Disturbing the Peace – I Would Never Do That, Or Would I?

Last night, my family took a long 12 minute journey north to Green Lane Park to go camping for one night.  It was nice to get away, and it was great to have such a quick trip.  Overall, it was a pretty good trip.  We cooked, we relaxed, we fished, and we enjoyed time around the camp fire.

One of the not so great parts of the trip was late night noise from our neighbor campers.  First, there was a guy blaring the Phillies game so loud that I thought I might be sitting in Milwaukee County Stadium at the game.  Thankfully, he turned it down when he saw our family heading to bed.  Then around 11:30PM, I heard things heating up at another site.  By 12:15AM, these campers were pounding branches against trees and sawing logs and talking with a fairly high volume level.  Well, that was it, I’m not normally confrontational, but I needed some sleep.  So I got up and went across to ask them if they knew what time it was.  I think I was fairly calm, but I was pretty angry.  These young guys seemed to settle down; however, they continued to talk around their fire until after 4:00AM.  Needless to say, I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.  This part of the trip certainly soured my experience at Green Lane.  Unlike all the PA State Park campgrounds that I have been to, there weren’t any rangers driving around at night to make sure people were quite during the posted “quiet hours.”

Well, I would never do something like those young guys.  Or would I?  As I was cutting the grass this afternoon, for some reason, I thought about a time that I was on a canoe/camping trip with my high school youth group.  As we were camping, I was up late with Brian Willem and James Harton.  We were carrying on late into the night (or maybe it was morning).  All the sudden, Dave Kennedy (one of our youth leaders) scared the C*** out of us when he snuck up and screamed that we better quiet down before he really got mad.

So…I guess those guys at Green Lane weren’t all that different from me.  This thought certainly brought a smile to my face as I finished cutting the grass.  I hope those guys had a good time.  I know I had a blast with Brian and James so many years ago. 

For now, I better get to bed.  I’m exhausted!