Weird Sightings while Camping

[Mary Beth]

Has anyone spotted anything weird, while camping or hiking? It would be cool to hear some big foot stories, but mainly I am talking about realistic stuff. Once, while hiking in my local park, I saw a small animal. It looked like a skunk, and a racoon mix. Very strange, colorings and I was baffled at what the animal was. Do skunks and racoons mate, if given the chance?

 

[ghostdog]

Sounds like you may have seen a ringtail cat. It is part of the raccoon family. The tail is black and white but different pattern than a skunk. The ringtails I have seen were about the same size as the skunks I've seen.

 

[Lamebeaver]

Thta's funny! When I started reading the original post, I was thinking of the same thing. I once saw a ringtail and they are quite unusual.

 

[Newanderthal]

When I was a kid I almost caught a snipe...

Weirdest thing I have ever seen was a guy with his pants around his ankles and a roll of toilet paper in his hands hopping around in the dark looking for a tree to lean against. It was quite disturbing.

 

[Wild Rose]

I would have wet myself, if I saw a man hopping around, with his pants at his ankles! I did not witness this, but a neighbor at a campground did. She said she was just getting out of the shower, in the public shower houses. As she was walking to the mirror, a man dropped out of the ceiling, and landed in front of her. Cops were called, and the creeper was arrested. She said, from now on, she stays dirty, and people can just deal with it!

 

[Shannon]

I have not seen anything as strange as Newanderthal and WildRose thankfully! I did see a fox sitting on top of a trash can eating out of the trash, but at a campsite that's probably not really that strange.

 

[oldsarge]

Once while camping as a teen, we watched from our tent as Raccoon carefully ripped open a bag of Oreo's, then reach in and scoop out the cookies and feed them to her babies. When they all left we checked out the bag and it wasn't even ripped apart, she did a great job of tearing it open as if she was going to try and seal it back up.

In Panama I once walked up on a large black panther while it was eating something it had killed. I was about25 feet from it, all it did was look towards me and make a loud hissing sound. After a few more guys showed up from behind me, the cat grabbed it's chow and ran off.

 

[hummingbird]

I once saw a huge hairy hand and arm reach out of a small cave. It was accompanied by a ferocious growl. We didn't stay around long enough to find out what it was. I think I won the sprint though and made it over the pasture fence without touching it. I was 12at the time.

 

[Grandpa]

A ring tailed cat? which is not really a cat but a member of the racoon family. Sorry for the blurred picture but this guy didn't hang around long for posing. (Tonto trail, Grand Canyon)

We have snipe fly in by the 100's when we are irrigating. Old timers in the valley used to eat them. But taking the youngens night time snipe hunting still remains a tradition here to. It's just easier to sucker them into a hunt because snipe are so numerous here.

[/IMG]

 

[Walking Man]

I was walking a trail once and came around a bend in the trail only to find a large white cow standing on the trail. It was funny because we were in the middle of a national park and there weren't any farms for miles. I know someone was missing a cow.

 

[Grandpa]

When in those high 12,000 ft basins in the High Uinta Wilderness, the planes flying over make a big racket. Even the little planes are very noisy. One night, or morning, a 2:00 am nature call had me standing out in the night when I saw a very bright light on the ridge. My first thought was somebody had snuck a 4 wheeler into the wilderness but then I realized it was flying. My next thought was a high plane still had his landing lights on but as it passed overhead, the light remained bright, so it was not a directional light such as a headlight or landing light. I could not make out any shape of a craft or anything. As the light moved further away it remained very bright and then, when about over the Vernal Basin where the towns are, it suddenly went out. About that time I realized that whatever it was had made no noise whatsoever. Definately a UFO (it may be identified by someone else but not me) but one of ours or theirs? Who knows?

 

[Hazel]

A leopard cub casually strolled up middle of a land surveying class being taught by my dad in Guyana or the school of piranhas eating a calf crossing a trench where I was fishing.

 

[grand]

When we visited the underground river in Palawan, Philippines, I was terrified when I saw several monitor lizards in the area. They were not wild or ferocious but still looked scary to me.

