The next morning around 6 am we wake up to hear the campsite #9 neighbors complaining that we camped too close to them. It turns out that we put our tents in between campsites 8 & 9 because there was no clear delineation.
So in a half-awakened state my husband (hus-bot) got out to apologize to the neighbors and let them know that we would move our tents over.
He addressed the female but she didn't say a word and only seemed to look down the hill at someone else. Suddenly a man appeared and got right into my husband's face calling him "ignorant" and yelling at him. He accused us of not paying for the campsite and just starting going off. In the beginning I tried to reason with him, letting him know that we DID reserve and pay for the campsite and that we would move our tents further away from him. However, it soon became apparent that he was just crazy and that there was no reasoning with him. (During this time, we moved all our tents over away from the middle.)
At first my husband was shocked but then he started getting angry. The man was accusing us of all sorts of things and seemed to be trying to scare and intimidate us. My husband started to explain, "Look, what happened was..." and held out his hands as he was speaking when the man slapped his hand away. At that point, my husband got fed up himself and pushed the man's chest. The situation was escalating and my husband actually challenged the man to a fight. He literally said to the guy, "Fine, you and me, let's settle this. You wanna fight? Let's fight on level ground." (The campsite was on an incline).
So my husband proceeded down the hill to the street while the other guy went up the hill towards his tent and started rummaging through a bag on the picnic table in front of it. This was the point where we were wondering what the heck was going on and couldn't believe what was happening. Then what does he pull out?!
A HUGE knife! I could not believe it. It was like an out-of-body experience and I really started freaking out. This whole part was a bit of a blur, with the guy yelling out who knows what and my husband darting from side to side (to avoid getting hit if the guy decided the throw the knife at him) and yelling at him "That's a violation of penal code 245 - Assault with a deadly weapon! I'm a criminal defense attorney!" He also tried to wake up the other campers by yelling "Everyone this guy has a knife!". Anyway, I believe at this point our friends were also waking up and started getting involved and somehow the guy ended up putting away the knife (I actually don't remember when he put it away).
The guy then started yelling about reporting us, calling us "gang-bangers". My husband yelled back about us all being professionals (3 attorneys, 1 physician, 1 pharmacist & 1 optometrist). Anyhow the guy started going around to our cars and writing down our license plate numbers and I believe at that point he noticed the license plate cover of my friends' car that named her law school.
After that I think he finally realized that we weren't a group of clueless teenagers and started getting scared. He began to back down with his yelling and looked a little more nervous. However both he and my husband were pretty souped up on adrenaline and both were still posturing and staring each other down. My husband even went so low as to imitate his Australian accent to aggravate him. Of course I was yelling at my husband the whole time to calm down and stop. Eventually the guy came over and gave a half-hearted "apology" which seemed more a way to cover his butt, saying that my husband actually started this whole ordeal. Finally he and his female companion went off hiking and we were able to have some breakfast in peace, albeit with a bad taste in our mouths.
We spent the rest of the day attempting to fish (none of us were successful) and in the back of our minds we were all a bit uneasy about sleeping next to the crazy man that night. However, when we got back from our fruitless endeavor we were surprised to find that they had....... left without a trace!
After that it we were able to breathe a sigh of relief and relax, enjoying ourselves by our campfire. Phew!
very well told! i laughed out loud while i was reading/remembering, hahah.
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