This is a short story I wrote for english 9 about a camping trip I went on with my scout troop. It is very unpolished, because I ended up having to rush it so don't expect too much ^_^I think I might work on it a little more later and if so I will be sure to post updates. That said, the story...
The jeep was warmed inside and out by the harsh afternoon sun. My eyes tracked the landforms that slid out of sight. They were fluid, knobby columns of crumbly rock colored by the iron in the soil. The terrain was irregular with an uneven distribution of muted green and yellow foliage. The occasional scrubby tree would make an appearance if I really looked. I leaned into the hard plastic trimming of the window and rested my head awkwardly in the corner between the door and my seat. It was hard to find a comfortable position in the muggy atmosphere. I sat up and looked outside at a distant hoodoo.My backpack sagged over the edge of the seat.
I pulled it up and unzipped it to get out my videocamera. I opened the window so that I could record better. After taking a few short videos, I put my camera back and shut the window. That would end up on my YouTube channel. We turned off onto a dusty unpaved road. Cows slowly looked up at the jeep. I saw in the distance a huge landform that wrapped around the horizon. It broke up into tall hoodoos at the edges and balancing stones on the top. It became gradually more prominent as we wound along the road closer to our camping site.
The sun reached it’s peak of brightness and was now quickly retreating to the west. There were lights in the distance from the cars preceding us that had reached the camping ground. Coming down from a small hill, we reached our destination. The jeep rolled to a stop on oddly smooth packed ground. I took out my videocamera again and tried to get some footage of a large hill that wrapped around one side of our camping grounds. By that time though, it was too dark for my camera to pick it up. I noticed with some disappointment that the battery was going down pretty quickly. I turned it off and put it in my pocket so I could go help set up the tents.
I woke up to the distant sound of cows. Moisture from the air had made my clothes and backpack slightly damp. Somehow, my camera had ended up in a little bag hanging from the side of the “wall.” When I had gotten dressed in some new clothes and put on my shoes, I took the camera out and took a quick video explaining where I was and what I was doing there. After that, I turned it off again and left the tent. I was surprised to discover that I was the only person awake.
The hill was a good deal more impressive in the early blue daylight. It had an incline of less than45 degrees that made it very easy to walk up, untill I got a little closer to the top. It was at that point where my footing became a lot less stable in loose, rocky dirt. When I got up, I looked around. I had gotten quite a bit higher than it felt from the climb. The whole camp looked very small down there at the base. Across from me was another, taller hill. It’s makeup was much less dirt than a lot of broken up, loose rock chips. There was another camp on the other side of the first hill in it’s shadow. I got some video of the sun rising.
I was climbing up the second hill when I noticed my brother and our friend Vuna walking around the camp. I yelled at them until they noticed me and started climbing up. I continued to climb closer to the top. They started to scramble up the hill, which was really the only way to get up because of the difficulty of getting a firm foothold. I called down again , asking if anyone else was awake. Nobody was. They got up to a large , stable boulder that I had chosen to stop on.
“Do you know what we’re having for breakfast?” Vuna said. I looked down at the camp, “Nope, not really. Probably just like pancakes or something.” I looked at the battery widget on my videocamera. It was at a dismal percentage of a full charge. I turned it off. “Hey watch this.” Damian said. He turned his body at an angle like a surfer and started shuffling down the hill side. We watched him start to pick up speed near the place where the two hills met. Vuna followed him , “surfing” in the same way. I turned on my videocamera and went down after them. After one near wipe out, I stopped recording, put the camera in my pocket and held out my arms to maintain better balance. We started jumping along the slope of the hill near the bottom until we reached the camp again.
At that point, almost everyone was awake and the sun was hot enough for us to take off our sweaters. The members of our scout troup were scattered around in small groups exploring the surroundings. A few of us, myself included, were gathered around the gril watching the food being cooked. It was what I had expected; Pancakes with bacon and eggs. I considered adding that to my growing collection of video clips of the camp, but decided not. That was something I could easily find at home every morning. The leaders told us to “go do something.”
“HEy, let’s go check out the top of that thing.” I said, turning towards the hill.”Okay,” Vuna said, “Come on Damian!” We took a different route that looked better for actually scaling the hill. It was on the west side, made up entirely differently of silky dirk covered in a hard crust interrupted occasionally with a rock or a footprint. When we were almost to the top, we stopped and looked down. It looked a considerably less forgiving fall.
As we came back down, I started looking through my videos. I deleted a few to save some space. There was some video from yesterday when we were driving to the camp, and then a lot from today. These would probably end up being uploaded in episodes. There was nobody waiting in anticipation to see them, but I thought that would make it a lot easier to understand what was happening. If my camera lasted until the next day, I would be able to have a little series of three videos like I had planned.
Camp was almost shut down for the day. The leaders told us we were going to the actual valley now. The place we were staying in was a few miles away from that. I put some of my more important stuff into my pockets and got into the jeep with Damian and Vuna. We talked a little bit and watched the everybody pack up. Lance got out of the driver’s seat and checked everything just to make sure, and then we left. We were the last of the troop to leave.
When we pulled up into the park, I didn’t really see much of note. It was a wide expanse of orange dirt. There was what looked like a massive dip in the ground. I got out and walked over to a pavilion at the edge of the dip.It turns out that was the actual goblin valley park. What I couldn’t see from the car was a huge valley type thing studded with bulbous and twisting sandstone formations. These were small enough that people could climb up on them and explore very easily. The massive scale of the valley was amazing. This is what we came for
I got out my videocamera and turned it on. The battery bar was red and it looked like I wouldn’t have much recording time at all. I pressed record. The screen faded away. Disappointed, I put it back into my pocket and ran down into the valley.
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