Donner Expedition - Chapter Two

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Well, we set off for the North Shore early Sunday morning. At around 9:30am we started driving around each little town that we passed through to see if there was a good church about to have a service. Each time either we had missed the service or there was no church that we would have felt right about attending (for example: Church of the Immaculate Conception).

Finally, we hit a town at 11:00 and decided that was our last hope. We found a tiny Baptist church that started their morning service at 11. Of course we went and were blessed by the worship, preaching and fellowship of that little church. We stopped at a park for lunch and had NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE #1.

We got into the car to leave the park, I started it, and we started to put on our seatbelts. Suddenly the engine started revving and I had no idea why. None of us knew what to do. Suddenly, it stopped, and we realized what had happened. In an attempt to reach her seatbelt, Joy had planted one foot on the floor and the other on the gas pedal. So, then we looked in front of us and tried to imagine what would have happened if the car had been in drive (I guess then I would have had my foot on the brake so we probably still would have been safe). But we would have taken off and then crashed into either a tree or a building. So, we were thankful that our lives had been spared.

We reached Silver Bay in the late afternoon. My grandparents loaned us their cell phone in case we had an emergency, and my Uncle Gary, who was staying with my grandparents, offered to show us to a nearby campground that he really liked (he grew up there so he knew where all the campgrounds were).



As we set up the tent (the picture on the top is a joke; we really did figure it out just fine), we noticed only one other person at the campground. [Note: At this point we had already broken Matt's rule, "Camp near a family," but we had no choice.] It was a guy fishing in the Baptism River which runs along that particular campground. He had a white SUV, I think it was a Jeep, and left before dark.

About an hour before dark, we finished the tent, and Joy built a fire to cook our supper. Just as the water finished cooking our noodles, it began to rain.