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| Willow contemplates her busy day |
A cloudy start but my hideous curiosity for anything to do with trailers and tow vehicles had me walking the hound around the camp ground checking up on hitches and weight distribution systems. I'll admit to being a teeny bit disappointed that most people had good set up so I had nothing really to tut at. Tut.
This long weekend is very family centred so even at nine in the morning, the place is ringing to the sound of children's voices, and adults of course - "Desiree! You just come back here and change outta them pyjamas, you got bacon grease all down the fron' o' them!" - or something like that.
Having attended to my ablutions, I set off for the beach to see if I could get the hound to run. It took a while to get there because everyone wanted to stop and talk, and be growled at by the anti-social mutt. She did eventually run a few circuits on the sand but her heart wasn't really in it for some reason. We did watch some kind of baptism going on in the lake, where a girl was dunked into the cold water whilst wearing a party frock, much to the appreciation of a crowd of onlookers. Of course, it may not have been a baptism, just a ritual humiliation - how was one to tell? (Pick the bones out of THAT comment!).
I walked the hound up a huge wooden staircase up the side of a cliff and had a mooch around the second camp ground before heading back to Towed Haul. No Airstreams this weekend but a lot of very old trailers, dusted off for the new season and bursting with kids. Everyone looked to be having a good time so it was clearly worth getting these old RVs on the road again.
Our planned destination for the day was the town of Owen Sound, about 150 Km north of us, on Georgian Bay. If you're a geography buff then you'll know that the bay is an off-shoot of Lake Huron but is the low side of the Niagara Escarpment (Huron being on the higher side) and is very deep. It's great for sailing, apparently, as it doesn't get as stormy as Huron proper, but the water is always very cold. Anyway, we didn't get to Owen Sound, so the geography lesson isn't required!
On the way we were diverted by the Cheese Shop near Kincardine and Lord Elgin's Fish and Chip Restaurant (one of the top five in Canada, apparently) in Port Elgin. I'm not sure that we'd have seen the restaurant had we not stopped for gas, so a big up to Canadian Tire for building their Gas Bar next to it!
We had to buy takeaway because of the hound, so we found ourselves down by the beach in Port Elgin, enjoying pretty good F&C whilst looking at the bright young things playing volleyball on the sand. Traversing the boardwalk, we were accosted by a fellow with an accent that would make Rab C Nesbitt blush - broad Glaswegian or what? These Scottish types never lose their accents, do they? He'd been in Canada for over forty years and still sounded as if he lived in Glasgow. His car was bedecked with Scottish stuff, just in case we'd missed his accent. We knew that he was a nice fellow though, because Willow didn't growl at him.
Back at base we sank into a grown up's camping weekend, lazing about and doing very little. It was marginally too cold to sit outside, but sitting inside with the trailer's tinted windows cutting down on the light, the evening seemed to draw in really quickly and at eight pm we were both thinking of sleep! Chivvied by Faceboook friends, though, we had some pizza instead and stayed up to watch Cold Comfort Farm on the DVD. It's a rock and roll lifestyle, eh?
We did take the hound out for a walk at eleven-thirty, which is always a good time to stroll around a camp ground. Most people were in bed, with dark trailers and glowing embers in the fire pit. Some hardy souls were still up, though, happily flouting the booze ban and making lots of noise; it is May Two-Four after all.
What will Sunday bring, I wonder? No footy on TV, I know that. We could nip off to the Pizza Place I suppose, they have banks of TVs there, but maybe we'll give it a miss this time; after all, we are supposed to be camping.
