We were hiking in the woods looking for a good place to set up camp.

"This looks like a good spot, girls," said my dad. Heather, Valerie, Sara, Dawn and I gratefully dropped our backpacks to the ground. They landed with a thud.

Dad assigned us all jobs. Heather and Sara were given the job of collecting firewood. Valerie, Dawn, and I were all told to pitch the tent.

While Heather and Sara went out to get the firewood, my Dad explained how to pitch the tent. After Dad was done explaining, he wen to go put the food in a safe spot.

We were still struggling to put the tent together by the time dad got back and started preparing the food for supper. Sara and Heather still weren't back yet and it was nearing an hour now. We asked dad to go look for them; maybe they'd gotten lost or something bad had happened.

Within fifteen minutes of his leaving, the clouds gave way to their heavy load and poured down on us, lightly at first, but it started to come down harder and harder. I saw a flash of lightening streak across the sky. I told Dawn and Valerie to go into the tent. I just had to fix one of the tent poles and then I'd be done.

Dawn and Valerie grabbed our backpacks and threw them into the tent and jumped in after them.

The lightning blinded me as I struggled to repair the tent pole. This holiday in the woods was turning out to be a complete disaster.

The pole snapped into place and I quickly unzipped the tent door and hopped in. Valerie and Dawn had set up our sleeping bags and put our backpacks and things in the corner.

We were all worried about Heather, Sara, and my dad. It was pouring outside and we were all wondering what was taking them so long. We could only think of the worst.

Finally, I couldn't take it any longer. It had been well over 2 hours now.

"I'm going out to find them," I said.

"Are you nuts?" said Valerie.

"No, I'm not!" I said.

"You'd have to be to go out there!" said Dawn.

"Well, I'm worried about them. Anything could have happened to them! For all we know they could be drowning or running for their lives from wild animals!" I said angrily.

They stood there looking at me with concern in their eyes, their faces told me that they were worried too, but they didn't want to go out there.

"Well, I'm going," I said. I unzipped the door and walked outside.

From the tent I heard screams and suddenly Dawn and Valerie came running out of the tent.

"Gun!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. I went into the tent and on the sleeping bags lay a gun.

"It was in your dad's backpack." said Dawn as she trembled with fear. I picked it up.

"Why would he bring a gun? It doesn't make sense. Well, I'm disposing of it, he knows how much I hate guns," I said.

We went outside and buried it by a tree. Then we set out to look for my dad and our friends. After 5 minutes of walking we heard something... it growled. A bear!

We all froze.

Find out what happens next time...