And now....maybe the end...If I don't get interrupted again.

At least we know what the booming is.  But we still don't know where we are. 
Then another realization: the lights in the distance aren't in the distance, and they are lightning bugs.  Meanwhile, me calling for help is making the kids uneasy, so I stop doing that.  Did I mention that for the last hour the girls have been singing songs to keep up their spirits and keep the bears away?

In fact, staying loud enough to make sure the bears knew to keep away was a big focus for us. 

Since we had come to the end of a trail, but what we were on kind of looked like a trail, we decided to back track until we were sure we were on a real trail.  We back up a few yards until we came to a set of steps that were hewn into the rock.  That we were sure was on the right trail, but we couldn't find any other way to go forward than the dead-end trail we had already been on.  So we all got together and disscussed our options, which really at that point there was only one.  Spend the night in the woods.  It was about 10:30 (we told time by taking a picture with my camera, then seeing what the time stamp on it was, but we didn't want to run the camera out of batteries since it was our only light and time source, cell phones were long dead).  I knew that it was light at home before 5:00, and we were north of that now, so hopefully we wouldn't be spending more than 6-7 more hours in the dark, hopefully less. 

The next thing was to find a place to spend the night (never would the term "sleep" apply to anyone but the youngest).  We decided to hike up the trail, in hopes that if someone did come by they could help us.  (No big hope there, we had seen a total of 2 groups on this trail the whole way down, and that was during the day).  After just a few minutes we saw a lovely ditch by the side of the trail.  We weren't picky, but this did have the one advantage that we could sit in it and not have our backs exposed, which kept us warmer, and made us feel safer. 

Now that we had our lodgings picked out, we ate about half of the food we had left, (pudding and pretzels) and made arrangements for the night.  This involved all of us snuggling together as closely as possible to keep warm.  (I had been very cold in my tent and sleeping bag the night before, so I was worried about warmth).  Did I mention how rocky the trail was?  Good.  The ditch was rocky too. 

So we got all snuggled down, and started singing songs to keep the bears away. I sang Ian's favorite lullaby to him, then started on my other go-to lullaby which goes like this: "Oh do you remember a long time ago/there were two little babes whose names I don't know/ they strayed far away on a bright summer day/and were lost in the woods I heard people say/ And when it was night how great was their fright/bright sun went down and the moon gave no light/The sighed and they sighed and the bitterly cried and the poor little babes they laid down and died/"  Anyway it goes on, but luckily, after the first note I realized that perhaps in this particular instance, this song would not be as comforting as normal.

Then we heard rustiling in the bushes across the trail, very very close.  I had my camera in my hand, so if we needed to we could fire the flash at whatever-it-was if it came to close, or at least take a picture of the bear that ate us for posterity.  We all heard it, but everyone pretended we didn't and we didn't know that the others had heard it until we talked about it the next morning.

So the night went like this...3 full renditions start to finish of 99 bottles of (root) beer on the wall and any other song that the whole family knew by heart.  Every half an hour the people on the outside of the pile would be cold and the people on the inside would be warmer but sick of sitting on rocks: so everyone would switch places into some new arrangement that we all hoped would keep us warm and keep us from sitting with sharp rocks poking into anything too sensitive. 

We discovered that our oldest has bionic ears, and could hear any noise and pinpoint its direction much sooner than the rest of us, I swear she heard beetles walking on leaves 300 feet away.    Looking up through the trees we could see the sky more full of stars that were brighter than I have ever seen.  This was good, since we could see the stars it meant it wasn't going to rain. 

About three o'clock the stars started to fade, half an hour later, we could see the shapes of bushes in front of us and decided to get up.  We stood around for a while huddling to get warm, stretching out sore limbs and backs and eating half of the food we had left, and sharing a bottle of water.  Around 4 o'clock it was light enough to clearly see the trail, and we started the hike down. 

I guess the end will have to come later.

Well, I guess I'll finish now...

Sorry, I haven't really been eating for the last 2 months.  I thought I'd post our Egypt pictures here, but then I realized I hadn't finished talking about THIS adventure, so here is the rest of it.

.......So it is dark, we have 2 miles to go when we have been going less than 1 mile per hour (in daylight) and there are weird booming noises in the distance.  (Is that where I was?)  We decided to keep going because really what do we have better to do?  We are picking our way along the trail when the trail ends.  That's it, there are trees on three sides of us and the trail behind us.  This is serious now because lost is not good.  We see a light shining in the distance so I call to it.  "HELLO!   HELLO!   WE NEED HELP!  HELLO!"  No response.  I see another light and try again.  Again no response.
 We are still hearing booming noises, and we are hoping that people aren't hunting at night...that wouldn't happen right?  People wouldn't go hunting at night with guns would they?  But it might be different because its a holiday weekend.  WAIT!  It IS a holiday weekend, specifically the 4th of July weekend.  We are hearing fireworks!!!  This helps us in two ways.  1. We know what the scary booming noises are.  2. We at least know that big fireworks are probably coming from civilization so we are pointed in the right direction.