We've camped here before, three years ago, I think. City on three sides of us, but you'd never really know it. Except when the alarm goes off at the fire station across the street. And the scenery is a little different from most campsites.

This Friday night camp was supposed to be a spring gathering of all the youth groups for 80 miles around. At least six other units.

But it rained. Forecasts called for snow by 8 o'clock.

Yes. Snow.

So guess who showed up?

Yep. Just us. Other six groups chickened out. Two of our rookies were totally unprepared for inclement weather, which I suppose is more our fault than anyone else's. Fortunately, being in town like this, moms and grandmothers were able to deliver the necessary rain gear (so I could get mine back).

Our project for the Saturday fair?

A rope bridge. More commonly known as a "monkey bridge."

Built this before, so it went fairly quickly. A cottonwood with a low fork made for a natural bipod at one end and, as the manual shows, we built a bipod of rope and two poles for the other end.

As I and the other leader were weaving the cross strands between the hand ropes and the base rope, I heard a boy shout "Heads up!", and I did the exact opposite. And watched my fellow leader duck down, geeing when he should have hawed, and get nailed right on top of the head by the X of the cross poles.

And it decked him. All the first aid training starts flying by in the brain, number one being there is likely to be neck or spinal injury, so do not move the victim.

So, instead, he rolls over himself. And says he's gonna need for a ride.

Before I can steal his cell phone and finish dialing 911, the man is sitting up, surprised to announce he's okay.

I have horrible visions of an accident victim that a friend of mine was first to encounter on one of our remote highways. Man is walking around, saying he's okay, then twists his head wrong.

And dies. Right there along the highway, before my friend's eyes.

But no death today. Just several large, hairless scrapes on the skull, and a lump about an inch across. Pupils normal, patient coherent. No stars, no dizziness, no numbness.

Within five minutes, the lump is four inches across. Off he is sent to the emergency room, his son driving.

Okaaaay, that's why we have 2-deep leadership.

The heck with the manual. We decide (yes, I knew what the decision was going to be, but it was best to let the boys decide) we want a tripod on that end of our bridge, not a bipod. Which meant disassembling the bipod and starting over, but to their credit, nobody wanted to try a shortcut. Even in the rain.

We were pretty much done by the time our injured member returned, maybe two hours later. He was proud to announce that, according to the emergency room doctor, the CT scan of his head showed "there was nothing there."

The snow never showed.

We weren't the only ones disappointed by the lack of attendance by the other groups. The coordinator of the whole thing arrived after dinner for the fireside ceremonies. (After the accident and rain, we said the heck with cooking foil dinners over a campfire. Dinner was Dominos Pizza. They deliver. Even to campsites on old historic sites.) By then the rain had quit, and it was a pleasant evening.

The coordinator warned that the other groups would hear of his wrath.

Since his grown son was one of the absent leaders, presumably intimidated by a little rain, I expect that's true.

Then came the real treat of the campout, a surprise to all but myself (having been warned just a few hours earlier by the wife).

A personalized, night-time tour of the old penitentiary. Complete with candles, hidden skulls, falling corpses, mysterious lights, and horribly loud banging noises. I never knew you could get such high-pitched, girlish screams from young males.

Repeatedly.

We were required to tour in single file, the manager of the place in the lead, one of her more squeamish assistants bringing up the rear (she screamed almost as well as our rookies).

Only those two had flashlights.

There was one light effect that even they did not understand. Looking for all the world like a little blue LED. Need to get back in the daytime to see what it was.

Our tour guide was quite peeved to find I had never toured this old site, despite all my years in the community, and the wife's involvement in its restoration. (She once served as a volunteer to launch corpses off the top tier of B-Block for a Hallowe'en tour. And was forgotten after the tour, locked in a cell there in the dark for nearly an hour. Fun. They say it was an accident.) I did point out I have been underneath some of these old buildings, and I was in here several times when it was still being used for its original purpose.

But the eeriness of this old facility comes not from the gimmicks and noises, but from its real stories. Its real past.

A cell where the inmate filed off the bar locking his door, replacing it with blackened soap. And used the freedom it offered to nightly raid the commissary, rather than escape.

The cell door that was welded shut because of repeated escapes by the local Houdini. Sealed in for years. (He got even. Got other inmates to give him contraband through the bars, which he flaunted in front of the guards. Eventually they had to cut his cell open to get it.)

The punishment pole, where inmates were chained up and beaten with rubber hoses. A form of discipline that lasted until the 1950s.

Four guards were killed by inmates in this facility over the eighty-some years. We stopped and saw where, and heard how.

Another man committed a crime so heinous in the community that he was housed in the pen pending his trial, since they were certain the county jail could not protect him from the outraged citizenry and vigilante mobs.

So the inmates overwhelmed the guards of this block and hung him from the fourth tier.

We visited the gallows. Complete with hangman's noose and trapdoor. Real gallows. Men died in this room. The small, tight concrete chamber was equipped with a small window, to give the condemned one last look at the real world.

Of course, all executions that occurred in this room took place after midnight and before sunrise, so each man may not have had much to see.

And the gas chamber. Men died here, too. One of the most vicious, a man who murdered young girls and tore them asunder with his teeth, lasted five minutes before being declared dead.

But probably the most poignant moment for me came early in the tour, before full darkness fell. The view of dusk that so many men shared, for so many decades.

After that hair-raising tour, we needed a little settling down time, so enjoyed the campfire (and the foil dinners) until almost midnight, with its calming embers and gentle crackles.

And no ghost stories.