I wonder.....whats the best?????

Bandit, One of my anthropology proffs. was a former anglican priest in the Philipines and S.E. Asia. He was doing research in Indonesia ( I forget which people) and learning the complicated stories behind many stars in the night sky. Some were ancestors, famous incidents or clan totems. After weeks of memorizing dozens of stars he remarked on one that slowly travelled across the night map that hadn't been mentioned. His instructor looked, pointed to it with his Parang. "that one? Yes, the one moving faster than the others." Oh, yes, that is a satellite."

The scout councilor that taught me his star hike routine told me of his most memorable celestial encounter. Part of his routine would point out Cassiopeia, the queen reclining on her sofa. His bright flashlight pointing towards constellation near the horizon. To her right and up a bit is Cepheus, the king. [color:blue]"One day, the queen was so angry at the king that she threw her crown at him and here…"</font color=blue> At this point, without looking, he swings his am with the flashlight straight up over his head slightly behind and to the right of vertical. [color:blue]"… and here is were it landed!" </font color=blue> As the beam points directly towards Corona Borealus, the Crown.<br><br>On this occasion, however, when he swung his arm up in the air, his flashlight pointed directly to a meteor that had just flashed across the sky, burning up in the atmosphere. [color:blue]" … and here … is a meteor," </font color=blue> he said, without missing a beat. For the rest of the week, those scouts though he was a god for being able to predict the actual time and place a meteor would appear.

Peeing in the fire. Oops, sorry, I thought you said cruel campsite prank.

There was a group of 12 of us out camping.. one guy was know for sleeping in and sleeping soundly.... the first morning, the rest of us got up, quietly packed up camp, and reset up camp around the point of the lake (some 125 yards away).. we took everything including the firewood shavings and footprints. Yep, we swept the ground with some branches, clearing our path.

It took him a couple hours to figure out where we were... we never told him that we moved camp. To this day he thinks he moved in his sleep!

That beat the time we slid his dome tent down to the edge of the lake so the door of his tent about an inch from the water.

Practical? There is always the old warm water in the palm of the hand trick...

Not a joke, but a good story:

When I was in high school, a bunch of us were camping out at one of the state parks. Sometime in the night someone woke up to the noise of something snuffling around the campsite. He yelled and woke up the rest of us, except for one of the guys who complained about us making too much noise and snuggled further down into his sleeping bag. Flashlights clicked on and it turned out to be a racoon rummaging around where we had our hotdogs and other food.

We all sat and watched the racoon walk around the campsite checking everything out. Great big old gray racoon, and it wasn't worried about a thing, just taking his time. After a while of watching him, it almost got boring and the conversation just turned to regular teenaged boy conversation while we sorta kept track of where he was. Next thing we know, the racoon shuffles up to Ricky's sleeping bag (the only one of us still sleeping). Before we could do a thing, the racoon opens up the top of the bag and goes right in. We were all kind of "this is gonna get good/horrifed" speechless. We could see the lump of the racoon going to the bottom of the bag. Then, from out of the bag, we heard Ricky "You guys just won't let me sleep and I'm about to get pissed off!" Then someone started it, whispering loudly "Ricky....there's a racoon in your sleeping bag". Within a few seconds we're all doing loud whispers for Ricky to get out, "....there's a racoon in your bag."

Then Ricky, still deep in his sleeping bag says quite loudly "I'm about to kick someones ass!" Then Rick's head pops out of the top of the bag as he sits up. He looks down at the bump of the racoon at the foot of his bag, he looks around at all of us kind of confused looking. All of a sudden he realizes that we are NOT messing with him and it really IS a racoon. He shot out of that bag like it was a cannon shooting a high-pitched girl screaming cannonball.

All of the noise and commotion made the sleeping bag shoot a second furry and scared racoon cannonball out right behind Ricky. Ricky didn't slow down till he hit one of the trucks, and the racoon fired off through the underbrush and trees headed towards the next county.

It's still one of my better camping memories.

heck of a story! I bet they both left a little "treasure" in that bag on their rapid exit.

I was camping with my best friend Joe, and my Future Brother in Law, oh 25+ years ago. We came in from 2 weeks out in the backwoods to the state campground, and rented a site, to wait for our lift in 2 days. The ranger warned us about the local racoon population.

Around 10pm that night, we hear some rustling, and my B-I-L says, let me go scare that raccon. Lew goes to chase off that Racoon, only to find it was a skunk - he backed off real quick, and yelled down to the next site "Be careful, you got a skunk heading your way" - we heard the warning get passed down around 6-7 campsites - then we heard "Bark bark bark YELP" - and a minute or to later, that nice pleasant order of skunk - someone didn't get the word

Memorial Day weekend on the Oregon coast, tent camping in the woods. We had just snuffed the fire and were in the tents when we all heard this awful racket approaching through the woods. Buddy climbs out of bag and sticks head out to see what's making the commotion. The noise turns to a roar, then suddenly see buddy's body jolt around and he pops head back in just as it sounds like something tearing our tent apart. Rubbing his face, he explains that hail is coming down through the trees the size of marbles, and he took face hits looking up at the tree limbs where the noise was coming from. From what it looked like inside the tent looking at his back side, you'd have thought something was tearing his head from his shoulders.

Then there were the idiots camped up the road from us during hunting season, and as we sat around our own little campfire, we saw this brilliant flash followed by hoops and hollers. Turns out the dumbos had let their fire burn down to a smolder, and had thrown wet wood on to try and coax it back up into flame, failing that, they doused it with charcoal lighter fluid, anticipating the few embers would ignite the fumes. Alas, when that too failed, someone got the bright idea to toss a lit match, which, with all that volatized unburnt vapor made a fairly large size fireball in the night sky, causing all those sitting round their thus illuminated firepit to go ass over teakettle backwards.

The best, though, was the makeshift carbide lamp my friend made from a plastic gallon milk jug. He dumped a handful of carbide in it and added what he thought was the appropriate amount of water, then screwed the cap on and poked a hole in the top of the cap. He lit the escaping acetylene and went about his merry way. Holding the lamp out in front of him, he led us down the path, all the while failing to notice the ever growing flame geysering from the top of the jug. Suddenly, there was this tremdous "Whoom!!!", as the gas buildup in the jug overcame the cap barrier, and a terrific flash, which fairly burned into our retinas the silohuette of our friend in front of us, arm extended forward as if mimicking the statue of liberty pose. As we recovered, we saw him standing there frozen. Inquiring if he was okay, he paused, then quietly asked if his hand was still there, it having apparently gone numb from the concussive shock of holding the unexpected bomb in his grasp. A quick count of his fingers revealed that the explosion lacked the requisite energy to remove body parts, and so after catching his breath, we continued down the path back to camp, in the dark, laughing all the way Ho Ho HO....