  Good Times Had By All You know when the weather is perfect and you're in a beautiful place camping with good friends after just having What-a-Burger for lunch?
Could you just tell me, what is better than that for your birthday (except for Pizza Junction)? March 27th fell on a Saturday this year and we hopped in Vern, our car, and drove down to Petit Jean State Park for some camping, hiking, cooking on a campfire and S'mores. We got there just about lunch time and as we were driving in, we passed a State Park EMT vehicle whizzing past us with its' sirens on. We thought, "huh..." So, we head out to campsite 16 to join our friends. Once we got there and got our gear all set up, we put on our hiking shorts, took our dog, Allie, and we all headed out to Cedar Falls.
So, we get to the main lodge and there are all these park rangers with their walky-talkies looking all serious and we all looked at each other and knew there had been an accident. Nuts. We took off down the Cedar Falls trail, 2.2 miles to the END ALL...the waterfall. Allie is "captain cutie" sniffing all the other dogs making friends, and lapping up water all along the trail. We're about a fourth of the way down the really steep part when we saw it, like out of a Stephen King book. There was a guy on a stretcher with about a dozen EMT/hikers carrying him up the mountain. At first all I could do was stare, but then, I started to get that sick feeling. He had fallen 75 ft. off of Bear Cave. Everything was broken and bloody. Christian and Brian offered to carry him up the rest of the trail to give the guys a break. They had to have been carrying him over a mile. My friend, Meredith and I, just sat on the trail and watched them carry him until we couldn't see them anymore.
I feel like there is this specific dark black cloud that follows me sometimes. Like when the Lada outside my flat in Estonia was blown up by the Russian maffia, or like when I got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Asheville, NC or when our cabbies in St. Petersburg, Russia got pulled over and arrested for DWI, and use and posession of cocaine after the scariest car ride and loudest techno experience of my life.
This stuff just happens and even when it's awkward, as morbid as that is, I always wish I had gotten a picture. So, sure enough, we heard about him on the news. He lived and they said that 1-2 people fall a year at Petit Jean. Crazy, crazy birthday! It ended up awesome though. We made Hobo pockets on the fire, corn on the cob and S'mores! And oh ya, Christian got poisin ivy like a champ. 
