A long story

My family camped in the Sierras a couple times when I was a kid. It was fun, if you don’t mind occasionally getting dirty or cold or wet. In my first group home when I was 19 years old the counselors took the whole group of us camping in Big Sur, in California. about a three or four hour drive. Oh boy, did I go through some insane stuff on that trip. I mean, painful, serious insanity. Somehow we heard that there were some natural hot springs ‘in the vicinity’ of our campground. So me and one counselor got up at 8:00 am to go soak in the hot springs. We got on the trail and walked. And walked. And walked. For an hour through the mountains. We finally ran across another hiker who told us it was about another hour away. Well we were committed to going there so we kept walking. We walked the hour and then we heard some people talking. About 20 feet off the trail we caught a glimpse of a campground. Me and the counselor went over to ask if they knew how much further the springs were. They were behind a huge log so we climbed over. Well much to our surprise we saw a pretty blonde women straddling a half naked man who was lying on his back on a blanket. They didn’t see us at first so the women pulled off her top. THEN she saw us! It was flurry of action as they tried to cover themselves, but it was really funny because you would think in that situation we would get a clue and just leave them to their privacy. But like two idiots we stood there staring and asked, “Hey, do you know how close the hot springs are”? Lol. I forget what they said, but anyway we kept walking. To make a long story short it took us two more hours to get to the springs with only a few 15 minute rests. We finally found them but much to our dismay, all of them were full of people. The springs looked pretty neat, bubbling and steaming, about the size of a normal hot tub. There were several of them. We found a REGULAR spring and hopped in to wait for someone to leave the hot ones. After waiting awhile we said screw it and turned around and walked back four more hours back to our campground. So we walked a total of 8 hours through the mountains, almost non-stop. Now I used to pride myself on being in good shape but when we got back I layed down in my tent and then the tiredness hit me full force. I had NEVER felt so physically tired and sick in my entire life, before or afterwards. I mean I was weak and trembling not to mention having full-blown schizophrenia. I mean I was SERIOUSLY sick physically. I had no strength, I thought I was going to throw up and/or pass out. Before I got sick I used to jog a 5 mile trail. And I used to get together with friends and play tackle football for a couple hours on weekends at the park. Or run three miles in high school in twenty minutes for soccer practice. But I never knew exhaustion like I felt in the mountains that day.
Anyway…the insanity was another story.

2 Likes

Maybe in my earlier years I might of walked that much, I dont know. That sure is a lot of walking, and some adventure. Today I dont think I would last 3 miles - maybe

You have some amazing things happen to you that start out so casually. Just a walk… and bam… you got more then you expected.

I don’t remember ever walking that much. I was in idiot (on many instances) and once took too much acid with a friend and while tripping, got completely lost in a tiny barely a forest on a foggy afternoon just 20 blocks from my house. Never did that again. That gave the head circus a lot to play with for months after.