Pictured Rocks

My first trip to Pictured Rocks was with my brother, James, and my dad when I was 15 years old. That week we ended up hiking about 70 miles, often waking up early, hiking to our campsite and then hiking more after we arrived at our site. The trip is filled with memorable events and I loved the time with my brother and dad. The best memory from that trip was my rocks. I am pretty sure that I still have them all, somewhere in a box...
I love rocks. They are the best souvenirs too -- the ones I like never cost anything. The only down side is that rocks weight quite a bit, but most of the time its not too much of an issue. But because this was a backpacking trip, picking up rocks as souvenirs was a problem. After the first day down at the beach collecting rocks, dad put a stop to it. He told me that my pile was enough and I shouldn't put anymore weight than that in my pack. But I could not resist the beauty of the rocks!
So, I quietly emptied a bag and shoved the contents somewhere else and slowly began to fill my bag. I knew that if my dad knew what I was doing I would have to ditch the rocks and that was not something that I wanted to let happen. I was just going to carry the extra weight and not say anything to either my dad or brother -- I wanted my rocks! I would shove rocks in my pockets all day long and at night put them in my growing bag.
Surprisingly my dad never noticed me taking the rocks. Each day he would help me put on my pack... each lunch he would offer to take items from my pack and I would eagerly give him some of my gear. Unbeknownst to me, after helping me on with my pack he felt really sorry for me and my heavy pack, so he would take more of my gear. Even though dad kept taking more and more items from my pack, he couldn't figure out why my bag was getting heavier.
Finally he demanded me to empty my pack so that he could see what was making it so heavy. Well, 5 days of smuggling rocks in my pack came out. I somehow managed to convince him that I was really okay with all the weight and would gladly take all my gear back. All I wanted was to keep my rocks. It was more than likely the astonishment that I had horded away all those rocks in 5 days and never complained about the weight of my pack. Also, the next day was our last and we didn't have to hike all that long. When we got back home he did make we weight the now large bag of rocks. I had eventually carried 16 pounds of rocks. All collected in just 5 days!