National Park After Dark - Trail Tales 43

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Today’s stories include the sisterhood of the frothing pants, powerful manifestors, surprise allergies, stubborn guide dogs, hiking back in time, tooth & claw induced fear, Grand Canyon gaslighting and raccoon terror.. Outsiders Only bonus stories available for Patreon and Apple Subscribers!We love our National Parks and we know you do too but when you're out there, remember to enjoy the view but watch your back. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe from wherever you’re listening to NPAD! Become part of our Outsider family on Patreon  or Apple Subscriptions to gain access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more. Follow our socials Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. To share a Trail Tale, suggest a story, access merch, and browse our book recommendations - head over to our website.Thank you so much to our partners, check them out!Lume Deodorant: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @lumedeodorant and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo codeReel: Use our link and code NPAD to sign up for a subscription to automatically get 30% off of your first order and free shipping.Quince: Use our link to get free shipping and 365-day returns.Earth Breeze: Use our link got get 40% off when you subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture, my work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff,

knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. We got Trail Tales coming in hot. How are you today, Cassie? I am great. It feels like I haven't talked to you in a long time. That's untrue.

We've been recording all day. This has been like a day where we've been working from morning until, and we're not done after this either. So we've just been sitting on Zoom pretty much all day too. All day long. Well, do you want to hear a story for me or do you want to tell one first? I would love to hear one, I think. Okay. All right. So my first story is titled Manifestation and an Angel. And I made a note here that I removed the personal intro from the email, but she was very, very nice

with saying thank you and sending love to us in the show. But the email after that starts, I too lost a partner suddenly. I don't really want to talk about the details of how it happened because it was traumatic and honestly just too sad. I do, however, want to share one of my favorite memories with Brandon and then the in-your-face can't-dign-it sign he sent me. Today would have been his 33rd birthday and it feels nice to reflect on happy times with him. We lived in a small cabin on 13 acres of woods in Georgia. We didn't have the internet or much indoor entertainment other than a few movies and board games. So when we weren't working at a super lame job or working on our car that we were rebuilding

and the motorcycles he was fixing for himself, we were walking around the woods. The woods were behind a few neighborhoods and there were several abandoned houses. Sadly, they were dilapidated and used as dumping grounds. I'm talking trash mounds, filling the houses, driveways, and yards. The woods were barely explored, however. If we went deep enough, we would very rarely find litter or proof of people at all. One beautiful, sunny day in particular, while we were walking around farther than I think we'd ever gone, we were talking about our most recent day trip to the lake. He said he really wished he had a boat.

Nothing fancy, just something that he could fish in. He promised one day he'd teach me to fish. Moments later, maybe a half a mile or so, I saw something silver shining under a tree. I gasped and then took off running over the fallen tree trunks and knee-high ferns. It was a John boat. It was covered in moss and partially buried and had several tree sprouts growing inside it, but it looked all right. After we pulled it out and inspected it, we discovered it was a perfectly usable fucking boat. We laughed and I told him he was magical and able to manifest the things he wanted the most. He said something cheesy and sweet along the lines of, well, I manifested you, probably as per his character followed by a kiss and a butt squeeze. In our

excitement, we decided to turn around and drag the boat home. After a while, we took a break and sat in our new boat. He said we need to buy a trailer since we are at least 45 minutes to any lake, and we talked about how funny it would be driving our lowered Honda Civic with a trailer and a boat, and again, like magic, his eyes were drawn to something shiny, deeper in the woods. What are the odds that under the brush, just 50 feet or so away from the place we stopped to rest, was a trailer? It needed new wheels, but those are obviously much cheaper than an entire trailer. We were hysterical with laughter and shock, with me now jumping up and down and screaming that he definitely was magical. We made jokes about him wishing the universe for what windfalls of cash and new parts for the car. We got the boat back to our

house, but never went back for the trailer. It was too heavy for us to move alone, and he passed away before we could enlist that enough help from our friends. Like I said, I don't want to get into the details about his accident, but I do want to share this. I clearly remember playing 20 questions with him when we were first getting to know each other. I asked him how he wanted to die, and he said in a motorcycle accident, going fast, having fun, and going out too quickly to feel anything, which is exactly how he went. I do believe he was filled with magic. I personally believe that we all are, but he was tapped into it on a level many of us are not. The morning of his accident, I went straight to his family's home. His little sister was sleeping. After someone else told her the devastating news around 7.30

morning or so, she found me sobbing on the kitchen floor. I'm changing her name since she's too young to give consent, so we'll call her Grace. Grace was five years old, in a floral nightgown and barefoot. Her hair was messy and her eyes were puffy from just waking up, but she wasn't crying and, in fact, looked a hundred times calmer than any of the adults present. She carefully sat down on the floor and basically pulled me into her lap while I wept uncontrollably in her tiny arms. After a few moments, She softly but firmly said the name she called me. Nini, I looked up and met her eyes, and she told me, Brandon is an angel.

