I was ten, and excited to be on my first camping trip. As the bus of girl scouts groaned up the 405, I wondered what it would be like. The campsite was called Little Africa. I wondered why. Would there be a jungle? Zebras? Elephants?
Little Weedlot in the Middle of Nowhere would have been a better name. Gravel as white as moon rocks. Clumps of blonde grass... ...few wimpy oaks. This was no jungle. This wasn't even the woods.
It did have a stream. This excited us. Then we saw the duck. It was dead, slumped on the rocks as current flowed around it. Nothing like a dead bird to keep you out of the water.
On the last day I found the cage. It was the size of a garage, rising from the weeds like it grew there. Steel bars as thick as a broom stick grew from the cement base. It creeped me. A dilapidated trailer stood nearby. One girl claimed it had belonged to a former owner. She'd kept tigers in the cage, but they escaped, clawed into the trailer, and killed her. Was it true? I thought, Even if it wasn't true, why was there a cage? Who or what had lived in it?
It spooked me. The thought of it chilled the skin on my back. The chill followed me home.
Note: The park still exists, under a different name. There's very little online info about it, except brief (and favorable) campground ratings. I used a Google Earth photo to get the the tones for the background of the second image. I don't know if the cage is still there.
I never found out what it was for.
What a disappointment that trip must have been! And the dead duck adds a sad touch (not to mention the mysterious cage and scary story)...Bet you were glad to get back home to your own room!!!
ReplyDeleteooh, summer camp stories are often unpleasant, but this one is so scary grim. Makes you glad you're an adult!
ReplyDeleteHi Walterworld,
ReplyDeleteI sure was glad to get the heck out of there. A Motel Six would have been a better destination- no cages, a safe pool to swim in, and a coffee shop nearby.
Hi Sally,
Yep,I'm glad I'm adult. It's spooky to be a kid when you run into something weird and don't know the full story.
Lovely illustrations: looks like handmade paper sort of.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Stray g.
ReplyDeleteI got that look using a photo of a sloppy brick wall as the paper texture. If you look closely at the tiger's stripes, you can see it.
I love love love these illustrations. The dead duck is so sad and beautiful. Yes, they feel like delicate collages made out of colored tissue paper. So beautiful - and even with the flatness of this, there is a lot of depth and lighting in them. Very, very good job! And as always, your stories/experiences are really entertaining and moving.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Billsey.
ReplyDeleteWhat a nice thing to say!:)
Before this week I never would have thought that creepy camping trip would lead to anything that got such great feedback. Thanks again.
p.s. don't work too hard.
It's years from your initial post but I just came across it and didn't know if you'd ever learned the history of the place. We used to camp there on occasional weekends when I was a little girl, and my parents got to know the people who ran it. It had originally been the setting for filming some of the old Tarzan movies, and when we first started going, you could still see the remnants of Tarzan's treehouse. Later, it was used as the set for filming the 1960's series Daktari, which apparently was a show about father/daughter veterinarians running an animal wildlife care center in Africa. The moldering animal cages you saw were left over props, abandoned when the series closed. Nothing creepy like owners getting killed by tigers! However, in the hills nearby at one time there was some kind of private animal rescue, because in the 80s we would sometimes hear distant lion roars, which was pretty exciting for a couple of little girls!
ReplyDeleteEarly 70”s for me. Exactly how I remember it too. Also there was a lake to swim in too.
DeleteWe camped there when I was a kid. It was called Little Africa and we would make friends with many of the families that would come from all over the country to camp there. It was lush, vibrant and had a beach where we would spend most of our time. At night we'd have campfires and play games until bedtime. The Lions that could be heard roaring in the distance were from Tippi Hedren's animal reserve which was very near by. Sorry to hear the place has faded away. I will always remember it the way it was in the 1970's.
ReplyDeleteExactly how I remember it too. There was a lake to swim in when I went
DeleteWe camped there when I was a kid. It was called Little Africa and we would make friends with many of the families that would come from all over the country to camp there. It was lush, vibrant and had a beach where we would spend most of our time. At night we'd have campfires and play games until bedtime. The Lions that could be heard roaring in the distance were from Tippi Hedren's animal reserve which was very near by. Sorry to hear the place has faded away. I will always remember it the way it was in the 1970's.
ReplyDeleteWow, thanks for the info. I'd figured the tiger-eating-its-keeper tale was probably kid-lore, but it's nice to finally know what was up with the big cages.
ReplyDeleteI was looking at today's fire map and it looks like the campsite (well, its current incarnation under a different name) is in the red area. Okay, I wasn't thrilled about it as a kid, but I'd hate to have it burn.
My parents used to work there in the summers, in the 70’s,& I took people on hikes to see the ruins from where they filmed Tarzan, back in the day. At that time, it was huge, well kept,& had tons of trees, grass, the stream and floating platform we would dive off of. The cages and cement areas, were where they kept the animals, ie; lions, tigers, crocs,& elephants. The treehouse was about 1/4 mike up the canyon, and it had railroad ties hammered in, to climb up. They had peacocks that roamed around and a pair of de-scented skunks as well. I only have great memories from it and wish you could have seen it back then. It was a very busy place,& held up to 3-500 campers over the summer. Flash floods came thru during filming and it killed many of the animals,& some were never found. The croc was said to still have been there, upstream, but in all the time I took people on that hike, I never saw anything but snakes and raccoons. Where you said there was one oak tree, there was hundreds of huge oaks throughout the entire campground,& were great to climb and put swings in.
ReplyDeleteTina Napolitano
ReplyDeleteI camped here with my Campfire Girls group, I have nothing but fond memories of it. Probably around 77 and 78 when we were there! I remember disco dancing in the hall! Good times!
It’s now October 1, 2022.
ReplyDeleteI remember Little Africa with fond memories. Went there with my aunt Alice who was the red headed life guard. Don’t remember dates but probably late sixties early seventies. I remember the area as thick green and beautiful!
My grandmother was the red headed life guard. We spent many summers camping at Little Africa.
DeleteI, too, have fond memories of Little Africa. We would spend the 3 Summer holidays there. The pond had a square raft which was kept afloat using empty 55 gallon drums. I always remember the water as being quite cold, but it felt good on hot, Summer days. Along about 1975, ownership of the park changed and Ellsworth and Dorothy Smith took over. She lived in the park while Ellsworth stayed in El Segundo as he worked for Chevron there. We became very familiar with the new owners and my parents began to help out around the park when we were there. At the end of the 1976 school year, we moved up to the park and stayed there until late that Summer when the Smith's lost the park. My parents tried to buy them out but they could not arrange financing. In the middle of the night, we packed everything up and moved up the canyon to Cypress Park.
ReplyDeleteIt’s so weird to find a post on this. We camped there in the mid 70’s a few times during memorial weekend. I was told as a kid that Clarence the cross eyed lion used to live there. I too remember the cages and peacocks.
ReplyDeleteIt was amazing reading this. I stayed their as a kid in the 70's. I remember my mom and her friend Bonnie? talking about buying it but it didn't happen. I remembered the store with pickled eggs and red hot sausages in a jar. I loved the creek.
ReplyDelete