Four Days of Outdoor Adventure Fodder!

In the spirit of this being the last summer holiday weekend when many are packing up their cars, RVs, trailers, backpacks and coolers to set out for one last hurrah, I want to celebrate the close of yet another summer with some outdoor adventure fodder!  After each post, feel free to share with me any of your adventures or misfits with the great outdoors; amusement and misery always loves company!

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Morning Yoga and a Bear

 

The hubs and I have a love for the great outdoors, while many go to beach resorts to reconnect, we rather reconnect sleeping on the cold hard ground, have no toilet facilities or very primitive ones, enjoy the taste of dirt with every bite during meals and push our bodies to the extreme level climbing mountains.  Of course this would bring anyone closer!  The feeling you are going to die any moment, regardless if you are sleeping in a tent or scaling a 18 inch ledge 3,000 feet up, would definitely wake anyone up to noticing your spouse.  These experiences just brings us closer and gives us a totally appreciation of clean sheets, the fizz of soda, warm showers and an evening with the boob tube!

On one of our very first adventures as a couple, we decided to hike to Half Dome in Yosemite and then climb it.  Since it makes for a very long day, most that do this camp out the night before and the night after.  We found a campsite about a 40 minute car ride to the trail head that was set back in a very remote area outside of the park.  If you have ever been to Yosemite you would understand that they have a bear problem, a seriously bad bear problem.   The camp host said that he had not seen a bear in this particular area in years, but that did not rule out the possibility of one wandering through the grounds at any given time. 

Around 4:45 am, I woke the hubs up telling him I had to go to the bathroom and would he come with me.  He could have been resembled as a bear with his grouchy response, ” I told you not to drink any water before bed, you are on your own!”  I tried to explain to him that I left my glasses at home and I can’t see, so I needed him to guide me to the outhouse – I am literally blind without my glasses or contacts.  He just mumbled something obnoxious and turned over.  I laid there for a while seeing if I could hold it and the stream running right next to our campsite was not helping that situation.

I finally grab the flash light and proceeded to head out into the darkness. As I was leaving the tent I head the him call out chuckling, “Watch out for bears!”  I just rolled my eyes and headed out into the darkness towards the direction of my relief. 

I was kidding myself, I could not see a thing even with the flash light .  Using the solar-powered light attached to the outhouse as a guide, I stumbled along the walkway.  I was just about 20 feet away from the bathroom when all of a sudden something appeared in the shadows from behind it.  It was tall, big, black and about 50 feet away from me.  I froze, shut off my flash light and reached my arms in the sky and stood as tall as I could.  I remembered that  is what you are supposed to do when you see a bear.  It kept coming towards me, my heart was nearly beating out of my chest, I was sweating profusely and sick to my stomach.  “This is it”, I was thinking “When it hits me, just play dead”.  The black image is now at the outhouse and it stops, turns to me and says, “Good Morning, aren’t the stars just amazing!”

I am still frozen in the “bear is going to eat me” pose and I numbly reply, “Yes, I love doing Yoga this time in the morning!”  He laughed and headed into the bathroom.  I then checked myself to see if the contents of my bladder let loose in my fright. Then the sudden feeling of total embarrassment flushed all over me.  What a friggin’ idiot I must have looked like!

To this day I wonder what that guy truly thought when he saw this terrified woman, eyes screwed shut, and stretching herself  out like she was Gumby at 5:00 in the morning.   After I told the hubs of my near miss adventure, he howled out of laughter and for the rest of the day he steered clear from me anytime we were near any type of sheer drop off.  Smart man!  (161)