I stepped out further and fell on my knees now. He's going to take care of you. After a while, she started crying hysterically as she began to wake up and began to understand. I don't know how much time passed, but sometime later, she wandered off and came back to me with a crayon drawing. It was of me and Brandon. Brandon had angel wings and a halo. in the middle of the page is a bright red stop sign. Above the stop sign were dark and big clouds with chunky raindrops. Once again, in her calm, sweet, but strangely serious voice,

she said, look, NeNe, Brandon is an angel now, and he's going to stop the rain for you. I'm sure I told her it was beautiful, thanked her, and didn't give too much thought about it after that. I had a lot of family to call, detectives to speak with, work to call out of, etc. The day of Brandon's funeral was pouring rain, like a movie scene with everyone in black with their black umbrellas. The second I stepped out of the car, the sky cleared above us, and the rain that was just seconds previously pounding down came to a sudden stop. Months went by, and I have two best friends, my sister and my dad, and even a few close coworkers who witnessed me stepping out of my house or a car and the rain just stopping. I vividly remember seeing the pouring rain on my front porch, opening my door and stepping outside, and it would stop and the sky would clear. There were several points when I literally believed I was going crazy.

And if it weren't for my friends and family who had seen this phenomenon with their own eyes and had seen Grace's drawing tell me that it couldn't be a coincidence. I'm certain I would have checked myself in for real psychological help. After several months of this, I remember an afternoon when I was alone and it was raining outside. I talked out loud to Brandon and thanked him for the undeniably obvious signs. But I was sad that he hadn't moved on if souls do that. I didn't want to be the reason that he was waiting around. Even though I felt the exact opposite as my truth, I told him I was okay and I wanted him to rest. I told him that I loved him, but his peace meant more to me.

I stepped outside and the rain hit my skin. It felt like a waterfall. I stepped out further and fell onto my knees, eventually laying on my back, looking up at the sky, and I wept as hard as I had the days following his death. The rain felt heavier than any rain I'd felt, and even foreign, since it had been so long since I had felt it. I told him goodbye and said all the personal things I needed to say, and it has rained normally for and on me ever since. A decade has passed. Every loss is different, and I'm certainly not here to say it gets easier. I'm ecstatically married now to a sweet

man who astrologically and in countless ways is very similar to Brandon. Another trail tale for the future is how my now husband proposed to me in a sparkly pink canyon. But this one is for Brandon. When we hang out with my husband's childhood friends, sometimes I can close my eyes and see Brandon sitting on a log by the fire with a guitar in his lap, laughing and loving my husband and his best friends. I keep Brandon alive by listening to his favorite music, sharing his stories, and being open about his death, and his impact on my life. I think you're doing a stellar job, Danielle, sending all my love from Atlanta, Noel. Man. Maybe you should have gone first.

Starting that off with a really heartbreaking story. I just... And I picked it. I mean, I did it to myself, but I thought it was a beautiful story. and one of signs and incorporating your love into your life, even though he's not physically here anymore. And I just love that story. So thanks, Noel, for sharing it with us. Yeah. Thank you very much for sharing it with us. That was a very, I, there's no, when you said coincidences, just the first thing in my head went. There's no such thing. No such thing. Yeah. Lift my spirits, please. Can you? This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this sounds.

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Okay, well, my next one is funny, so we can bring the mood up. The title itself made me laugh really hard. So it's titled, Is There a Sisterhood of the Frothing Pants? Oh, no. It's back. The frothing pants are back. If you haven't heard it yet, the trail tale, we did a Trail Tales where someone wrote into us about a frothing pants incident that they had in the woods.

And it was so funny. I couldn't read through it fully without cracking up hysterically. So we should look up to which one that's in. because it's probably the funniest story we've ever gone. You know what I mean? I feel like we reference it quite a lot. So it's a memorable one. Yeah.

