The Most Frustrating Thing Ever

(This blog will be pretty long, brace yourself) Okay, so over this last weekend, Keven, me, my 2 brothers and Keven's 2 brothers, went camping up at Grayback Gulch. We were having kind of a last "hurrah" before the school year started and such. Anyway, on Saturday morning I got up first to go into town because we had no maple syrup for the pancakes. (they only had sugar free syrup, that has nothing to do with the story, but nonetheless, GROSS) So, I went to town and when I came back, Nick was up making a fire. The 4 others were still in the tent. We needed more firewood so we strolled up the little hill by our campsite, only a 2 minute walk. We were gone less than 5 minutes and when we were coming back into the campsite we noticed the horrible forest service lady. ( and when I say horrible it's only because we seriously have a bad history with this lady, I will explain all in just a minute).



So, Nick and I were coming back to the campsite, Keven was sitting out by the fire and the forest service lady drove off in her truck. In the 5 minutes Nick and I had been gone, the horrible forest service lady had come around to our campsite and noticed that no one was actually sitting staring at the fire. She got out and and said 3 times to the 4 people that were still inside the tent, "Forest Service, unattended fire",..well the people that were still in the tent were like, "what the?"....and when Keven came out, she told him it's against the rules for an unattended fire and then she left.



About 5 minutes later, the horrible lady and younger lady come walking over to our campsite. The younger lady says that it was brought to her attention that there was a situation of an unattended fire. We explained that there were 4 people still in the tent on the campsite and we were gone only 5 minutes. She said that didn't matter, that it was still an "unattended fire"..she then said we can determine how to split the fine. As soon as she said this, I said "Just how much is this fine?" "$200." she said. I was so flabbergasted, that the only thing I could do was start crying and say "Are you serious?" We couldn't believe it. She then proceeded to tell me that she could issue the fine to each one of us, but that she wouldn't. Okay for one, Steve and Tim (kev's brothers) are minors. The campsite was under Keven's name. But all she asked for was someone's drivers license and that's who she write the ticket to. Nick gave it to her and then I said, thru my crying, "We are not paying this. We are taking you both court. And we are filing a complaint against both of you, especially you old lady." I was not a happy camper. (forgive the pun) After they left, we went and read the rules posted as you enter the campground. I posted below the actual rules. The only thing it says it that you must extinguish the fire before leaving the campground. We hadn't left yet. There were still 4 people in the campsite. So on the ticket, instead of sighting us for what she originally said she was sighting us for, which was "unattended fire", she wrote that we had left before extinguishing the fire. Which is a complete lie! She only wrote that so she could cover her own butt. Anyhoo, that was our relaxing last weekend before school started.