The haunting begins...

I spent the past weekend in a ghost town, with a bunch of creepy ghouls skulking about. Oh yeah, the Boy Scouts were there, too.

It was the annual Boy Scout camping trip in Calico. Calico's an old desert mining town that's been transformed into a touristy ghost town. Usually, "ghost town" refers to the fact the mines were abandoned long ago, but during the two weekends before Halloween, it becomes a more literal description--it's a real ghost town, filled with monsters and other scary things!

We got to town late Friday night. We had a few glitches--due to traffic, it took us four hours to get there (instead of two). Once there, we began setting up Martha's tent in the dark, only to realize she didn't have any tent poles. Luckily, I also had a tent, so I just offered to share. And then, approximately five minutes after handing Mark a walkie talkie in case of late-night low blood sugars (he was in a different camp), I lost my walkie talkie. I was super bummed, because it turns out they don't work so well as singular devices. But the worst part was explaining to Mark that I'd lost it (usually, he's the one who loses everything). His initial reaction of concern was quickly replaced by a smirk (and relief) he wasn't the loser.

The good news is, we got all the bad news out of the way that first night. Once the sun came up, we started a whole new day, and everything turned out much better.
The boys were chattering excitedly about a visitor. Apparently, somebody left a loaf of bread out, and a fox ate it. The story quickly changed as it passed through the group, from "There was a fox" to "I saw the fox!" It was alternately described as small and reddish, about the size of a dog, and big and brown, like a wolf.

I noticed in the daylight that the rock structure behind us resembled the top half of a skull. It was soooooo cool!

I met up with my friends Karen and Greg, who'd arrived while we were sleeping. They made a fantastic French toast breakfast, and I marveled at how much better food always tastes when you're camping. They joined the Scouts after breakfast for a hike in the hills, and I returned to my camp to enjoy the momentary peace and quiet.

Calico's in the high desert, so I'd mentally prepared myself to sweat in the projected 90 degree weather. But a nice little breeze rolled through the campground, and kept everything cool. While the Scouts were gone, I crept into the leaders' camp to sit under their tree and read in the shade. It was quiet, breezy, and I was completely happy.

As I was reading, a group of Scout parents passed by.

"Come on, Heather, we're going to town!" they shouted. How could I resist?

It's a short hike to town, maybe half a mile. It's easy during the day, but there's one section that's pitch black and pretty scary at night. I was glad it was daytime.

We passed through the campground, admiring all the sites decorated with Halloween gear. There were graveyards, cauldrons, inflatable pumpkins and all sorts of spooky stuff. Later on, at dusk, costumed trick or treaters ran wildly through the camp.

The town was already filled with scary people--we followed this group in.  

But the decorations weren't just limited to people. The buildings were decked out, too, all along main Street. This one even had a giant spider on it, who was about to eat an orange stuffed cat. The whole scene freaked me out, as the cat bore a striking resemblance to our beloved little kitten Fernando.

We wandered through town, drinking sarsaparillas and inching our way through the mystery house. The house, built at all different angles, severely messes with your head and your balance. At one point, I gripped a handrail tightly, convinced that gravity had failed me, and that I was about to fall down.

By the time we got back to camp that afternoon, the gentle breeze had grown into full-force hurricane winds. We rescued our neighbor's tent, which flew in to the mountain side, and then reinforced our own tent with as many big rocks as we could find. Our tent didn't blow away, but I spent the rest of the night tripping over rocks.

The Scouts went up to town, returning in a steady trickle over the next couple hours. They all returned carrying the same two things: brown sarsaparilla bottles (which looked like real beer bottles) and toy guns. Hey, what do you expect, it is the Wild West, after all! (Mark came back with candy cigarettes. Apparently, his vice is smoking, not drinking and shooting.)

After a nice dinner, we all walked back to town for the evening haunting and a comedy hypnosis show. (I'm not sure what hypnosis has to do with Halloween, I just went with it, but the boys loved it.)

I thought our boys went home after the show, but somehow, we beat them back. At one point, Martha and I went looking for them, but we stopped when we got to the super dark valley. I had a wimpy little lantern that did not shine light anywhere past three inches of my face, and Martha held only a wimpy little glow stick. We stood in the dark, contemplating our next move. All I could think about was last year, and how a coyote had walked this trail just moments before we did.

"Maybe I'll just pick up a rock," Martha said casually. Then she bent down and picked up another, and I couldn't blame her.

In what may not have been my proudest maternal moment, we decided not to go any further. We reasoned the boys would be much safer traveling through the darkness because A) they are loud, and would surely scare away any predators, B) they had much brighter flashlights than we did, and C) they were not scaredy cats like us. A and B turned out to be true, and C probably did, too, though no boy would admit to it.

When we woke up Sunday morning, the wind was in full force. It was whipping everything around, including us. We tried packing up the tent and tarp, but the winds were blowing them around so hard we just couldn't. I crammed them into my duffel bag to repack at home.

Martha and I broke down our camp fairly quickly, then wandered over to the Scout camp to see how they were faring.

Their tents were much bigger than ours, but the boys were much smaller. The wind was tossing them all around pretty good. I watched some older Scouts wrestle their tents. Then I turned to see how our boys were doing. Mark and his friend Sean were gripping the ends of the tent's rain cover. But instead of packing it away, they were running. The wind was blowing straight into the rain cover, puffing it up like a parachute, and the boys were cracking up.

Eventually, the Scout leaders gave up on the slacker boys and the gusty winds. They ordered the boys to do as we did, cramming the tents into the cars, to repack when we got home.

The trip always ends at a dry lake bed, shooting off rockets. Because of the weather, the troop decided to shoot off just a few token rockets, most of which broke or were carried off by the wind. We drove by the swirling dust storm over the lake bed, and decided to keep on driving--our teeth and skin were already gritty with sand, and we just wanted to go home to a hot shower.

The trip ended as it always does, with the exhausted Scouts unloading the trucks back at the church, and the parents yelling at them to hurry up. I'm glad we showed up, because it turns out one of the leaders found my walkie talkie and returned it. 

It was the perfect way to end the trip--definitely on a high note.