Well, this one is part two and it goes like this. Hi, Cassie and Danielle. In your Trail Tales episode 25, oh, look. They said it first thing. It's Trail Tales episode 25. You shared a story about frothing pants and asked if anyone has ever had a similar experience. I'm happy to be able to do. say, I am a member of the sisterhood of frothing pants and provide such a story and maybe

destigmatized frothing pants a bit. In 2013, I was a forestry student in Germany. Our universities had a yearly exchange program with a university in the U.S. where one year the U.S. students would come to Europe for two weeks and the next year German students would visit the U.S. having an amazing two-week tour through European National Parks in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia the previous year, I was excited to fly to the U.S. for the first time and explore the Pacific Northwest. Our trip itinerary included Snoqualmie, Gifford Pitchit, Mount Hood, and Willamette National Forests, and we even got to spend time in Mount Rainier National Park.

We were about 40 people, including our professors, and spent a lot of time walking through all kinds of diverse ecosystems from lush coastal rainforests to high plateaus, which, in the middle of many were full of fragrant sage and beautiful wildflowers. We were very lucky weather-wise and had no serious rain for the first stretch of our trip. I had packed two pairs of hiking pants but had at that point only wore the lighter one of them as the temperatures were mild enough. On this day, however, the forecast predicted rain. And in order to be best prepared for a long day in the field, I chose to put on the other

sturdier pair. The sky was overcast for most of the day, but as the afternoon progressed, the first droplets of rain started to fall. We were on top of a ridge where we looked at and learned about recent control burns with a U.S. Forestry Service Ranger. The topic and the way he presented it were super interesting, so at first we did not really register and then not really mind the increasing amount of water falling from the sky. As foresters, we also probably thought we should be fine being outside in all kinds of weather, and nobody wanted to be the first to show signs of discomfort. After about two hours,

of mostly standing and listening and talking with the Ranger, we started walking back down towards our cars. I had needed a bathroom break for quite some time at this point and took the first opportunity to make a little detour into the not so dense underbrush. As I peeled my, by then, completely soaked, pants down over my thighs, I noticed they felt slightly slimy, but I attributed that to maybe a residue of sunscreen on my skin from the day before. I finished my business, pulled up my pants with a little bit of effort, I'm sure anyone who's ever put on wet pants can relate, and hurried to catch up with my friends a little further down the trail. When I was at their level, one of my friends turned around, squinted at me, and said, what's on your pants? The froth is back.

My first thought was that I maybe picked up a bug or some leaf or twig on my little pea break. Looking down my front, however, I saw horizontal stripes of a white, foamy substance all over both of my upper legs. Upon closer inspection, they also extended to the area between my thighs. I was a little freaked out as I had not seen them when I had pulled my pants just a few minutes before and had no idea where they had come from. I gingerly touched the froth with my fingers and found that it was, A, removable, B, felt a bit slimy, and C, smelled slightly strange. Not the most reassuring characteristics. I took out a wet tissue and tried wiping it off, which worked okay given the less than ideal circumstances. By then, a small group of people had

gathered around my embarrassed self, wondering why I had stopped in the middle of the trail in the pouring rain. My by then, very red-faced must have been a great contrast to my black pants with white stripes. Yes, you read that right. Of course. my pants were black and provided the perfect dramatic background for the crisp white lines. After some wiping from me and my lovely, helpful friends, I needed help getting the froth off the back of my thighs. I very self-consciously trudged on, only to find out that my pants had some more of the white stuff in them. The stripes reappeared after only a minute or so of walking, not wanting to slow everyone down and stop again. Remember, it was still raining. I kept on walking

and me and my friends tried to come up with different theories to explain all this. None of our ideas made any sense, and I just focused on getting back and hopefully change into clean and dry pants soon. Once I was in the car, I used my rain jacket to cover my legs and hoped that none of the other people would notice anything. I was lucky. Everyone was busy with their own wet clothes and gear. I was also lucky that everyone was soaked, so our hosts decided to drive back to our cabin

so we could get changed before we headed out for dinner. I thought about my frothing pants the whole evening, but it was not until I lay in bed that night that the explanation finally hit me. I had washed these pants in the student dorm laundry a couple of weeks before the field trip and not use them since. I now remembered that the whole laundry load had been very wet when I opened the washing machine. I had just assumed that the spin and pump out mode on the machine wasn't working and chucked my wet laundry into another machine to spin. It now became very clear to me that not only did the machine not spin, it apparently did not rinse my laundry at all. My pants were still full of detergent and the rain and movement from my legs brought it all out again. That's why the foam only appeared after I had walked for a bit.

