Pair of Washington Campers Experience the Most Hilariously Unfortunate Mishap

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While camping can be a ton of fun if you know what you're doing, there are a lot of variables you need to account for in order to stay safe, especially when you're camping in the backcountry. Among other concerns, you need to know how to bearproof your campsite, how to safely build and extinguish campfires, and how to quickly evacuate the site and head back to civilization in case of an emergency.

Katie, a Washington resident and lover of the great outdoors, likely planned for all these variables while camping in the Cascades with her boyfriend last week. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, and the hilariously bizarre misfortune that befell them was one the couple never expected!

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's... an REI camping tent? According to @katiebugg34 , she and her boyfriend could only watch in horror as the wind instantly snatched their tent up into the air and carried it off over the forest like a nylon flying saucer . Against the odds, they were at least able to retrieve their tent, but only after "a couple hours of bushwacking." So much for a relaxing camping trip !

Related: Backcountry Camper in the Yukon Survives a Half-Hour Standoff With a Grizzly Bear

And just to dispel the inevitable critiques accusing Katie of being a camping novice and not staking her tent properly, Katie insisted in the comments that she did use tent stakes; she just fell victim to a hilarious stroke of bad luck: " I used them, but I removed them before I disassembled the tent and I guess turned my back on it for too long."

LOL! Judging by Katie's comment, this mishap must have happened right at the end of their camping trip, so at least the 'stakes" weren't as high- unlike their tent!

An Unlikely UFO?

While the unlucky couple may have burned a perfectly good afternoon searching for their lost tent, at least the side-splitting video of their tent peacing out went viral- not a bad consolation prize. That, and their hilarious accident may have inadvertently given conspiracy theorists in Washington something to gab about!

"Someone's gonna say they saw a UFO when they went camping," speculated @blklipstick.

"One man's tent is another man's UFO," quipped @drakey_pooh.

I won't even lie: I checked. I went to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) to see if anyone had made a UFO report that lined up with Katie's camping mishap. Unfortunately, no dice. The most recent UFO sighting reported in Washington was logged on June 5 in the Spokane area, and the date and location don't really align with Katie's tent misadventure (while Katie didn't specify her location, Mount Rainier is clearly visible in the background, putting her closer to the opposite side of the state).

Still, this whole kerfuffle got me thinking. According to the NUFORC database , Washington has the third highest UFO report count of any US state, beaten only by Florida and California. Katie can't have been the first camper in the Cascade Mountains to lose their gear this way. How many of these reported UFOs were just some poor camper's flyaway belongings... and how many (if any) were the real deal?

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