Chapter Eighty-four Camping (Three)

  Wang Fan immediately responded, and Keli also followed suit. When the three of them were left with only their shorts on, Wang Fan stretched his arms a few times, moved around a bit, and then let out a loud shout before jumping into the water. When he emerged from the creek with his head above water, he said to Ju An and Keli, "Come on down, it's really comfortable!" After saying that, he swam away for a distance, looking at Ju An and Keli, who followed suit and jumped into the water one after another.

  Three people were swimming happily in the water, at this time two dog heads, Tiger Head and Garlic Head, also stretched out from behind a rock, with a smaller Wu Song head in between. Seeing Ren An in the water, Tiger Head and Garlic Head jumped in too. Wu Song was afraid to get into the water, so he used his small paws to splash water on the side.

  The tiger head and garlic head swam with a standard that was not low, sticking their heads out of the water surface, through the clear creek water, clearly seeing the two guys each with four claws paddling in the water for a few times to get to Ju An's side. Wu Song, who was anxious on the stone, pointed at these two guys and shouted anxiously.

  Yu An swam up to Wu Song, stretched out his hand and put Wu Song on his shoulder from the stone, took him to the creek, took Wu Song swimming for a while, Wu Song himself started swimming in the water. Wang Fan said curiously: "The monkey can actually swim!"

  Wang Fan looked at Wu Song swimming happily in the water and laughed: "I didn't know it could swim either, I'm seeing it for the first time today."

  Keli heard the conversation between the two and laughed, saying: "Ordinarily, mammals know that if they paddle a few times in water, they won't sink, so don't be alarmed."

  A few people swam for a while, then got ashore, changed into clean underwear, and did so on the stone, watching Tiger Head and Garlic Head playing dog paddle in the water. Wu Song was holding a towel with comical movements to wipe his monkey hair, while Wang Fan would occasionally sneak up and pull the towel, immediately withdrawing his hand, making Wu Song look around, delighted by Wang Fan's sly smile.

  "Not far away, Taylor's voice came: 'Buddies, pack up and get ready to go.' Upon hearing Old Taylor's roar, the three of them started putting on their clothes. Fortunately, the water droplets on their bodies had already dried, and in a flash, the three big men were dressed. Ju An said to Hu Tou and Suan Tou in the water: 'Let's go.'"

  Two guys reluctantly got out of the pool, crawled onto the shore, and started shaking off water more than two meters away from the three people. Wang Fan looked at the two guys and said: "The second den's little dog must leave one for me, this guy is too human-like, and even knows to leave people to shake off water, just like a well-trained one."

  Ignoring Wang Fan's muttering, the three of them walked to the campsite and put the saddles back on the horses. Tyler and Anderson still led the way in front, while Ju An and the others followed behind, bringing up the rear. Hu Tou and Suan Tou kept watch over the mules, while Wu Song was carefree, squatting on Xue Hua's back, one paw holding onto the saddle horn and the other clutching an apple to gnaw on. This guy had developed a bad habit - when eating apples, he wouldn't eat the skin, but would first gnaw off the skin, spit it out, and then directly eat the pulp inside. No one knew who he learned this from, anyway, Ju An always ate apples with the skin on.

  As we walked further ahead, the trees became more sparse. After a while, we saw large patches of white mountain rocks everywhere. Keli introduced that these were volcanic rocks. Yellowstone National Park is actually an active volcano. If it erupts, the entire North America will be doomed. Fortunately, according to scientific research, it only erupts once every tens of thousands of years. This still makes me a little worried since I live next to a volcano. But then again, if it does erupt, the American people will all perish together with me, so it's not like I'll be alone in my misfortune.

  A group of people walked slowly, especially in places with more rocks. Keli reminded Ju'an and Wang Fan not to pull the reins too tightly and to maintain their posture on horseback. Ju'an also observed Keli's posture when going uphill or downhill, which was basically vertical on the horseback without leaning forward. Keli explained: "When walking on this kind of rocky road, you must trust your horse and always pay attention to your surroundings. Horses are easily frightened by a shoe, a snake, etc. This is especially important when traveling in the wilderness."

  Ju An and Wang Fan nodded, indicating they understood, and followed him for a while, learning more about horse riding. Wang Fan also said, "It's true that reading ten thousand books is not as good as traveling ten thousand miles."

  After walking for more than an hour, passing through several forests, when the sky gradually darkened, Ju An and his party finally arrived at the campsite, a large grassland adjacent to this small stream.

  As soon as they arrived at the camp, Keli helped Taylor and Anderson unload the mules, while Ju An and Wang Fan started setting up their own tent. The two of them worked hard for half a day before finally finishing the tent, then laid down a layer of felt inside to block out the dampness from the ground. At night, the two of them slept in this tent, once again becoming wilderness roommates.

