Arrived to find the gates closed and locked. Not really a problem if we can't drive in because it's OK to walk in but we had to park a quarter mile away. So we load up for our hike in with two wooden Berlebach tripods, one holding our heavy Pentax APO telescope that we use as a spotting scope and the other my Olympus EPL1 camera and Panasonic 100-300 telephoto lens attached.
I was carrying the camera tripod and Christi said she'd carry the telescope tripod, which is much heavier. We were again searching for the Pigmy Owl that was reported to be in the area. We searched for it back on the 12th of February but could not find it then nor yesterday, but we did spot and shoot a few other birds we had not seen before, meaning that Christi could cross them off her list of birds to spot.
It started to get cold and blustery so we decided to pack it in after two hours of hiking and head for REI, the backpacking outfitters store to buy some new windstopper gloves (our gloves sucked). So we started hiking back to the Jeep and Christi said, "This scope and tripod are way heavy could you carry it and I'll carry the camera and tripod." So we swapped what we were carrying and continued our hike back to the Jeep. As we approached the closed gate we couldn't drive through and were walking around it I spotted 9 large birds (eventually identified as simple ass crows) circling over head. I had already passed around the gate but Christi was still negotiating the passage around the gate when I shouted, "Look up there!" pointing to the circling birds. Dumb move on my part. She looked up while still walking and tripped over the concrete gate post base and took a tumble. She, the camera, and tripod hit the ground, the impact of which tore the camera tripod socket (the threaded fitting where the tripod screws into the camera) right out of the Olympus EPL1 camera body and put a huge gouge in my Berlebach wooden German made tripod.
Thankfully Christi was not seriously hurt, at our age (even though the wife is five years younger than me) falls can be seriously detrimental to our health. The lens wasn't damaged, thankfully, but the camera can never be mounted on a tripod again, but it does still work just fine for hand held shots.
Christi felt really bad because she likes the photos the EPL1 takes so she told me to order a new one, which I did last night from B&H Photo after some on-line searching.
BTW, other than a bit of cropping this is a straight out of the camera jpeg shot, absolutely no post processing whatsoever was done. It could easily be enhanced but I didn't feel the need to do so at this point.
Don
Just gotta' be Careful ... 
Going to be a Fun camping season ... !!! Best of Luck to ya' !!! 
So much for warranty work. For small things that's probably just as well as it saves me from hauling the Jayco around for minor stuff I can probably better fix myself.
