What's your craziest camping story?

Everyone has crazy things happen to them. Something that makes you shake your head and think "that was wild". We've had a few while camping, and if I think back, there were several that happened when I (mom) was a kid camping with my family. Like the time we survived a tornado in a tent. Or the next time we survived a tornado in a camper. And then a few years ago, we were camping at Graham's Island and the wind came up in the middle of the night. I looked out the window and saw the Blackstone cover blowing in the wind. I stepped outside just as it started to lift off and grabbed it out of mid-air. Talk about perfect timing!

Once when I was a teen, my friend came to the lake with us and we were swinging in the hammock and the tree snapped and sent us to the ground with a loud thud! Mom laughed so hard at us she couldn't breathe.

We've had lots of strange encounters with animals too. There was a raccoon that casually walked through our campsite as we roasted marshmallows at the Maquoketa Caves campground in Iowa. The albino chipmunk that hung out with us all summer in Indiana (we named him Albie). The time we were hiking at Turtle River State park and Jamie's sweatshirt was covered in worms, yuck! I think the most memorable was probably the time in the Porcupine Mountains that we ran into those people with a duck on a leash. They had it off trail splashing in the river. Dempsey spotted it first, I thought it was just a dog and he was being silly. Nope...a big ol' white duck on a leash.

Of course I had my share of animal encounters when I lived and worked in Yellowstone. I was chased by a coyote on a trail once, had bears near our camp, horses that were more than difficult and bison trapping me in the cabin during a rainstorm. But that was all par for the course.

Gosh, the more I type, the more crazy stories pop into my head. So what's the craziest thing that has happened to you while camping? Are you like me, and just keeping thinking of more and more stories? Maybe it's not crazy at all, maybe these things just happen in the wild all the time and the more time we spend outdoors, the more interesting things we encounter.

I say, get out there and experience it, but stay safe!