In the past three weeks we went on 2 separate vacations. The first was with my family. Steve, Hunter and I went camping in Hobble Creek Canyon in Springville, Utah, with my family. Everyone was there (except for my dad of course who comes up for one day only each time we go camping, but he never stays for a night).
The first night it was just my mom, sister (Missee), niece (Violet), family friend (Missy), Steve, Hunter and I. My sister-in-law Mindy was helping bring stuff to the campground since my mom's car wasn't big enough to fit everything in it. She brought one load and then she and her daughter (another niece Hailey) left to get one more load and she left her son, Jaxon, at the campground to play.
My mom and Missy decided to go down to Macey's and get some groceries (not enough room in the fridge at home). Missee and I decided to go down to Walgreen's to get some items. I wanted to buy some prizes for a scavenger hunt I decided to plan to make for the kids the next day. Missee was emptying out some boxes of firewood from the car so we could take Violet with us. She passed by something twice before knowing it but when she noticed it we all noticed it.....a snake. I HATE SNAKES! I got as close as I dared to get and checked and noticed what looked like (to me) a rattle. I said that it looked like it had a rattle on it and we all stepped back a little further trying to decide what to do. A couple of seconds after I said that I thought it was a rattlesnake Violet (who was standing next to me) screamed at the top of her lungs and the snaked "flipped out". The best way to explain it is that it kind of did a somersault type action. It didn't really move again after that, but we weren't sure if it was dead or alive and none of us wanted to get to close to it to check. Violet was FREAKING OUT and screaming that it had bit her (it didn't). We drove the the Campground Manager's location and he wasn't there. We went back to the campground (snake still at the same location), Mindy and Hailey returned a short time later. They didn't know what to do either since the Campground Manager was nowhere to be found.
I went and woke up Steve and asked him for help. We asked him to kill it by throwing a rock at it. He threw a couple of rocks at it (he's not very good at aiming) and when he finally hit it we noticed that it didn't move. We decided that since we hadn't really noticed it moving since Violet screamed that she must have given it a heart attack or something.
When everyone else arrived on Thursday we would show them the dead snake and BJ (youngest brother - who moved to California recently) finally told us it was probably a rattlesnake and not one of the snakes who has a fake rattle to make other animals think they are rattlesnakes.
Here's a picture of the snake:
Steve and I have OSA (obstructive sleep apnea) and use CPAP machines. I can go for a night or two without my CPAP. I don't get the best of sleep - but I can survive. Steve on the other hand......doesn't. If he doesn't use his CPAP when we go camping his uvula (thing in the back of the throat) swells and he keeps choking on it. If he tries to talk he dry heaves (since he hasn't eaten anything he can't throw up). This year we rented a battery that he could use for his CPAP so he wouldn't have that problem this year. (It makes him VERY ONERY the whole time we are camping) The battery worked awesome the first night but it only worked for a couple of hours the second night. We figured one of two things happened. 1. He forgot to turn the battery off the first day so it stayed on all day, or 2. It wasn't fully charged when it was sent to us.
When we originally decided to go camping with my family we decided to go for 3 days (staying 2 nights) from July 23rd to July 25th as we had a family reunion for Steve's family on Saturday July 26th. We were going to get up Friday morning, pack up our tent, then our car, then hang out until the late afternoon. We would then go home and shower and relax and go to bed early for the party the next day. When we woke up on Friday morning and Steve said he hadn't slept very well and his uvula was pretty swollen and he kept dry heaving every time he tried to talk, we decided to pack up and leave right then (around 9:30ish).
We packed up quickly, went home, showers, took long naps, and relaxed for the rest of the day.
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