So you all want a story? ok. I will tell one maybe two.

David and I were young then. And we were tent mates. This trip forced us to go without certain items for a period of days. We had to carry what we ate, so we did not shop for junk food or munchies. We all had huge packs that we carried our tents, supplies, clothing and our bibles.

Each night one of us had to prepare a Bible Study for the group. I need to tell you that there were some very strong personalities on this trip. And I was the littlest boy there.

So on the hike we had access to a store once. John attempted to keep me level headed and sane by limiting my access to sugar, because I was totally hyperactive. David and I usually found ways around that. And on this particular day we got around that problem. We spent a good amount of cash on goodies, sugar items and doughnuts.

Every night we had to sack our food and hang it from a tree limb so that the bears would not get our food. There was a group of scouts a few days ahead of us on the hike that kept getting hit by bears. I never saw a bear on the hike.

David and I hid our stash of sugar in our tin pot kits that we could eat out of – they were two piece pan that had space inside to put stuff. We were in our tent one night (that night) and bears came lumbering through the camp. The food was all up a tree, but we had sugar there on the ground. So what do you do to make sure that the bears dont find the sugar?

YOU EAT everything that was in the stash – licking clean the paper wrappers and licking the pots clean so as not to attract a bear to get into our tent. We laughed so hard, but it really wasn’t funny. David was a hoot…

Story two

There were little rest areas on the hike where there were shelters and one one particular day we came across this shelter and next to it was an out house. Now an outhouse on a trail was much better than shitting in the bush…

And we all took our turns in the out house. On the floor in the corner of the outhouse was a small bundle of stuff. You never knew where animals will pop up on the hike. And so I was sitting on the throne of thought and this little bundle of stuff began to move. I raised my feet off the floor and did my business and left the outhouse and its little foreign occupant.

One of the girls went in to do her business and a mouse came running out of the bundle of stuff across the floor of the outhouse and scared the shit out of her. I never saw someone come out of an outhouse so fast in my life. It was hysterical.