Waiting for Lightning

One of my favorite musicians, Stephen Curtis Chapman, has a song called "Waiting for Lightning" which played in my head several times as we camped at Todd Lake. This camping experience was very enlightning to me. Randy and I use different words to communicate camping and hiking expectations. Randy wanted to go up a "hill" to camp above Todd Lake. I thought "hill" meant a grassy rolling field slightly higher than the lake. When in reality, Randy meant "miny mountain" which is most successfully climbed by mountain goats! So, we packed the tent, sleeping bags, tarp and food up the steep "hill" and found a nice flat spot to pitch our tent. After being bit by the dracula mosquitos on our trek up the hill, we applied OFF. Anywhere we missed in the application became a target for these ruthless little bugs.
After pitching our tent, we decided to go for a little hike around the top of the hill. When we left it was clear blue skies and in the 90s. Water seemed so far away! On our hike, we hurdled down trees and branches as we worked our way though the forest. After a bit of this, we decided to turn around and go back to the tent. Good thing we did. Thunder and lightning were moving in over Mt. Bachelor and it was evident we were in for a storm. Randy immediately took charge and applied survival knowlege to rig up a tarp over a rock so we could cook over a small fire. We ended up only receiving a few sprinkles Wednesday, but Thursday morning was a different story. Thursday morning there was sheet lightning and thunder on two sides of our camp. One crack was a flash and boom almost simultaneously. Needless to say, after the hail hit our tent and tarp, we were ready to go down the hill back to the truck in the parking lot. I don't think I have ever been so eager to get to flat land in my life!