Was camped out in my friend Cometseekers front yard when she was out in western NC. Her neighbors dog thought waking me up by sneaking into their yard and being about 8 inches from my face when it started growling at me was appropriate. Needless to say I was so startled I scared their dog and myself by throwing a shoe and promptly went to go into the house to get a drink only to discover I was locked out. Then I broke into her house and crashed on the couch from the exertion.
Puppy love melts even a cold heart
Originally Posted by CamoEvo
I don't normally camp at public sites but i did twice last summer and they were memorable for the wrong reasons. At about 1am a dog took a dump just past one of the trees i was on and the wind was blowing in my direction. I think that was worse than just about anything. Next morning i chided the dog for it. It looked me in the eyes, went to where i had been setup, took another dump and then looked me in the eyes. Cheeky bugger.
About 28 yrs ago i was camped up in a remote drainage in a bush camp. It was late evening, i was in bed reading and something leaned against the side of the tent and nuzzled in. I gave it a whack thinking it was a dog or black bear and then went to sleep. Next morning there was allot of commotion in camp and a shot rang out. It was time to get up for breakfast and when i got out of my tent i saw the bear prints by the side of the tent,,,,,,,,, only they were grizzly. Funny how you relive an experience even tho it was 8 hrs ago. Gave me pause.
" The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it."
“The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.” ~Wayne Dyer
www.birchsidecustomwoodwork.com
I had a dream that my hammock ripped in half once.
Well, I just had a scare, while peacefully Hanging in my hammock, my onboard defibrillator fired, yup, good thing I was Hanging, if I had been upright, I would have been on the ground. If I did not have an implanted defibrillator, I would have been dead!
I have told my adult kid I want to go out Hanging in my hammock, I almost made it, good thing the defibrillator is still alive enough to get my heart beating again, I have too many projects I want to finish. LOL My biggest fear is to have a prolonged period where I am nonfunctional, that thought scares the living heck out of me.
Last edited by IRONFISH45; 11-13-2014 at 07:08.
I was in the Smokies a few weeks ago when they had a massive rain (5.5") and 80MPH wind gusts. When we were setting up camp for the night, I had trouble finding good trees because the cleared area for the designated backcountry campsite didin't have suitable trees and was surrounded by dense rhododendron. I ended up tying one end of my hammock to a massive tree, but the other end was tied to a 4-5" diameter tree that was set back in the rhododendron.
Throughout the night, we kept getting these massive wind gusts. It would be relatively calm for a few minutes, then you would start to hear this roar from higher up the ridgeline that grew in magnitude until it hit. I could really tell when those wind gusts hit because the small tree at my foot end would whip around like crazy and I went for quite a ride.
Throughout the night we heard several trees crack and fall around us. The ground was super saturated and the trees were heavy with moisture since there had been lots of rain in the last week.
We packed up camp in the pouring rain well before sunrise and started headlamp hiking to our car. I have never experienced rain so heavy. The trail was a rushing creek and we had to negotiate lots of recent blowdowns. We hiked for 4 miles in the massive rain. It finally started to let up, and the remaining 4 miles back to the car were characterized by spitting wind driven rain and more of those wind gusts.
When we got back to our car, we found a tree had fallen across the road 6ft behind the cars rear bumper. On top of that, the ground underneath a huge tree not far from the front of the car would move every time the wind gusted. As we were driving out of the GSMNP, we had to stop several times to move recent blowdowns off the road.
What an adventure...
I've been 'bumped' 2-3 times. The one time I think it was a dog that was hanging out at the campground but the others - I have no idea. I made a few loud noises, rolled over and went back to sleep
A simultaneous double legged charlie horse in the calves no less. The pain was excruciating and made getting out of the hammock a chore.
Gotta love those leg cramps when trying to climb out of a hammock! lol
My scariest experience in a hammock happened when I was racing downhill mountain bike about 8 years ago.
I used to be the last on the way up right before they closed the chair lifts. Bringing a backpack, I would sleep at the top of the mountain then ride down early to have breakfast at my car. The finals that year were held in the Saguenay region on a tall mountain right next to a fjord. There were no good trees to hang at the top so I decided to ride down the course a bit until I could find a good place to hang.
The scary part is that I woke up the next day inside my hammock, hung right next to my car, without any memory of how I got there.
To this day, I am still assuming I crashed and had a concussion but was somehow able to get back to the car in the dark, or in the morning.
Needless to say I had my worst result ever on that Sunday...
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