Amnesia

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Sam tried his best to shake off his ruminations of the past.

After all, he wasn't that kid anymore, or at least that's what he told himself. Besides which, he was here to get his mind off of stuff like that and being the only downer on this trip would be just sad.

They left the diner about an hour later, leaving a nice tip for Ian and a plan to check out one of the local trails.

It was about a thirty-minute drive from their hotel, which they'd stopped at to grab their bags and cameras. Deciding that they might as well take pictures while they were here.

It had been the plan to vlog, but they all realized that taking a break from the cameras wouldn't be a bad thing.

Besides which, they would still be posting on social media throughout the weekend.

When they got there, unlike what Sam had read online, there weren't a lot of other cars. Just a hippie van in front of them with a bumper sticker on the back windshield that had some kind of local university.

Pulling up to the little booth, the ranger greeted them warmly.

"Hey, how are you folks doing today?"

"Um, well, thank you," Colby answered.

"Good, good. Well, you know, usually they tell us we have to charge people who come through here, but between you and me I haven't seen anyone but you and those kids today. So, let's do this, I'm just gonna give you a day pass and you all go right on through."

The man rummaged around in the booth for a second before producing a plain white piece of paper that had the name of the park and the visit date on it. He handed it to Colby through the driver's side window who passed it to Corey in the passenger seat.

"Um, sure. Thank you so much, sir."

"Of course, my pleasure. Enjoy your hike now."

"We will. Thank you again. Have a nice day."

The man smiled at them and they waved as they drove off.

"Well, that was nice of him," Corey said, as he reached forward to put the piece of paper on the dashboard. To be honest, they were all pretty dumbfounded.

"Yeah, I'm still trying to process that. But hey, he didn't charge us, so we're clear I guess?"

"Yeah, I guess." Sam shrugged.

They lapsed back into silence as Colby navigated the unpaved road that widened out after a half mile into a gravel parking lot.

Colby parked on the right-hand side, with the hippie van being on the far left-hand side of the lot.

Outside the van, it looked like there was a guy lounging on a parking marker talking to whoever was inside. He seemed to be smoking a joint and generally shooting the shit with the people in the van.

The three of them shared a silent look that said, "leave that alone at all costs."

Not because any of them had anything against smoking marijuana, but more because they all still had vivid flashbacks of when Sam smoked the weed that was laced with heroin and nearly died.

In fact, that incident had left all of them scarred in different ways and more leery of taking drugs and honestly, more aware of the dangers that could happen.

Smoking weed might be mostly an innocent pass time, but people could still get hurt- or, in Sam's case, nearly die.

They got out and walked around to the trunk, each of them grabbing their packs and slinging them on.