Ride Report: Blue Ridge Parkway, Oct 9-11, 2010

[Trip]

Originally Posted by Bonesaw

I return to camp and know that I have to sleep well tonight, so I take a couple Benadryl and wash it down with a beer. We talk some more, and are interrupted by a dog running through our camp site. This is shortly followed by a somewhat distant female voice saying “I swear, your only job was to was to watch her! You can’t even do that right! Go find her!”

A man appears shortly and I say, “Your dog is down there,” pointing in the general direction of the dog’s path. Later, the same man asks if we have any extra “fire starters.” I tell him that we used pine needles, which are abundant all around our campsites. He replies with “Well, good God, I’m not a woodsman!” I am instantly disappointed with his manliness. We later see, what I presume to be, his son spraying some kind of flammable aerosol on their fire and saying “I GOT IT STARTED!” Way to go kid.

After this excitement, I go to bed. I toss and turn all night, and my face is cold throughout the night. I may have gotten 6 hours of sleep, but I am constantly woken up by the campsite noises. I wake up the next morning with back pain and a headache.

I got to add that the woodsman decided to have a conversation with his wife and two people who showed up at like 1am so loud the entire campsite heard them. They were literally 3 feet from my tent when they did this too. The two women in the group had the most annoying laughs. After about 2 mins of this, some redneck somewhere far away in the campground yells out "WHAT PART OF IT'S QUIET TIME DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!" Fred didn't tell us til the next morning, but you sign something saying you will be quiet after like 10 or 11 when you check in. Well they spend 5 minutes debating if he is talking to them in hushed voices and then proceed with their conversation about bullshit. After about 15 minutes of this I am getting pissed and about to yell something at them when the same redneck makes sure they understand his point by yelling at them again. They thank god decide to go to bed. About 3am, someone lost a dog that was going ape shit and it ran by my tent and they chased them through the campground yelling "shhhhhh!" At about 4 am, some kid decided it would be a good time to start screaming and it took awhile to shut the little bastard up. At about 5-6, some people started waking up, so I didn't get much sleep. I am a light sleeper.

The second night was worse though, it was really windy that night and we slept under trees. The leaves/acorns were falling all night and a big branch landed right on top my tent and scared the ever living shit out of me.