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When I crawled out of the tent in the morning, something didn't feel right. Everything was where we left it, but I had this weird feeling that someone had been in our campsite. Tom walked up behind me, wrapped an arm around my waist, and pulled me back against him. He put his mouth to my ear. "Last night was awesome. I can't believe you fell asleep in the middle of a bigfoot serenade."
I turned my head, and he lowered his ear. "It feels like someone was here." I walked around looking for any footprints or evidence to back up my feeling. I found nothing, but the feeling didn't change. We packed up and checked our location before heading for our destination. With any luck, we'd be in the area before noon.
Tom was leading the way when something caught my eye. I'd been skeptical when Chance told us about Sasquatch trails, but I guess the light was just right or something, because as we walked by, the trail was obvious. I didn't want to shout for Tom to stop, but I didn't want to lose site of the trail, so I pulled off my hat and dropped it on a tree branch before running to catch up with him. I reached up and touched his shoulder to stop him. When he turned around, I motioned for him to follow me back to where I left my hat. When we got there, I retrieved my hat and pulled Tom into the right position to see the path through the trees heading off at an angle from the path we were on.
Tom was well over six feet tall. He walked a few yards down the trail checking that he didn't have to duck. As I watched, I could see almost a foot of clearance above Tom's head. He turned around and walked back to stand beside me. "I think it's a Sasquatch trail, and it's heading in the right direction," he whispered. "Should we follow it?"
We hadn't talked about this specific scenario with Chance. He talked about finding and photographing the trails as evidence, but we never asked if we should follow them. "Will you be able to tell if we get off course from the observation point?"
"We'll check the position every 15 minutes. We can course correct if we need to."
We took pictures and started up the trail. We'd only been following it for about ten minutes when I got spooked. I didn't know if being on the Sasquatch trail made it worse or not. I felt like someone was watching us. I kept darting my eyes from side to side but didn't see anything. Tom stopped and pulled out a bottle of water. He took a drink and handed it to me, looking me in the eye. He leaned over. "You OK?"
"I think so. I feel like someone's watching us."
"Check your weapon and stay close."
He repositioned the rifle over his shoulder, and I did the same. I had zero confidence in my ability to actually hit anything if I fired the rifle, but I was pretty sure that my screams of pain from the kickback might scare something off.
Tom moved even more cautiously after that. He kept checking our location, but he never indicated that we should leave the Sasquatch trail. I heard something off to my right. I stopped and turned that way. I saw nothing and heard nothing more. When I looked around, Tom was gone. "Fudge," I said.
I hurried up the trail to catch up with him. He hadn't even realized I was gone. I reached out my hand to stop him and stood on tip toes to whisper in his ear and ask how close we were. "Real close," he replied.
Tom stopped when he reached the coordinates we found in Harry's journal. "This is it," he mouthed to me. We were on a trail angling upward. There was a small clearing in front of a rock face. I couldn't see any cave entrance, but it was easy to believe there could be one hidden in the rock piles or brush. After looking around the area, Tom led me across the clearing and up a slight rise on the other side. Tom stopped and dropped his pack. "Looks like a good spot," he whispered.
I still wasn't convinced that any rational person—well any rational person who believed in bigfoot, would choose to set up camp in a place where they expected to see a Sasquatch. It was counter intuitive, but I helped Tom with the tent. We were able to contact base camp through the radio. I was still feeling twitchy. Before we settled in to watch, I pulled Tom along with me to explore the area to see if we could find any bigfoot evidence. It made sense to me, that if this area was home to a family of the creatures, we should find prints, or scat, or something.
We found nothing but checking out the area made me feel a little less on edge. We went back to the tent and settled in to wait and watch.