After leaving Sturgis, Scott and I did a little camping in the Black Hills wilderness. The Black Hills were beautiful, truly an oasis in the relatively monotonous surrounding South Dakota lands. We were a little stressed out from the Sturgis experience and looking forward to some rest and relaxation.

Two things of note happened. The first is that, after noting as we were turning in that this was “bear country”, Scott and I paced our food somewhere inaccessible. But that didn’t stop me from almost crapping my pants when I heard something BIG sniffing around outside my tent. We joke that, in his tent Scott is like a nice tasty treat inside an easy to open wrapper. Wasn’t so funny just about then though. Fortunately whatever it was, it left without incident. Phew! Probably just a Chupacabra!

The second thing that happened is Scott and I got chiggered. Now, I’ve never dealt with chiggers before. Ticks, sure. Mosquitoes of course. But these little mothers are apparently invisible tick/mosquito hybrids- they wait in the grass to jump onto you, then burrow into your skin and leave you with itchy bites. We didn’t even know we got Chiggered until a day or so later when we each saw about 75-100 red bites on our bodies. They itched like crazy.

And even then, we didn’t know what they were until we got to Denver and someone in the know filled us in. I wonder what other beasties are out there that no one has told us about.

Usually, when you click on the “Read More…” link, you get more text. This time if you click, you will be treated to a view of our horrible chiggering, which includes a partial view of Scott’s ass. Proceed with caution.