I told my friends about the laundry fail the next morning. They thought it was hilarious and inquiring about the state of my pants kind of became a running joke for the rest of the trip. It was all good-natured fun though and I remember that trip. the wonderful nature and the great people I've met very fondly. But I have to admit that I am more conscientious when doing laundry nowadays. I came back to the U.S. this summer and discovered your podcast while having an amazing time in visiting 27 national parks in four months. Keep doing what you're doing.

Your podcast is wonderful and has kept me awake on many long drives, made me laugh out loud on train journeys, and also made me shed a tear or two on the heavier topics. Enjoy the view, but watch your pants. Okay. Oh, my God. Well, the last time, so this was a laundry mishap. But wasn't it last time it was like something in the pant, like as part of the material? Yeah, last time they thought it might have been something with the material because they had never worn them before and they didn't wash them or something before they wore them.

And they thought it was like some weird chemical that was coming out of the pants. I've never I've literally never heard of that before until these two stories and then are the first time in Trail is 25 or whatever and so many people were like oh my god this has happened to me I'm like what where are these frothing pants and where are they at I want to know what brand they are because I'm just curious if there's a correlation between all of these pants that's true investigative work okay so my next story is a little lighter than my first, and it's titled That Time I Was Transported Back in Time While Hiking. My wife listens to every episode and told me I should share my experience with you. Here's the strangest trail tale I'll probably ever experience. A few years ago, some friends and I were hiking the Finger Lakes Trail, a more than 550-mile trail through New York State. The trail system goes through a series of state forests and parks and terrain and is mostly forested hills with abundant water sources, the occasional farmers field,

and lean-to shelters every so often to spend the night in. It's basically the perfect example of a hiking trail. We'd done most of the trail in pieces over many weekends, and by this trip, we had already seen more than half of the entire system. We pretty much knew what to expect, and this trip started out very mundane. The plan was to hike about 15 miles or so through the hills before passing through a large field and spending the night in a lean-to. At about three miles from the night's camping spot, we hear a large boom off in the distance.

That in itself isn't too unusual either. One of us thinks that they saw a quarry nearby on the map and they're probably just blasting. Another jokes that it sounded like a cannon. We all laugh and move on. The final stretch is our biggest climb of the day, because isn't it always? And we're all huffing and puffing when we spot something at the top. It looks like a tractor, which is kind of worrisome because we're in a farmer's field, and even though we're still on a trail and have the right to be there,

we generally try to avoid needing to explain that to landowners. But as we got closer, we realized it wasn't a tractor. We make all kinds of guesses, four-wheeler, side-by-side, random farm equipment. Turns out that it's a motorcycle with a sidecar and a very old one. Maybe the owner is camping at the same spot we are. Then we notice an emblem on the sidecar. It's an iron cross. Huh, must be a very old German motorcycle.

Then we turn and see a literal tank, just sitting in the tree line, done up in camo, with another iron cross on the side. As we stand there gawking, I look into the woods behind the tank and see dozens of people in Nazi uniforms, complete with flags, tents, and lots of weapons. We have no idea what to do at this point. We're totally stunned. But eventually we get it together and decide to keep going until we find the lean to. Maybe it's just past all this and we don't have to get involved in whatever the hell is happening. We reach the lean to, which turns out to be in a lovely spot right next to a pond with a little fire pit. And oh no, it's also full of Nazis. We can't avoid being engaged by these ones and they come up to talk to us.

