I remember well, we went hiking up a 6 mile one way mountain (I can't remember the name of it) trail . I was in 7th grade at the time, but I was in relatively good shape because we hiked up Kennesaw Mountain every day in preparation for all the mountain hiking we were going to be doing. I was never the biggest fan of hiking, but my parents loved it so they took me and my siblings along with them. We were planning on spending the night at the camp site at the end of the trail. We got an early start to the hike so we would have time to set up camp. For this hike, we were going all out, we had huge backpacks with sleeping rolls attached to them, a tent, anti-bear crap (airhorns, food containers, pepper spray, bells), and other various camping supplies. Being the kid who never used his locker at school, and instead just carried all his books in his backpack, I wasn't bothered by it much.
We made it to the campsite in the afternoon, I'm surprised we didn't miss it, the only thing indicating that it was more than a flat place of grass-less dirt was a tiny sign with a picture of an arrowhead on it. We stopped to set up camp, but after about a half hour or so, me and my sister started to feel sick. To put it plainly we threw up because we were dehydrated. Something about the altitude made our bodies require more water, but I was young and I didn't really notice the difference. And I'll never forget what my mom said to me after I threw up, something like this: "You can walk back down and sleep in the car if you want to." I sat there and thought to myself, this was highly unusual behavior for her to send me, a 12 year old boy, down a six mile trail in the dark through grizzly bear country. I don't think she would have actually let me do it if I said yes (which of course I didn't), but it was still quite strange and completely out of character for her.
I thanked God that I didn't go down the trail that night, because as the 5 of us laid there in our tent, the most intense thunderstorm that I've ever experienced in my entire life rolled in right on top of us. The tent was rocking all over the place, it wasn't going anywhere because we were inside, but it was still kind of terrifying (and cool, I mean I was 12 so it was kind of awesome). It was hailing, pouring rain, and thundering all at the same time. I can't even imagine what my parents were feeling, they must have been freaking out that whole night out of worry. On the hike back down we saw a bunch of camping supplies strewn out on a boulder as if they were drying in the sun, some unlucky travelers we bumped into got caught in the storm before they could set up their camp, so everything was wet. I think that made my parents feel a little bit better about themselves. Also, one cool thing we did was filter our own water, we were low on our bottled supply on the way down, so we used a small filter to get clean water from a stream we found.
I have fond memories of that hike, it was quite the adventure for us.
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