My camping adventure may not sound like an adventure since it was in my backyard. But to me and my brothers it was really exciting. Our adventure started when my brother Kyrin age 13 decided to build a long-house out of bamboo cut from our backyard. When he asked me to join he and Alex my other brother also age 13, I should have known it would be an adventure. My two brothers had been studying Native American structures, so we decided to build one of our own.

Camping in the backyard was not my idea of camping, but when I was asked to help build the longhouse, something told me to ask if we could sleep in it, so I asked, and my mom said yes. So we started building. Alex supplied the fun Kyrin supplied the plans and I supplied manual labor. After it was built we put a tarp around it and tied it down, after which we crawled inside. About an hour later, someone kicked the support beam causing the whole structure to collapse on us.

We were disappointed, but we were not going to give up, so I suggested that we build a tepee, and after some debate we did. We soon had the poles up and the tarp wrapped around them. We laid some rocks around the base of the tepee to keep out animals, and then we went inside for some jokes and some stories. Little did we know that there was a skunk in the woods behind our house but we were soon to find out. We were soon asleep and we slept fine until about four in the morning, when we woke up smelling a strong and disgusting smell. “I asked what that smell was?” and they responded, “That it was a skunk. Hearing some rustling behind the tepee I shone the flashlight in that direction but did not see anything, so I counted to three and we ran toward the house into Kyrin and Alex’s bedroom where we changed our clothes after showering.

            This adventure taught us to put our tent somewhere where it would not be attacked by skunks. And to close the tepee when we went inside to keep out any smells of all the animal that would bother us, and to make sure we know what comes in our backyard.

  Note from Alex, “Beware of skunks.”