They explain to us that they're having, quote, the most fun you can have with your clothes on. And it's way more fun than Xbox. Like, dude, we're out here in nature not playing. playing Xbox, you don't have to convince us of the merits of touching grass, but we're not going to do it wearing a Nazi uniform. Of course, we're all too stunned to say any of that, but it's what we're all thinking. They offer us some potato soup and we politely decline. Just as we're trying to wiggle our way out and formulate a plan, we get roped into a tour of the camp by a very drunk man in an SS uniform. He tells us he's a method actor and that during a reenactment, he'll do everything he can

to get in the mindset of the soldier he's portraying, right down to smoking unfiltered German cigarettes, which he was desperately trying to light on a campfire, even though he totally doesn't normally smoke. He shows us a few tents, a minefield, some MG-42 machine guns, a car, and the tank, which we now know is a tank destroyer. It was probably the main gun of the tank destroyer

on the howitzer that we heard boom earlier in the day. Some way through the tour, when he's showing us a PPSH machine gun and yelling at his less enthusiastic girlfriend, we realize that he is very drunk and decide we need to disengage as quickly and politely as we can. It was getting dark and it was too late to find an alternate campsite, so we returned to the now empty lean-to and set up our tents behind it. We go to bed early, but the sound of automatic weapons and hearty German accordions and drinking songs stop us from getting too much sleep.

We got up before dawn and left. They asked us not to photograph their faces, but I'm glad I took some pictures to prove that it actually happened. Extremely strange experience. P.S. there was a small contingent of Soviet reenactors, but they were outnumbered maybe three to one and were far less enthusiastic in their roles. Apparently, the Germans were the victors in this mock battle that day.

I'm certainly not against historical reenactment, but the vibe wasn't, I'm playing the bad guy because somebody needs to, it was, this Nazi uniform is my favorite outfit. And that was very off-putting, Mason. Yeah, that's horrible. You said it was the, you're like, I have a more lighthearted episode and then this person goes into being in the woods with a bunch of Nazis. That's terrifying. Okay. And very, that's not, you don't play dress up with that. There's some things you don't dress up as and Nazis is one of those things. Well, the way he said at the very end, he's like, you know, I'm not against doing it because you got to play the part because it happened in history and whatever. But this was like they enjoyed it.

And that was the problem. And I just imagine. I mean, Mason, I don't know if his group was all male or if there were females involved or whatever. But I just imagine myself and like you and a group of other women. Walking into a situation like that. And coming across that and how maybe differently it would have gone. I don't know. It's just freaky.

So I take it back. It wasn't lighthearted. It was just. I forgot. I saw the title. I was like, oh, cool. Cool. This one's nice. Back to the future maybe vibe. I don't know. Nope. It's actually one of the most horrendous acts in history. But yeah, I take it back. And I hope we never come across anything like that in the woods, though, because that would scare the shit out of me. Yeah. All right. My next story is titled Nuts and Needles. Hi, ladies. I'm actually not the biggest fan of podcasts and only found yours while on a road trip with

my gals to Glacier National Park in Montana. It was a 16-hour drive from my home in Durango, Colorado, and I had already exhausted my music playlist at the halfway point. My friend then suggested I listened to your podcast, and I've been a fan ever since. It's still the only one I listened to today. Thank you. On to my story. A couple years ago when I was 19, my friends and I decided we'd go to the Needles District in Canyonlands in Utah for some much-needed outdoors time. We were all in school and had part-time job so it was hard to get together often. It was October and perfect weather. Desert season, as I call it. We headed out and grabbed a permit before beginning our trek into the needles. Now this is only the beginning of the fuckery that would ensue. We didn't get there until nighttime,

and not one of us had been backpacking there before. We had a map with our designated campsite circled for both nights. Camping anywhere else in the park is illegal. We couldn't see a damn thing in the park, no posts, trail markers, nothing to indicate we had reached it. So we bedded down on some rocks and called it a night. And who should come running past us the next morning while we're packing up? A fucking ranger. She turned right around and asked us if we camp there and we said yes, but only because we couldn't find our designated spot. Then she asked us if the ashes on the ground were from a fire we built. We lied and said no, knowing the fines would be outrageous for doing it. I know now never to set a fire when it's prohibited, always listen to the Forest Service and your rangers. It's for your safety

and the preservation of the park's ecosystems. She took our names and numbers down anyway and said we'd be hearing back about the impending charges. Great. I hadn't even been there a full 24 hours and we'd already gotten lost and in trouble with the law. The next day goes by without a hitch. We take some fun enhancers and climb a bunch of rocks and enjoy the day. Fun enhancers. It's like drugs. That's ningo for drugs. Code for drugs. This time we succeeded in finding our campsite. We weren't the brightest bunch, so kind of a small miracle that we did.

