August 11th, 2008
Took the kids plus a friend for each to Wildwood Conservation Area this weekend, for a trial camping-with-lots-of-kids run. Our friends Rob and Barb, parents of one of the kids, came along too with their tent. Not, as it turned out, entirely the best choice of weekend. I did check the forecast on Friday night and it said partly cloudy. Which means “partly sunny”, right? Wrong.
We get there at 10am on Saturday morning, with dark clouds overhead. No problem. A bit of cloud is fine. Set up the trailer while the kids splashed about in the small stream that ran behind the site — the high point of the trip as it later turned out. They caught a crayfish and several minnows.
With the campsite set up, we took of for the marina area for some fishing and more crayfish hunting. No sooner do we get a line in the water than the skies open up. Rob and I and the boys were lucky enough to be next to the Marina building, so we stood under the roof, but the girls were a long way from anywhere and got utterly drenched. To add to the troubles, Sylvia ran the battery in the truck down (it was already weak from being run down in Algonquin) and we had to get a jump start when the rain finally let up briefly.
From there on it pretty much pissed down until dark. This was one of those times when we were so glad to have spent the big bucks on the Coleman Bayside. We put up one wall of the add-a-room and hung out between that and the inside and everyone was pretty much happy. My battery power isn’t working properly and it was a non-electrical site, so I powered the trailer plus an AC light off a 700 watt inverter attached to the battery.
Once dark fell, the partyers next door started up. And went until 3am when they were issued their final warning by the campground police. Certainly if I ran things they would have gotten one warning at 11:01pm, the second at 11:10pm, and then they would have all been shot @ 11:15pm. I wished I’d had an air horn in the morning, so I could wander through their site letting off blasts at random.
At 12 degrees, it was a bit brisk in the morning and rather damp. Ran the furnace for a while to get the trailer warmed up and to dry the air a bit, and then we made a big breakfast before packing everything up and leaving.
Wouldn’t you know, as soon as we reached London, the sun came out…
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