Part 3.5 A Night on Angel Lake

The drives through Nevada weren’t very exciting. They were full of goofy conversations and lots of music. The night after we left California we spent the night in a northeastern town of Wells up on Angel Lake. Angel lake is up 8000ft on a mountain surrounded on one side with mountain peaks and the other side was the campground. It was a beautiful spot, the lake water was warm from the desert sun and crystal clear. The place was empty since it was a Monday evening, but apparently fills up on the weekends for good reason. It was like being in our own little world up there. We had a nice evening with a campfire and watching the sun go down over the peaks.
When the dark came so did the wind. Not too bad at first but it gradually picked up and became chilly. We climbed into the tent which was still warm from the sun beating on it through the evening. The wind kept coming. If you’ve ever seen the movie the Blair Witch Project, the part where they are in the tent and they are freaking out b/c they think the tent’s being attacked. That’s what it was like in our tent and I’m convinced that’s how they filmed that scene. All the walls of the tent were moving and shaking. Then the gusts would start. You could hear them coming, sometimes you could even hear them circle through the peaks of the mountain getting closer until they plowed into the side of our tent. The wall of the tent would bend down and hit our heads! Sometimes you couldn’t hear it coming and the gusts (which had to be 50mph or so) would smash us. We’d reach up our arms to support the wall, scared the tent poles might snap. And it was like this the entire night. The sky was clear and the moon bright, it would have been a wonderful evening except the vicious wind. We slept maybe 3 hours the entire night.
Around 2am we discussed going to the car to sleep. We ruled that out for fear if we got out of the tent it would blow away w/out our weight. At 3am we discussed packing up and leaving then. I ruled this out b/c I couldn’t imagine trying to fold the tent and tarp with this wind! And then the idea of trying to drive down the narrow, twisty, mountain road we took to get up here in the dark scared the hell out of me. So we laid there drifted in and out of dozing between gusts and waited until 5. The sun was peaking out around 5 and we got up quickly packed up camp and were on the road by 6. The earliest and fastest we’d ever gotten ready and on the road. This was by far the hardest and scariest night we’d ever had while camping…and we survived.

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