Last weekend I got the chance to visit a town in Northern California called Happy Camp.
Happy Camp is famous among those with an interest in Bigfoot because it has supposedly been seen there.
While I don’t claim to believe or disbelieve in the big guy, I couldn’t resist asking a waitress at a local cafe about any recent sightings of it. She looked at me and rolled her eyes and said there hadn’t been any for a while.
Somehow I felt disappointed. It might have been cool to hear a story or two.
I then drove over to Java Bob’s Bigfoot Deli only to find it closed. It was another disappointment. I was hoping to visit the research center/deli and get some information on where the big guy might be. I was also told that Bigfoot souvenirs were available there and boy did I want one of those.
So I did what every curious tourist does. I took my trusty SLR camera with the 1000 mm zoom lens, my trusty digital eight mega pixel camera and set out in my electric lime Saturn Vue to drive some of the back roads in search of the elusive creature.
I drove for hours, stopping frequently to scan the woods but nothing happened. Perhaps the color of my SUV offended him. Perhaps he was having a bad hair day or he is actually a she and was suffering from PMS. At any rate, as the sun began to sink lower in the sky, I decided to head home, disappointed once again.
As things turned out, Happy Camp has an online newspaper http://www.happycampnews.com/ and after taking some time, I found that there had been a sighting in June 2005 as well as a footprint that had been found in August of that same year.
So where does the legendary creature go when it isn’t hanging out by the roadside or on the property of unsuspecting homeowners? Well, if it does exist it has a lot of forest to hide in. Trying to find it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
For those who are true believers, the creature does exist and many of them are on quests to find it or bring back proof. More power to them. For the Native Americans who believe, I respect those beliefs.
In my view it makes for good campfire stories. I have spent a lot of time in the woods and have never heard nor seen any strange ape-like creatures. But then again, you can take my opinion for what it’s worth. After all, I hunt ghosts for fun.
If I ever did meet one, my first reaction as a journalist would be to ask it out to lunch, assure it that I wouldn’t identify it in my story...just call it “Big B,” take some pictures of it with its back to me and then wire the story to The Associated Press. My book, “Getting to know Bigfoot” would come later.

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