The next day, we packed up and started heading back to the car. We have about eight miles of backcountry wilderness to cover to get there. And that's when things really turn south. All of a sudden, my eyes and ears start swelling shut and I'm breaking out in hives. I have no idea what's happening, but obviously I begin to panic. And I'm still having a little too much fun from the previous day, if you catch my drift. I'm still being mind fucked. And now my body is going through it.

Okay. So what do we think? Is it like, I'm not well-versed in this? I don't know. Is it like edibles? I'm guessing acid. Oh. If it's lasting a whole day, if it's asking, if it's lasting 24 hours, I'm guessing acid.

Acid, yeah. I took an edible last night to go to bed. And I took more than I usually do. And it was a mistake. What happened to you? It was a mistake. I was just laying there. Like, I couldn't fall asleep because I was, usually I eat it right at the perfect time that I actually don't feel the effects.

It just helps me sleep. But last night, I took a little more than usual. And I also didn't fall asleep on time. So I was not having fun. I don't like feeling like that. And I was just laying there. I'm like, just go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, please. So I couldn't handle acid.

I just say that. I can handle it. I mean, I think it's great. Not that you would know. It once. Except for children. When you're older. If you're older, if you're listening.

Anyway, that's when my throat starts swelling and breathing is becoming difficult. My mind is racing and all of my friends are low-key freaking out as much as me. I'm having anaphylaxis in the middle of nowhere with a nobody nearby and no cell phone or service. Holy shit. And get this, I didn't even know what I was allergic to. Luckily, one of my friends was a long-distance runner, and she ran and found a high place with one bar. Now let's set the scene, shall we? I'm dying on the ground, and my friend is yelling for a chopper. The helicopter arrives and I'm airlifted out and into Moab. I discover that I'm allergic to peanuts. Can you guess what I brought for food on this trip? Literally trail mix and peanut butter bread. That's it. Apparently, I had

developed this allergy over time and had no idea, but it gets weirder. I have exercise-induced food-related anaphylaxis, which means I can eat a small amount of peanuts regularly and be fine, but if I eat them and then work up a sweat, I'm destined for death. So not only am I stupid, I'm also a freak of nature. You're not stupid, you didn't know. And that's a weird thing. I've never even heard of this before. It's a very rare thing, I feel like. But that's my story. We ended up getting charged $5,000 by the Ranger that found us that morning, and I got charged an extra $40,000 for my lovely ride through the canyon. Most expensive trip of my life and one I'll never forget.

Side note, my friend had bought a supposedly cursed ring and wore it on this trip. She threw it away and we've had a pretty peaceful adventure since. That end part, 40K and 5K by the Ranger, and of course. almost dying on your trip makes it. It's a good trail tale. A memorable experience. Yeah. Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks for sending it in. But damn. Yeah, that's a lot of, I mean, there's power and things. And I'm not saying it was the ring's fault, but I'm saying that. It was the rings fault. I have the opposite experience with the scarab on our group trips. So, and when I was in Egypt, a person on the street handed me a little figurine of a scarab.

and I've been carrying it on our group trips pretty much ever since. And we've had some really good luck. And the scarab is supposed to bring good fortune and things. We call it the weather scarab because when she doesn't bring it, we get bad weather. Yeah. So just check in with people and see what they have. Don't have I even bring some curse. I feel like you're the person I need to check in with to make sure you don't have any curse shit with you.

Yeah. Well, to my knowledge, I don't have anything cursed. But I do shop at antique stores a lot. I know. I was like, look at my haunted candle. Look at my haunted chair. Leave that at your house. Don't bring that around here.

Okay. My third story is titled at the edge of a cliff bar. Hi, Cassie and Danielle. Of course, goes without saying, love the pod. Your personal story about Barry Jam on the recent trail tales reminded me of a funny incident from the summer. So I thought I'd write in. For everyone who doesn't know, Cassie brought Barry Jam into our tent in Alaska.

In Bear Country. intentionally. I just had a nice little jaw. Not intentionally. We just forgot. A nice little jar in my backpack that I forgot about. And it sat nicely next to Danielle's head. Yeah.

