After all the magic of the Cuny reservation, and yet more hiking in the badlands, it was time for things to wind down. With the group tiring of long walks, our best gear getting worn out, and everything starting to point to us becoming exhausted, our days in the Great Plains of Minnesota were decidedly more mellow than ever.
The campsite here would, however, be my first bear sighting: or, to be more accurate, near-bear-sighting: or, to be even more accurate, redneck-campers-screaming-and-running-from-a-bear-sighting. Whatever you want to call it, my companion and I had to take the long way back to the bus, in the dark. It was something of an adventure.
Other than that, the magical campsite experiences continued: we swam together, we talked together, we cooked together, we ate together, we drank together. I don’t really know how to describe how lucky we were to have a group the gelled so well, but we did.