As Bryn Sees It: July 2008

well this past Sabbath, ali, ty, my dad, my friend rachel, and i went up to my uncle's cabin in the mountains. we took our quads and dirtbikes and took off on one of the trails up there. we made it through this really fun trail that i had only been on once before (last summer). when we got to the end of it, instead of heading back to the cabin right away, we decided to go look at this other lake that ali and my dad had been to before. we got there and took some pictures before starting on the way back. well, me and rachel were on a quad together, and we were the last ones to get going cuz i had to put the camera away. i tried to tell ali and tyler to wait for us cuz we weren't quite ready to go yet, but they didn't hear me and they took off. anyways, by the time we got going...they were nowhere in sight! usually we wait for each other till we're all ready to go, but i guess they thought we were right behind them. so we decided to go back in the direction that we had come since that was the way to get back to the cabin. we thought that they were just a bit ahead of us and would be waiting for us. we drove for awhile and didn't see them anywhere...then we found ourselves at a fork in the road that we didn't remember from our way to the lake. we realized that we had taken a wrong turn, so we turned around and decided to go back to the lake in case they had gone back there to find us, but in trying to do that, we took another wrong turn that led us to a different fork in the road. (needless to say, i didn't know this particular area very well, and i also don't have the best sense of direction in the world...haha). so anyways, we were completely and utterly confused at this point...had no idea where we were or which road we should take or what we should do, and we were all by ourselves. at that very instant, i looked up and saw this guy on a motorbike. i hadn't seen him come down the trail, but all of a sudden he was just there. he was like "are you lost?" and we were like "yeah we're kinda confused about where we are." well he talked to us for probably about 10 minutes, helping us figure out where we had been, which wrong turns we made, and how to get back to the lake we were just at and also my uncle's cabin. he was extremely helpful and knew the area really well, and he told us if we got lost again to just call "help" and he might hear us and come help us again. we decided to go back to the lake just to see if they were there looking for us, and if we didn't see them there, then we would take the logging road that the guy had explained to us was the road we had come from on the way there, which would eventually get us back to the main road that led to the cabin. we thanked the guy a lot and turned around to head to the lake. rachel said later that she didn't turn around right away, but she did after we had started going and she didn't see him anywhere behind us (even though he had said he was heading in the same direction). we had to wonder...was this an angel? he seemed to appear right when we were the most confused and had no clue what to do, he knew exactly where to tell us to go, and he told us to call help if we were lost again. how could someone on a bike hear the word help through a really big forest? maybe he was an angel that was right beside us the whole time. we don't really know, but if he wasn't an angel, he was for sure someone sent from God to help us when we needed help. well anyways, we didn't find them anywhere at the lake, so we headed back on the logging road which took us back to where we came out from the first trail we went on. luckily i remembered how we got back to the cabin from that trail since i been on it last summer. there was one place that i couldn't quite remember if we were supposed to keep going straight or take this trail that veered off to the left, but rachel reminded me that the guy said the logging road would take us back to the main road, so we kept going straight until we came to a distinct place that i remembered from last year...cuz last summer we had gone through this insanely huge puddle and gotten really dirty, and i saw the place where the puddle had been. then i knew we were on the right track. we finally made it to the main road and saw a sign for dee lake, which is a lake just after crooked lake, where my uncle's cabin is. man i was relieved at that point. my only concern was that my dad and ali and tyler were probably out looking for us and i didn't know how they would know that we had made it back, since we had no way to communicate with them. when we were pretty close to being back to the cabin...we saw my dad and tyler on the other quad. they were just gonna start going back on the trail to find us. we were sooo glad that they weren't out on the trails looking for us, since it was really close to dark by that time. we explained to them what had happened, and they told us they had blindly followed ali as she was exploring a different trail to waste some some time while everyone was getting ready. they thought that we were right behind them, until ali turned around to go back in the right direction. they got ahead of us when we took one of the wrong turns, and we had probably just missed them by a few minutes. once they made it back to the cabin, ali stayed there in case we came back, and ty and my dad headed out to find us. that was when we saw them on the road, so we all headed back to the cabin and told ali what had happened. after our little adventure, we made a fire and had some hot dogs before driving back home. we told them all about the random guy that was there, and they also thought it was quite possible that he was an angel. either way, someone helped us find our way back...otherwise we might have been stuck out there in the dark. so anyways, that was my experience from the weekend. the end...(and sorry it was so long!)...

so here are some pictures to trade off for all the words...