 

[WildRover]

The first time I ever saw bats come and eat mosquitoes off the mosquito net it was pretty amazing. There were hundreds of mosquitoes all on and around the net and the bats would just circle around a few times and all the mosquitoes would be gone. I stayed up for hours watching this.

 

[Pathfinder1]

I usually don't trek very far,
when all around me black bears are.



Hi...

I've probably seen a few strange sights over the years...one comes to mind..although it"s not spectacular.

I was fishing for grayling in the headwaters of the Chena River when I saw what appeared to be a jacket cuff just barely visible, poking out of a sand bar. I tugged on the cuff and gradually removed an OD army field jacket, in quite good condition.

In one lower front pocket was about a dozen stainless steel snells, and in the other lower front pocket was a handfull of .44 mag ammo.

That jacket fit me perfectly, and I wore it for a few years.

How did it get there, under what circumstances, and who was the former owner? I have no idea, and to this day I sometimes wonder about that.

 

[Sagebrusher]

*bump*

While on a university geological field trip in the Sonoran desert, around midnight while everyone was in the quiet drunken stage just staring into the fire....










A frog immolated itself in the campfire!

 

[ppine]

Sitting in Ash Meadows Hot Springs in so NV watching 2 Stealth Fighters fly behind the hills when the Govt insisted that they did not exist.

Listening to my Dad on a hunting trip in ID when he came into camp in the dark and was spooked by tracks that went straight up the mtn side. The old stories of Sasquatch told my grandfather had kicked in out there in the dark by himself.

Having 2 F-18? Navy fighter jets fly over my tent and break the sound barrier at 0300.

edit- Being kept awake by a family of long-eared owls with a nest in a tree above my tent that I hadn't seen on the N Platte River, WY.

Camping next to the Snake River, ID on a canoe trip and having the river rise and flood our beds after water release to generate power on a cloudless night.

 

[Judy Ann]

It was a dark, balmy night by the mountain lake that I had hiked into. Not one to be too frightened by insect sounds on a summer night there was this nagging feeling that I might be missing something. The water gently lapped the shore and what turned out to be a particularly small owl croaking was categorized as a frog. Finally I drifted off to sleep. About two am there was a roar across the large lake, and lights shining brightly. "Lord have mercy," I thought. "I've hiked into moonshine and drug country and now I'm going to die."

My old dog woke up and as usual looked up at me to see if I needed her to protect me. I figured that the boat must have been one of those cigarette boats that haul butt in the South, but noticed that I wasn't hearing any voices. About the time I grabbed my whistle, mace and 2 inch blade, the night became dark and quiet again. I believe I was awake the rest of the night.

The rangers the next day mentioned that jet planes on night maneuvers had been out the night before. Moonshine and drug runners....sheesh!

 

[ghostdog]

It was a dark, balmy night by the mountain lake that I had hiked into. Not one to be too frightened by insect sounds on a summer night there was this nagging feeling that I might be missing something. The water gently lapped the shore and what turned out to be a particularly small owl croaking was categorized as a frog. Finally I drifted off to sleep...

That is lyrical and poetic.

 

[Pathfinder1]

When in those high 12,000 ft basins in the High Uinta Wilderness, the planes flying over make a big racket. Even the little planes are very noisy. One night, or morning, a 2:00 am nature call had me standing out in the night when I saw a very bright light on the ridge. My first thought was somebody had snuck a 4 wheeler into the wilderness but then I realized it was flying. My next thought was a high plane still had his landing lights on but as it passed overhead, the light remained bright, so it was not a directional light such as a headlight or landing light. I could not make out any shape of a craft or anything. As the light moved further away it remained very bright and then, when about over the Vernal Basin where the towns are, it suddenly went out. About that time I realized that whatever it was had made no noise whatsoever. Definately a UFO (it may be identified by someone else but not me) but one of ours or theirs? Who knows?

Hi...


The Shadow knows...!! :tinysmile_twink_t2: