Chasing the Colors in Sproul / Skeleton Crew

I awoke in the middle of the night inside my tent in the Sproul State Forest. In the distance, I could hear coyotes howling. I hoped they wouldn't come any closer. I tried to remember where I'd put my whistle. Reached for my flashlight. "Are you up?" asked my husband from his tent nearby. I said Yep, I was. 

The moon was still sailing the sky above us. I found my flashlight, did a few things around the tent. Spotted something moving along the side of my tent. SPIDER! Well, it actually wasn't a very big one; in fact, it was a grandaddy longleg, not an actual spider. So I HAD gotten an unexpected visitor from leaving my tent door open! I grabbed a tissue, scooped up the spider, unzipped my tent door, tossed the little fella outside, where it belonged. Zipped shut the tent door, rolled over, went back to sleep.

The next time I awoke, it was just before dawn. I don't know what woke me, but I listened, and heard a branch moving well above my head in the trees. Something heavy was walking on that branch. A big bird? Then I heard a bird noise that sounded like a hawk to me. That might be a first for this campsite. I heard it move around some more. Rolled over, went back to sleep.

And then suddenly, it was full-on morning, and time to get up and out of the tent to tend to the necessary things. The overnight low had been 40 degrees, but I was as warm as a little piece of toast in my new down sleeping bag! I did a few things; crawled back into my tent, and into my sleeping bag. Ahhh. THAT feels VERY nice! 

My husband woke up shortly afterwards. I heard his tent door zip down. "Did you FORGET something?" he asked, as he nudged Little Bear and Tiny Tiger toward me. As it turns out, I - the bad tiger-mother! - in my pre-bedtime daze, had forgotten to bring Tiny Tiger inside the tent the night before! 

My husband recounted the tale: by 11:30, I'd been in my bag inside my tent, and shortly after that, asleep. My husband stayed up till midnight. As he and Little Bear were heading into the tent, Little Bear spotted Tiny Tiger atop my tent, and insisted that they rescue him and bring him into THEIR tent! And so they did! I guess I'm REALLY glad they did so; what if that HAWK had spotted a Tiny Tiger morsel just sitting around?

It was one very unhappy little Tiger's face that greeted me. "Give me that tiger," I said. And my husband did. And Tiny Tiger and I sat in my chair, in my new sleeping bag, for a while in the morning sun. We even discovered a tiny zippered pocket that was exactly, perfectly, tiger-sized! We put him inside it, and we were as snug as two bugs in a rug! Suddenly, I was back in Tiny Tiger's good graces again. (My husband calls this "tiger bonding.")

It took a while for the sun to warm up our campsite, and so we got out in leisurely fashion, each ate a muffin that our little-old-lady-friend had given us on Friday. We took our time packing up, and as I had most of my gear packed, I went to sit down in my blue bag chair. 

Oh no, there was an ominous crunching noise! Had I broken the chair? I stood up, turned the chair over, and looked, but didn't notice anything. Sat back down again. Eventually, we were all packed up, and began to walk back to our car. Ours was the only vehicle left in the parking lot; I guess the other folks from the day before had already left and gone home.

As we got back to the car, I realized I was on the last leg of our last backpack trip of the year. "I did it! I DID it! I DID IT!" I practically shouted. I managed to do ALL THREE of our regular backpack trips this fall, in spite of some major problems with walking! We put our gear in the car, settled into the seats, which seemed oh so comfy. My husband wanted to do one last short walk at another location before we left Sproul, so we stopped in state gameland 100 and walked down a little path to see some very nice foliage colors, including the scene above.

In the big field, under the sunny sky of a beautiful 60-degree autumn day, I got out my bag chair, went to sit down, discovered it had a very definite LIST to it. Yep, turned it up. Looked again. BUSTED! I think this was probably the last journey for that blue chair. Can you believe that it waited until the very last hike after the end of the very last backpack of the year to give up the ghost? Talk about good timing! And it never even TOSSED me, like some chairs will when they break. Wow. Well done.

And then we settled back into the car for the drive home. The light was that golden, glorious light that they call the golden hour, and our drive was right smack dab down through some of the best autumn colors we've seen so far. It was amazing! (See picture in extra photos.) 

I got out my camera and started taking pictures. There is much to be said for the grand old tradition of the Sunday afternoon drive. We were coming down on route 144 out of Snow Shoe. It was like a candy store rollercoaster magic carpet ride. It was like riding through a corridor of candy-colored light. It was like living INSIDE a stained glass window. I was so happy I was laughing out loud!

David Bowie came on the radio. We Can Be Heroes, he sang. My husband turned it up. I was so happy! I was finally sitting down, we were done backpacking for the year, and there were both glorious colors AND a marvelous tune on the radio. How lucky can a girl get?

As we came through Clarence, not far from Snow Shoe, I asked my husband to pull the car over onto a side road so that I could photograph a really wonderful Halloween display of skeletons in a particular yard. They also did an amazing job last year, as I recall. There were male and female skeletons, and animal and bird skeletons, and even black flamingos (see photo in extras). It was really well done. So we even managed to tuck in one very last tiny Halloween adventure, and then we went home.

I have one last little sidebar here to add. Before we left, my husband had said he'd like to weigh our backpacking gear. So when we got home, I went and got the scale from the bathroom, and as we unloaded the car, we took turns standing on it, with our gear on our backs and in our hands. I know that on these pages before, I've indicated that I carry around 40 pounds of stuff when I backpack. Well, I was WRONG. It's closer to 60 pounds of stuff!!!!!

I've got three photos so here are three soundtrack songs: David Bowie, with Heroes (of course); Bruce Hornsby and the Range, with The Show Goes On, and Vanessa Williams, with Colors of the Wind.