A tarp saved by rear end once and I've never gone tenting without one again. But, this is really a story about a prick of a Ranger.

I was on my motorcycle, doing the Midwest and East Coast and had just left Shenandoah...heading west on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There was definitely weather brewing. This weather just happened to be the 1980 Hurricane David that landed at Myrtle Beach and was I was directly in it's path. Fog was getting thick when a Park Ranger pulled me over and gave me the low down: there was no out running the storm. I asked him if there was lodging nearby that I could reach. He said, "No". I asked him if I could camp out in the Ranger's Station. He said, "No". What he did recommend was that I make my way up the North side of the Peaks of Otter, set up my tent and dig a trench around it. Okay. Sounded good to me and that's what I did. But, I didn't have a shovel, so I did my best with a good sized rock with a sharp edge. I lit a joint and looked at my "moat". Anyone on acid would have known that this wasn't gonna work.

So, it's foggy, the wind in blowing and the rain is starting. Bingo! Duct tape to the rescue! I taped the tarp that was under my tent up to the sides of the tent. Let me tell you...this worked great! I spent the next 72 hours in the tent, sedating myself with pot so I wouldn't think about the tree that was gonna come crashing down on me. I did have a rain cover, which a falling tree wouldn't have noticed, but several hundred spiders did and took shelter between the tent and the cover. I wrote in my diary, ate, slept and kept myself pretty well comatose for three days. There was no going out. If you want to know what it's like to be in a tent during a hurricane, just imagine yourself laying down on a run way at an airport and a 747 takes off over you every 60 seconds or so. I'm gonna be frank, here...it has harrowing.

Well, on the third morning, the Sun woke me up and I could see the silhouettes of all of those spiders. THAT was something. So, I make my way out of the tent to find that another biker couple had braved the storm just 20 feet from me and I didn't know it. That's how thick the fog was. Then I saw it....

I looked down the slope. There was a lake with a beautiful reflection of the lodge that didn't exist. Well, I guess that if that prick of a Ranger was honest with me, I'd be telling you about burger dinners and what I watched on TV for three days. I take it back about the Ranger, but not the tarp...