A Turn of Events

Surprisingly, Craters of the Moon didn't give me the peace of mind I was expecting. It wasn't the place that I had a problem with, it was the weather.

I need to mention first that this will be my inaugural 'camping alone' experience. Something that I never thought that I'd do...... It's good to face your fears, right?

I crawled into my tent around 10:30 and by then it was raining lightly. I decided that might keep me up, so I put in my earplugs and snuggled up in my sleeping bag, expecting to drift off into a blissful sleep. That didn't happen. I couldn't hear anything, but I could feel movement, so I had to take out my earplugs, SOMEBODY (Eric) had gotten me all paranoid about serial killers, rapists and psychotic truck drivers. I was sure their was somebody standing outside of my tent. That feeling lasted for about ten seconds when I realized that it was the wind. When I say wind, I mean holy wind. All I could think about where the super huge tornados, that my dad had told me about, back east. This is why I don't watch the news people. I started to panic. Am I going to be a fucking statistic on the news tomorrow? I can see the headline, 'Campers dead after freak tornado in Idaho.' Who, in their right mind, camps in Idaho, in May? This girl.

I laid there for an eternity, and when I finally looked at the time it was a little after midnight. Not quite the eternity I had thought. Time to make a decision. Either lay here, in my tent, which might take flight at any time, and wake up in the land of OZ or resort to car camping. Car camping it was. The moment I stepped outside of the tent, the tent caught air and flipped over. Nice. I was standing in the rain, with no shoes on, trying to disassemble the tent, in the dark. Fun. There was still stuff inside, but I didn't care. I shoved it, as is, into my trunk. There was so much stuff in my car I had to sleep in the front passenger seat. Not something that I had planned on, it was cramped and cold, but I survived the windy, rainy, and eventually, snowy night.

I'm not even sure if I slept, but I opened my eyes at 7 and my dreams of going for a beautiful spring morning run along the scenic drive around Craters of the Moon was instantly shattered by the new layer of snow. The wind didn't help either. Screw this place. Time to head down the road.

I'll see you later Craters. I'll come back someday when I've finally forgiven you.