My roommates and I had big plans for our spring break to go camping in the beautiful Big Sur coastal area of California. Though the forecast predicted several inches of rain and dangerous winds, we stuffed the butt of my my roommate's Tahoe as fully as the physics of matter would allow and set out on the beautiful California Highway 1 towards our campsite in Lampkiln state park regardless. We brought all the necessities, such as wet firewood that would prove to be immune to all forms of fire, miscellaneous articles for which it was very important to remain dry, and lots of cheap wine.
A mere 60 miles from our home and a vast 3 and a half hours later (thanks, Highway 1) we get to Lampkiln, and chat briefly with a grizzled white-bearded man who looks to have kidnapped the park ranger and confiscated his clothes and his booth. He informs us that the site we have reserved is an "exposed beach-site," and that the winds for the night are expected to reach 50 miles/hour at their peak. We are not deterred. Our site is right at the mouth of a river that meets the ocean, near a very majestic powerful wave that crashes about every 10 seconds with some serious undertow.
The night that followed was horrific. We had two tents, a large 8-man tent and a small 2-man tent, and someone had had the cute idea of appointing the inferior tent to the duty of "supply tent," so we ensured that all our valuable dry goods were taken out of our air-tight vehicle and placed haphazardly within the leaky 2-man tent. After a quick dinner heated on a propane flame (since lighter-fluid, which we did not have an abundance of, was apparently our only other flammable item, not our firewood), we retired to our tent and pretended to sleep for the next 8 hours while our stakes were ripped from the ground, our bedding was sprayed with rain, and the walls of our tent flapped like a child's kite in the wind. Adding insult to injury, our Tupperware container full of eggs that we'd left on a picnic table to chill had blown open, filled with water, floated the eggs to the top (we were very excited to learn that eggs float) and allowed the wind to scatter and crush our eggs across our campsite. The gusts had snapped the poles on our supply tent clear in half, too, and created a natural body of water in its base. We affectionately nicknamed it "Lake Foresight." All of our possessions were floating in it when we woke up.
The Park Rangers we encountered that morning stared at us with wide eyes, speaking in hushed whispers of the forces of nature we'd resiliently defied. We had the site reserved for 3 more days, but we coolly filled out the paperwork for our reservation refund, and got the fuck out of Big Sur. It was raining when we packed, too, so we spent the 3.5 hour car ride back with wet clothes on our backs and muddy equipment in our laps to compensate for our rushed pack-job.
But the trip was not over so soon for my two roommates, who spent the remainder of spring break stricken with the worst poison oak I have ever seen. Though this is largely due to the fact that they were drunken-wrestling on a bushy hillside while foraging for firewood, no one had any idea just how bad poison oak could be. The afflicted areas became swollen, so bad in my roommates' faces that they appeared to have black eyes and could only manage a squint. Red patches spanned one's ankles, arms, neck, and face, and large and scaly bumps appeared everywhere. I'm also told that both had taken a moment to pee in the bushes, which resulted in affliction in the "land down under". Despite the obviously terrible consequences of the poison oak venom, I do find it somewhat amusing that both eventually chose to receive large shots of cortisone in their asses to combat the effects.