It was so upsetting. Okay. I live in Revelstoke, which, excuse me if you already know, because you probably do, is a town that sits between Mount Revelstoke National Park and Canada's Glacier National Park. For the past decade, I've spent countless hours skiing. hiking, climbing, paddling, and running the trails of British Columbia and Alberta. I've never really been one to be fearful of bear attacks until I got turned on to tooth and claw through your podcast. Caviot being, of course, it's a great podcast and I love the guys, but I went down

too much of a bear attack rabbit hole this summer while voraciously consuming their content. I highly suggest people listen to them, just maybe listen to their episodes with some variety instead of honing in on every single bear attack episode in their feed, especially if you live in bear country. That's too funny. Solid advice. Anyway, my roommate and I decided to go on an overnight hike in the nearby Monashy Mountains up to a beautiful alpine basin that doesn't see a ton of traffic. He's a plant biologist for the national parks and is such a fabulous hiking companion

as he basically interpretive guide you up the trail every time. To protect his privacy, I'll call him Steve. The thing about Steve, though, is he's kind of a fearless outdoors person who wants to sleep in his own tent, which normally would have been fine with me had Night of the Grizzlies circulating my mind the entire time. Steve and I got up to the brilliant meadow, set up camp, and cooked ourselves some dinner. After being beyond stuffed with backpackers pantry pad tie, we brushed our teeth and set out to stow our food. A hundred or so meters away, we configured a bear hang in the stunted alpine trees and traveled to a nearby. sub-peak to watch the sunset. We chatted about our favorite mountaintop meals, what kind of fairy tale creature we'd be if we had the choice, and plenty of other stupid stuff which pulled my mind

away from bear attacks. As we had settled back into our tents, which were about 30 to 40 feet apart because of the lack of flat real estate nearby, I started unpacking my pack. An unsettling realization dawned on me. I had a cliff bar, a banana brownie, and sunscreen in my first aid kit. Within moments, I knew what I had to do, and my dentist wouldn't be happy about it. I unwrapped the treats and stuffed them into my face. What are you doing over there? Steve called out, alerted by the crackling of rappers. Me? Nothing.

I said through a mouthful of cliff bar. Go to sleep. Steve, being the level-headed wildlife biologist that he is, thought my newfound fear of bear attacks was ridiculous. I couldn't alert him to my patheticness. You forgot food in your pack, didn't you? He had called back out after a moment. Yes, yes I did.

I replied, shoving the wrappers into his zip-block bag and then deep into my pack. I had been caught in the act, and we both laughed. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to work Cliff Bar out of my teeth with my tongue until I fell into a peaceful sleep among the alpine heather, uninterrupted by bears. The next morning we packed up and continued on our hike to the peak of the mountain, where we took shelter from the wind and an old fire lookout. As I used the panoramic view to scout the alpine for grizzlies to no avail, I firmly decided I would only be listening to Tooth and Claw episodes about hippos or pink river dolphins from here on out. But I want to know, had you been with me, would you have done the same thing?

And no, I didn't eat the sunscreen. Thank you for all you do, Celine. I just love the visual of her just shoving everything into her mouth and being like, what? Me? No. No. I'm just, I'll be there in a minute. It's like so you.

Like in that situation, I was Steve. Yes. Yeah. I would have done, I probably would have done the same thing. Yeah. I guess instead of getting out and like walking back to the bear. Because obviously the food's cashed. It's dark out too.

It seems like process. Just feel like, yeah, just eat it really quick. Assuming I even knew that I left it. That's the key because that's the key because Cassie forgot the bear jam. Like imagine taking out and being like, oh, shit. Like what are you going to do? Just shove a whole thing. Yeah, I can't eat a whole charm. You're going to eat jam. I'd just be like, you know, it's sealed. We're good. Yeah, Cassie would would have just rolled the dice. She would have not hung it or ate it. She would have just kept it.

I'm like, ah. The 50-50 shot here. Wait, the pros and cons. Don't follow my advice. We know that this is bad. This is not advice. This is just mistakes I've made in the wilderness. All right. My next story is titled, Two Blonds, A Blind, A Blind, man and a grumpy guide dog go on a hike. My name is Lindsay and yes, you can use my name. First of all, let me be cliche and quickly say I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I have loved it for years. But after becoming a resident of Essus Park, Colorado, my love for the podcast has taken a whole new level and meaning. I got to see you both at the Stanley this past September and it was amazing. Thank you for visiting our awesome little mountain town. My cabin is a 15-minute walk into Rocky Mountain National Park.

