Camp Cretaceous: the cowboy at camp

Chapter 3. Traveling to the Island

The sun begins to rise over the long flat meadow, bringing a vast color of yellow and orange painted along the skies. The morning dew glistens in the sunlight, like millions of stars in a galaxy of blades of grass.

A rooster makes its morning call, waking me up. I groan and roll out of bed. I toss my flannel shirt on, put my blue jeans on and tuck the shirt in, feed my belt with the golden belt buckle on through the belt loops, and put my cowboy boots on, tightening the spurs.

I walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth and hair before turning the light off and walking out of the room.

I grab my black suitcase and open it, putting in a few folded button up shirts, a denim shirt, jeans, socks and underwear, toothbrush and any other crap I would need before zipping it up.

Carrying it to the door, I finish my rounds around the house. Turning the TV off, locking the windows, and walking over to the landline phone.

I dial the number to the Bradley's house, some family friends, to ask them if they can come by every day while I'm gone to check on the animals and the house and feed them, and they accept.

With everything done, I put my leather vest over my flannel and put my hat on, grab my suitcase and exit the door, locking it.

I put my suitcase in the backseat of my old Chevrolet square body truck and put the keys in the ignition, making the starter spin the flex plate, roaring the engine to life in a perfect ratio of air and gasoline being mixed together in the carburetor, being sucked into the chamber and being squished by the piston, getting ignited by the spark plug and pushing the piston down, moving the connecting rods and pushing the crankshaft down, and lastly the exhaust gas gets pushed out the valve and down the exhaust manifold, with the engine repeating that same cycle thousands of times a minute in each cylinder.

I put the truck in gear and drive down the gravel driveway, I get on the little road and cruise down it, heading to Raleigh to the airport that was on the letter.

I end up at the airport, and walk in dragging my suitcase on it's wheels. I follow everyone else, because I don't know what the hell to do this goddamn place looks like hell it's so complicated. I show the baggage claim attendant my ticket and they take my suitcase, putting a sticker around the handle, before sending it off on a conveyer belt.

I wait in line in security, and it's moving slow as fuck. As soon as it's my turn, they make me walk through some empty doorway, and it beeps loudly. "Take your boots off sir" they say. I obliged, and put them in some bin, and attemp to walk through again.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

Fuck, not again. "And your metal belt buckle" they say, as I take that off and put it in a bin, and walk through again.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

I groan loudly.

Eventually i make it through and find myself at the gate. I will be getting on a connecting flight from Texas that goes to Costa Rica, and we take a Jurassic World ferry from there.

This is my first time on a plane, or really my first time on a vacation. The plane slowly rolls up to the gate, and they move a large tunnel up to the door and people begin to exit.

The plane leaves in about a half hour, it is refueling now and getting other supplies like food and drinks I guess.

Finally, we all line up at the desk, and pull out tickets out. One by one, the computer scanny dingy thing scans everyone's tickets, and I walk down a weird hallway, that slightly goes down at an angle and goes down into the plane door.

I walk into the plane and look for a good seat, finding a nice aisle seat, half way in the plane, in between the wings. I sit down and click the seatbelt on, tightening it.

"Well hey there!" Some girl next to me greets. She has a Texan drawl accent and black hair. "Howdy" I say. "I like your clothes" she compliments. "Thanks, yours too"

After everyone sits down, a flight attendant starts at the front of the plane, demonstrating how to tighten the seatbelts, where the emergency exits are, how to inflate the life jackets, and other safety things before the plane slowly rolls to the runway.

"Have you've been on a plane before?" The girl asks me. "Nope" I say. "Oh, this is my third time on a plane, my mama and papa-" she starts rambling, and fortunately the loud engines speeding up to take off drowns out the noise, but unfortunately this is the longest human interaction I've had in a year, and the longest I've had with someone that wasn't family in forever.

The plane shoots down the runway and begins to lift up, before fully being in the air. I lay back in my chair, trying to sleep to pass the time.

"You need to wake up sir" I hear, opening my eyes and seeing the flight attendant. "We are about to land" he says. "Okay thank you" I yawn

"You was out like a light" the girl next to me says as the plane begins to land. "Say, where are you going?" I ask her. "Jurassic world! They're inviting me to some cool camp thing called Camp Cretaceous!" She says enthusiastically. "Me too." I inform as she smiles. "Wow, we have so much in common!"

"I'm Sammy!" She introduces. "Nathan" I say as the plane rolls up to the gate. The plane stops and we stand up, slowly getting off the plane.

Sammy goes ahead of me, practically running. I take my time, the ferry doesn't leave for another half hour anyway. I get my bag from the baggage claim and carry it to a bus line, with a sign that says Camp Cretaceous.

We get on the bus and it drives us to a dock with a ferry. There are five other kids on it. There is a boy, he has brown hair and a green jacket, and is looking very nervous.

The next one is another boy, looking like the youngest of the bunch. He has dark skin and black hair, and a yellow jacket. He looks very excited to be here.

Then there is Sammy, who has short black hair and is wearing a brown leather jacket. I think I'll sit far away from her, I don't really want to do that again.

There were two other girls. One was wearing some tracksuit athletic wear and had a black pony tail, she was sitting alone and drawing. The other one was so pink it was an assault on the eyes, like a living barbie doll. She had pink hair with a pink jacket, and was taking a bunch of pictures on a cell phone.

I sit next to the Jittery boy and he glances up at me and whimpers. "I don't bite" I smirk.

He rubs hand sanitizer on his hands...and arms....and face...what the hell?

Ignoring whatever the fuck he is doing, I look out to the sea. The wind peacefully sprays the water onto the sides of the boat. The bright tropical sun twinkles over the calm waves over the ocean, like a fuck ton of glitter.

The boy next to me runs to the side, so fast I thought he was going to jump off or something, and vomits over the side. Seasick. This'll be worse than the plane.

Eventually, the large shape of the island is in view. The beautiful green mountains and trees like nothing I ever saw.

The ferry moors at the dock and a minute later a ramp is lowered onto the platform. I grab my bag and walk down it behind jitterboy.

AUTHORS NOTE

HOWDY! I know this chapter kind of ended abruptly, but I wanted the rest of it to be the whole episode, and I want each episode to have its own chapter. I am planning to do one of these every week, at least during the summer it might change during the school year since I'll be very busy during school. Thanks for reading! -Nate