Bu what if the door handle is really hot ? <| sep |> Really great album <| sep |> LongsorryI ' ve camped solo for a long time . Well , I ' ve got a family now , so we camp with difficulty now . Apparently , we now need to load the van to the gills to camp in comfort . Side note we usually camp in the same place year after year , but we decided to try something different this time out . We left on a Friday afternoon as the kids were getting out of school . We got a late start , so we didn ' t actually arrive until 30 min . just before sundown . The campsite was 75 yards downhill from the van more on this later and my bad back wasn ' t helping matters . But me , the wife , and the two kids made it work . We got everything set up in about an hour , made a fast dinner , and and enjoyed a very shortlived campfire as we were all exhausted . The kids and wife were in bed and asleep within 20 minutes . Because of my back I have not been sleeping well . And just as I finally started managing to doze off , I hear a bit of ruckus outside . I pull out my earplugs and listen for a second . My first thought is that there is a person or people going through the coolers and other totes looking for beer . My second thought is raccoons . Everyone else is still sleeping soundly at this point . I ask the wife if she hears anything . She groggily replies , No . Just about then I hear the big ice chest that was resting on a stump go ass over teakettle and come rolling down the hill towards the tent . I tell her on the opposite side of the rather large tentseriously , she ' s 16 ft away from me to throw me a flashlight since I gave mine to my boy whose flashlight batteries died . I quickly pull on my shoes and head out with the wife ' s headlamp which , much to my dismay , has about the luminescence of exactly one tealight candle . I round the tent and start clapping very loudly , but not yelling because it ' s about 11 pm . I figure at this point that it ' s got to be raccoons because thieves wouldn ' t be knocking over coolers . As I clapped , I see the furry butt of what I assumed was one of the fattest raccoons I ' d seen in my life . He very quickly and adeptly scampered up the nearest tree to the right about 15 yards away and proceeded to climb up about 30 feet . As I ' m focusing what little light I have on him , that ' s when I notice some movement just at the edge of my peripheral vision to my left at about 25 feet . I shine the headlamp in that direction and that is the precise moment the thing between these two trees stands up . I ' d venture a guess that it stood about 6 12 feet tall . My immediate thought is , Holyshit ! That ' s a b e a r a n d t hatraccooninthetreeisacub ! And I ' m seriously hoping there ' s not a second cub behind me down by the beach . And that ' s when Mama bear decides to growl rather loudly at me because she was clearly enjoying her illgotten marshmallows . So , against all instincts , I make myself as big as possible with outstretched arms and start yelling , GET OUTTA HERE , BEAR ! !! That seems to do the trick . It growls at me again , the cub comes down the tree like it ' s riding a firepole , and they both haul ass up the hill toward the van before disappearing into the thick . Silence for a few seconds and I hear the wife ask very meekly , Are . you . O . K . ? I say , Yeah , we had bears . She asks if I need help and I tell her somewhat defeatedly , No . I got it . I then proceed to spend the next 15 min cleaning up all the food that the bears tore through . And I have to take it up same trail the bears used to deposit it in the trashcans up by the bathroom . Then I spent another 12 hour putting all the stuff back in the totes and coolers and made about 6 trips hauling all that crap uphill back to the van while keeping my head on a swivel . So much for my back and for sleeping the rest of that night . edited most of the horrible grammar and intentionally left some in to antagonize die grammatik Schutzstaffel