A Scary Camp Story

When I was a little girl we lived in a little pink house in Elgin Oregon. It had a huge yard with tree's, a small grass field and a big garden spot.

Our family had been planning a camping trip to Kalispell Montana when school got out. As children, we where quite excited at the prospect of catching a wild horse and bringing it home as a pet.
We practiced our roping technique's with larriett's made out of yarn on our bed post's and where quite certain we would catch a wild young pony and make it our own.

So with four excited kid's, a collie dog and a calico cat, we headed out to Big Sky country. We made our way through a corner of Washington, acrossed the panhandle of Idaho and into Montana to Kalispell, which sits between Glacier National Park and Flathead lake.

In Kalispell we stopped for a few days to visit my aunt Marveleen and uncle Dale. They even had a pony for us kids to ride.
We rode the pony double and bare back.
On one of those rides, I was behind my big sister Susan, choppily trotting allong, when I lost my balance on the slippery pony's back. With my arms wrapped tightly around Susans waist I fell off dragging her with me. Later that night while taking a much needed bath I noticed a perfect print of a pony track on my leg.

After a few days of visiting, we pulled out and found a quite little campground in the forest, in which we set up a tent. I was sure a bear would show up and have us for a late night snack.

I had a little blue Schwinn bike. My sister Paula and I spent allot of time riding our bikes around the campground, but I saw something frightening that kept us in close to the campsite.
There was a man in a dark army van that I would glimps now and then. He had long curly hair and looked like the bad man, who shot John Wayne, in the movie "The Cowboys". He might have just been an innocent camper, but when I would see that ominouse van, my heart would beat with fear and we would high tail it back to the safty of the campsite.