Racoons and camping

Happy evening to you all.

I could sum up my whole post with the following statement: Racoons are smart little buggers.

But, as a "teacher," I know that if I were to read that, I'd want some more explanation, so I'll humor you with the following story:

Ben and I took Dad Hubert and little brother Jaren camping/fishing a few nights ago. Our plan was to stay just one night, fish a little, and just have a good time in the mountains.

We loaded down my little Subaru and drove up to Jordanelle Reservoir. It was such a pretty day! We got to our campsite a little after 7, but the sun was still out, so after setting up camp, we went for a little walk.

While on our walk, we encountered a young moose...about 10 feet away from us, munching on a willow tree. He seemed pretty docile, as he let us nearly sit on top of him to take pictures (not really). After about 15 minutes of watching Bullwinkle, we continued on our walk, back to the campsite.

Upon our arrival back at camp, we decided to take our poles out for a little fishing adventure before the sun went down. This was really my first time fishing and I was excited to learn the ropes, so to speak.

We fished for only about 20 minutes. None of us had any nibbles, but it was fun none-the-less. It was getting late, the sun was going down, and we were hungry campers, so off to camp we went, expecting to enjoy a dinner of roasted hotdogs and chips.

Back at camp, we prepared ourselves to roast hotdogs, but when Jaren noticed the hotdogs (and buns, and marshmellows) were "missing," we went on a rampant hunt for our food. (Silly us...apparently my Eagle Scout campers forgot to put the food away).

About 5 feet from the fire pit, Ben found an opened bag of hotdogs with only two edible dogs left (the others had been nibbled and scratched); the bag of buns was five feet beyond the dogs opened and, like the dogs, nibbled. Even further down, the marshmellow bag lay open and quite empty. How stupid were we?!?!?!

We managed something else for dinner and were careful to boil the remaining hotdogs (we only could eat two, as they were the only not nibbled).

The racoons came back later that night, after we went to bed. They used their creepy little claws to open the cooler.

Racoons are smart little buggers.