  Two people had just set up the tent, Taylor shouted: "Kerry, take An and Fan to the creek to find some stones, I will go into the woods to find some firewood, Anderson is in charge of dinner."

  Following Old Tylor's arrangement, Ju An and the others followed Keli towards the small stream.

  "Moving stones, what for? Are you going to build a stove?"

  Kerry explained: "When making a fire, pile up a ring of stones around the campfire to surround the fire in the middle and prevent fires from occurring while sleeping."

  After hearing that, Ju An and Wang Fan started searching for stones by the small stream. The three of them went back and forth five or six times, carrying a stone circle with a diameter of one meter. At this time, Old Taylor came over with a large package on his back. He threw the package to the ground beside the stone circle, pulled out branches from inside, all dry fir branches, the thickest as big as a bowl mouth. Then he took out an axe from beside him and easily chopped the branches along the grain. Wang Fan watched from the side and shouted that he wanted to try too. He took the axe from Old Taylor's hand and tried chopping several times, but either the wood was crooked or his strength wasn't enough. Old Taylor taught him for a while before he got a little better.

  When the fire was lit, Anderson brought over two pots one after another. Ju An found that there were Chinese cabbage and two chickens in the big pot, as well as some potato slices. The small pot had two pieces of boiled beef with a few leaves wrapped around them. After asking, they learned that it was pickled vegetables made by themselves at home. Ju An originally thought that Americans didn't eat pickled vegetables, but who knew that they also ate pickled green vegetables.

  The pot was placed directly on the bonfire, with the large pot at the bottom and the small pot on top. Then, the split firewood was put into the stone ring. After that, basically, several people had nothing to do, except for Anderson who was busy opening the gas stove, using an iron plate to make pancakes, a bit like the Beijing-style roasted duck wraps with scallions, those palm-sized small pancakes.

  Jū ān and Wáng Fán and a few others opened up the folding canvas chairs and sat around the bonfire.

  "Will we be following this route from now on? Or will we continue to travel with the team like this?"

  Taylor laughed and said, "Next time Kerry and Anderson will bring the tourist group later, I'll take the food guys ahead to the campsite to wait for them. Next time we bring a team over, it won't be as easy as this time. We didn't add anyone, but we brought more stuff. Our maximum is fifteen people at a time, if there are more, we can't take care of them."

  Jū ān nodded and then asked: "Last time, did some people who were preparing to travel far contact you? I gave them your phone number."

  Taylor nodded and said: "Contacted, they have twelve or thirteen people, will come over in about a week, at that time you are also together to liven up the scene".

  "In a week, I'll be going back to China for a friend's wedding, no time to hang out with you guys." Ji An said, poking at the flames with a small twig.

  Wang Fan listened and then asked: "Can our group organize this kind of wild ride activity?"

  Taylor thought for a moment before responding, "The people in that group need to know how to ride horses, otherwise it's too dangerous. If someone were to fall off the horse and die, it wouldn't be a big deal. If they're not skilled enough, I really don't dare take them out into the wilderness. If all of our tourists are like this, we suggest not doing it at all, just in case something unexpected happens. This time, An introduced them to me, and after understanding their situation, basically they all have several years of riding experience, even if they're not great, they won't be too bad. They've all had experience with wilderness horseback riding within China, and we also agreed that if an accident were to happen in the wilderness, we wouldn't take legal responsibility. It would all need to be written into the contract, after all, horseback riding is a somewhat dangerous activity."

  "Come to think of it, that's also true, after all, ensuring safety is the top priority."

  "Actually, I've been thinking about it for the past few days, whether to add a farm tour. At this time of year, many farms have activities, and we can take a day off to bring everyone to the farm to play in the maze, spider web, pick vegetables and fruits, etc."

  Wang Fan said with this idea: "This idea is not bad, do you have any photos or something? When the time comes, put them on our company's homepage to increase some popularity."

  Taylor smiled and replied: "We are also preparing to set up a website for our sheep, photos and so on are readily available, it's just the description that needs to be in English, I don't think that's a big problem for you guys."

  Wang Fan nodded in agreement with Old Taylor's suggestion.

  A few people were chatting, and Anderson walked over and said: "Stop chatting, everyone start preparing for dinner. By the way, An, how do you say lunch and dinner in Chinese? I'll try it out when we're with the group later."

  "Just one sentence is enough, and that's 'dinner is served'."

  After repeated teaching for several rounds, Anderson and three other American devils learned it, with correct tones and a strong flavor of people's commune.