This Story Is True......

Several of the times I’ve stopped there I’ve gotten some water from the creek, then filled a few little bottles. The time my wife and I stopped there at night, I also got water. We stopped first at the Monster Mart to see what goodies they had. While we were there I began talking to the clerk about going down to the creek. Some local heard me talking and mentioned all the rain they’d had lately. He told me to be careful walking down there and to “watch out for gators”. I’d never heard of any gators in that area, and I thought he was just having some fun with me. Anyway, both my wife and I were going to walk down to the creek, but you have to go down a little hill and she only had sandals on. She went back up and I continued down. This presented a dilemma, because I still wanted to get some water, but I also wanted to film getting it. (I was working on a little homemade Bigfoot film at the time.) When I got to the bottom and to the edge of the creek, I had a little flashlight in my mouth, my phone in one hand, and a styrofoam cup in the other. It was muddy, and I had to lean out to get the water. Now I was not only thinking about Bigfoot, but a gator coming up out of the water - in the dark - and grabbing my arm. Brrrr. (I used a little bit of that footage in my homemade movie.) I’m so glad I didn’t slip and fall in!

One more thing, and this has spooked me, too. After I got the water, I stood up and began walking back up toward our car. At least I thought I did. It was dark, and instead of walking back the way I’d come, I instead began walking to my right, sort of parallel to the creek. I’d taken 8 or 10 steps when my wife called out from the top of the little hill: “This way, up here.” I’m glad she could see me down there, or I’d have ended up even farther from the car, walking through near waist high weeds.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the chiggers got me, too. I had some big welts on my legs and they itched like crazy.