So let's just say I have had my fair share of adventures. I have so many stories I could tell, like when we had an unexpected visitor at a bonfire, I am forever terrified of mountain lines now, or an innocent walk with my boyfriend and his dog, ending in a run for our lives from a mama elk. Since this is my first time writing in, I figured it would make the most sense to tell y'all about my first ever hike in the Rocky Mountains. Disclaimer, if you read this, I will piss myself and it will become my whole personality for 2024. Anyway, I arrived in Estes Park in March, the snowiest month of the year here.

As someone who has lived in Florida their whole life, this was a giant culture shock. I had to learn how to dress for snow, drive in snow, walk in snow without busting my ass. Oh, and breathe, because did you know that Floridians do not breathe the same way as Coloradoans do? I didn't and ended up in the hospital, L.O. Oh, my God. Despite its initial struggles, I did make some awesome friends pretty quickly. Specifically, I became good friends with my co-workers, Ellie and Colt. Both loved to hike, but Colt loved to hike. He backpacks multiple times over the summer, has summited Long's Peak multiple times, and hikes whenever he gets a chance. He is also blind and mostly deaf. Ever since I arrived and we had become friends, he had been begging me to go on a hike with him. I finally agreed to go with him and Ellie and what we call him. an easy walk to Fern Falls. Turns out Fern Falls is a five-mile hike on a good day. We did not go on a good day. On a snowy day in late March, Ellie Cole and his guide dog Pete loaded up the car. Let me tell you about Pete. Pete is Colt's best friend and guide dog. However, Pete hates hiking. When Pete gets tired,

which is within a mile, Pete will run Cole into trees, off the side of the trails, into snowbank, Thanks, whatever slows him down. It doesn't work. Colt will also blame literally anything else for him falling because to him, Pete can do no harm. We know better. Once we got to the trailhead, I quickly realized hiking with Colt is not as straightforward as letting Pete guide him down the trail. Pete is trained to follow behind a person walking in front of him, which is great. However, Pete can't shout out when there are any obstacles on the trail. So Ellie and I took turns leading Pete and Colt and yelling rock every five seconds. The first half of the hike went pretty smoothly.

However, we quickly began gaining elevation and the snow got deeper and deeper. We soon lost the trail we were following. Now, the only person on this hike who had been to Fern Falls before was Colt. He tried his best to guide us in the general direction of Fern Falls. I forgot to mention he knows Rocky Mountain National Park like the back of his hand, but Ellie and I soon had to admit we were lost in the snow. Ellie and I begged to turn back, but Colt told us to walk just a little further, and we decided to traverse the side of the mountain on our left.

With poles and spikes, we were slipping and sliding and sinking into the snow. I thought we were going to lose Pete and Cole a couple of times. However, we eventually made it across the side of the mountain and began to hear the faint sound of trickling water. At this point, Pete refused to move another inch, so him and Colt took a seat on a nearby rock. Ellie and I creeped to the side of the cliff and peered down, finding a mostly frozen waterfall.

We described the waterfall to Colt and he asked if we can move closer. As we explained that we could not, since we were above the falls, he grew confused. He had no clue how we made it on top of Fern Falls. To this day, he nor I can tell you how we did it. But hey, we made it. And no one slid down the mountain. After Pete stopped being grumpy, we got back and followed our footprints in the snow all the way back to the car.

All in all, we walked nine miles. Happy to say that Colt and I still hiked together and every hike is an adventure. but none will be as memorable as my first experience in Rocky Mountain National Park. Again, thank you for all you do and sharing your life and passions for the outdoors. I have learned so much from your podcast, Lindsay. I love a grumpy guide dog. It's just like the guide dog. You never see it.

No, you don't. And it's so funny because Lindsay put guide dog in parentheses when they first started describing the dog and I didn't understand it at first. But then the next sentence was that they would like walk pee or. into or Pete would walk him into everything. Everything. Yeah. Pete is just on his own journey. Is that it for our regular?

Yeah. That's it. That's it for our regular episode. And we have a couple more for people who are on Patreon or are on Apple subscription podcast. We have two more stories. Mine is titled, My Boyfriend Left Me for Dead because of Raccoons. And mine is titled Gaslit by the Grand Canyon.

Oh, man. All right. So we'll see outsiders over on the subscription channels, everyone else. Please enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at NPAD Podcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Join our outsiders-only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. to listen ad-free, unlock monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting our show.

For our exclusive discount codes and source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For more information on our show, our book recommendations, merch updates, and more. Visit our website at npadpodcast.com. And please rate, review, and subscribe from wherever you listen to podcasts. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts

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