Thursday.
Packing up
day, and it wasn't quite as sunny as previous days, but still dry and getting very warm. Today
was the first day we weren’t witness to the Mad Mowers, two busy young Park
Rangers riding around on big mowing machines and mowing the life out of any bit
of grass they could see. On Tuesday I swear that between them they mowed the
same patches of grass near us at least three times. I get it, young people
trying to look busy and justifying their existence, but pity the poor grass.
And my eardrums.
I made my
final sortie to the shower block for this trip, spent ages in there and enjoyed
the hot water very much. Yes, my flipflops were wet, but I didn’t care.
When it came
time to break camp, it all went swimmingly well, up until the bit where we had
to hitch up. There was nothing wrong with the actual process, but we were
attacked by the biting bugs of Rondeau, all of them at once it seemed. This was
despite liberally dousing myself in insect repellant. To be fair, I didn’t get
bitten much, but the little buggers were everywhere. Poor old DW had to retreat
to the sunshine because they seem to like her flesh particularly, and she was
gnawed on quite viciously.
Once hitched
up and secured, we drove off slowly towards the waste tanks dumping station. A
fellow towing another trailer had stopped in the loop road for some reason, so
I took a different loop, and we had a very slow race to see who could get to
the campground gate first, to use the dump station first. He had a few yards on
me to start with but then, a schoolboy error on his part, he stopped at the
dumpsters to drop off his garbage, and I sailed serenely by. We take our
garbage home.
At the dump
station there were no other trailers using the facilities, so I was able to
drive right in and connect up the tank flush to the handily provided
non-potable water supply. It’s never a nice job dumping the waste, and it was
really niffy around the hole in the floor, and that was before we started to
dump, but these are the sacrifices us hardy campers make. I’d finished both
tanks, and flushed through, before the fellow I was racing finally turned up,
and he was behind someone else now. What had he been doing at the dumpsters,
rescuing Raccoons?
The drive
home wasn’t the best as there was a really strong headwind for the first
section of the run, then when we changed direction, it became a cross wind. In
the mirrors I could see the trailer twitching as we drove, but fortunately its
twitches were not being translated to the steering of the Toadmobile, so it all
felt solid enough. The fuel consumption takes a dive in those situations,
though, and that’s when the engine really has to work hard, which bothers me
far more than the twitching trailer. It’s a good job, I suppose, that the drive
was mercifully short.
Unloading on
the driveway at home is a chore, but one we like to get completed, mostly, more
or less, as soon as we’ve chocked the wheels and unhitched. When it’s warm, as
it was, it’s even more of a chore, but we stuck at it and emptied the
Airstream, remembering this time to grab the bag of garbage, and to empty the
recycling bin, especially as the following day is the City’s recycling
collection day for us. We have, once or twice, forgotten one or both of the
aforementioned chores, and neither omission has helped freshen the air inside,
strangely enough.
I will just mention the weather (being a British Canadian, I am bound by law to mention weather at least three times in every conversation), as it was another totally dry trip. When we started this Airstream adventure in 2011, our trips were constantly rained on. We even spent a couple of weeks driving to and from Florida and it rained at some point pretty much every day, and the rain in Florida can get quite scary, let me tell you. A couple of years back we were all but flooded out at Science Hill (St. Mary's, Ontario) when the storm drains couldn't cope with the 36 hour deluge. But in 2024, we've had two dry trips, both early in the season, too, and I have to say that I'm thankful. Camping in the rain isn't so much of an issue when you have a good trailer, but trying to do trailer-type stuff in the rain, or even waterlogged ground, is never much fun. Hurrah for the fabulous weather this time around.
So that’s it
for camping for a couple of months, now we can concentrate on the garden and
the pool while the Province’s families enjoy Rondeau’s campground. We do have an
annual pass for the park so I doubt that Charlie will go the entire summer without
spending time on the beach there.
We have
organised another travel trip, not in the Airstream, but I’ll keep that under
wraps for a while. Roll on September.
