In lieu of fool moon: freaky and strange places and people.

I figured most of people on here have done their fair amount of travel and sleep in the strangest places just to go climbing. Let's hear the stories. No urban legendary please, only first hand experiences.

Nothing too freaky, just sleeping inside an electric fence to keep the bears out. Camping at Lake Louise, Alberta, to climb the several good areas locally. The fence gates (self-closing) have insulated handles, but it still takes a time or two to get used to grabbing hold of one. Beats being a grizzly's Clif bar, though.

Trying to sleep in a pyramid tent in the bugaboos with a pika running across (and into at one point) my sleeping bag all night. Food was all safely hung outside but he probably mistook my BO as food.

Stopping for the night on a solo drive to Red Rock, throwing down a bag at a lonely spot in lightly forested FS land, just off Devil Dog Road in AZ, waking in the dark wee hours to something bumping (nosing?) down on my feet, and not seeing what it was.

We got freaked out by some tweaked out dude trying to throw his head into our fire on the beach. I was seriously sizing things up and how to exit the situation. The cops should keep people like that off the streets instead of giving tickets to people who sleep in their cars.

How about, on a road trip to Colorado, made it driving until about 3am. It was a particularly pitch black night, couldn't see but about 5 ft from the car, still in AZ. It was my dog and i. I threw out my sleeping bag right next to the car to go to sleep. All of the sudden, the dog takes off yelping, and I hear, in stereo all around me, MOOOOOOOOOO, and hoofs stamping, and a big stampede runs directly towards the car, diverting on either side to flow around - I was in a freakin' stampede at 3am. After that invigorating experience, once i rounded up the DAMN dog (cattle dog of course), I was awake enough to make it another hour to sleep soundly near a semi-hog waller of sorts.

Damn! The dog pretty much saved your life!

Joan Lee wrote:Damn! The dog pretty much saved your life!

I think the dog was diverting the cattle. It's bred to manage herds. The cows would have otherwise stomped all over the sleeping human in the dark. The dog's instinct is to protect his owner.

^^^you probably live a very sheltered life.

I pulled up to sleep in my minivan at like 2AM in a neighborhood but after like 30 minutes a dude started looking in my van with his flashlight. I didn't think it was too odd at first because I was just parked in a neighborhood. When I spoke to him I offered to move and but he said he was just trying to figure out why there was a car in front of his house (again, not weird.) He then added that I should move away from his house for my own safety but I didn't need to leave the neighborhood. I asked why I needed to move and he told me just to park at the end of the street and I'd be safer there (it was like 50 yards further.) I parked down the street to appease him but left about 20 minutes later. I now suspect the dude was expecting some sort of violence because he was checking strange cars at 2AM and concerned about people being near him.

Zappatista wrote:^^^^^You probably will end up in a shelter at some point in your life.

Robots and Dinosaurs wrote:I pulled up to sleep in my minivan at like 2AM in a neighborhood but after like 30 minutes a dude started looking in my van with his flashlight. I didn't think it was too odd at first because I was just parked in a neighborhood. When I spoke to him I offered to move and but he said he was just trying to figure out why there was a car in front of his house (again, not weird.) He then added that I should move away from his house for my own safety but I didn't need to leave the neighborhood. I asked why I needed to move and he told me just to park at the end of the street and I'd be safer there (it was like 50 yards further.) I parked down the street to appease him but left about 20 minutes later. I now suspect the dude was expecting some sort of violence because he was checking strange cars at 2AM and concerned about people being near him.

Robots and Dinosaurs wrote:I pulled up to sleep in my minivan at like 2AM in a neighborhood but after like 30 minutes a dude started looking in my van with his flashlight. I didn't think it was too odd at first because I was just parked in a neighborhood. When I spoke to him I offered to move and but he said he was just trying to figure out why there was a car in front of his house (again, not weird.) He then added that I should move away from his house for my own safety but I didn't need to leave the neighborhood. I asked why I needed to move and he told me just to park at the end of the street and I'd be safer there (it was like 50 yards further.) I parked down the street to appease him but left about 20 minutes later. I now suspect the dude was expecting some sort of violence because he was checking strange cars at 2AM and concerned about people being near him.

Should have told him to pass the pipe and stuck around to give him a hand.

While peacefully sleeping in the dirt on the fringe of Palm Springs I was rudely awakened by a young man. He was quite surprised to find someone sleeping there. He proceeded to pick up a large rock and stated " I am going to smash your f**king head in if you don't get otta here" In the dim light I could only barely make out the meth induced twitches in his face. I kindly obliged the gentleman.

Years ago, my partner and I decided to check out what all the fuss was about these climbing competitions. So we headed to the Pocatello Pump in Idaho. Wanting to get a good nights sleep before the big day we decided to arrive around 2 am. Finding suitable accommodations proved more difficult than we anticipated. We drove around for an hour until at last we found a dead end dirt road. We threw the bags out in the lane and laid down for a nice nap. At the crack of dawn we were startled by a loud "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS DOING" My partner jerks to a sitting position and fires back "WE'RE TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP" "Oh" the old guy responded, turned and walked down the driveway to his "ranchette" We were surrounded by those little ranches. Well we were up now, might as well pull out the stove and brew up.

Then there was the shotgun alarm close to Devils Tower.... Oh never mind.