The First Of The Season - Part IV

Packing up day arrived, and it didn't speed us up any. We normally like to stay on the site right up until 2pm, which is the official check-out time, but this fine day we decided upon a slighter earlier departure. It was just as well we did, because this being the first of the season, things didn't go quite as smoothly as we'd hoped.

While the big storm had raged across the lake on the previous evening, Rondeau Park remained dry and entirely storm-free. This Thursday morning was clear and warm and I enjoyed my walk over to the comfort station for my shower. But what's this? All the showers occupied? Well, not exactly because one wasn't working and I couldn't bring myself to use the one for disabled peeps, or the ones designated for families. I did, though, stride off purposefully towards the comfort station over on the east side of the campground, the one that's in among all the tent camping sites. There were hardly any of those sites occupied, so the shower stalls there were much less likely to be occupied. I was right.

These showers were of a slightly older design, but still with the shower nozzle on the wrong wall. The water control was like you'd have at home with temperature control and the like, unlike the more modern stall where you simply press a button and the water runs for a pre-determined time at a pre-determined temperature, then you press it again. And again. The advantage of the single button is that you can't walk out and simply leave the water running, but clearly the Park's management felt I was to be trusted to turn the thing off myself today. An odd thing was that I heard someone pull on the  locked door (it opens to the outside), then not ten seconds later another pull, then a further twenty seconds and a third pull. It was almost as if the person or persons doing the pulling couldn't quite believe that the stall was occupied. Ho hum.

Back at camp there was time for a quick breakfast, then on with the break-camp (did you see what I did there?). I had decided to put the new chairs back into their carrying bags, but was struggling with what should have been an easy concept. Long story short, I had to have DW help me, and even then we weren't sure we'd done it correctly. I think it may well have taken more time to break down the Pleasure Dome and the new chairs than it did to pack and hitch the trailer up. 

We were still earlier than we would have been usually, but not by much.

The Airstream was covered in tree debris, it having been stationed under a handsome Burr Oak for three nights. The car was much the same because we hadn't used that during our stay. As we drove out of the campground I could see leaves and twigs flying off the roof of the trailer, which was nice.

At the dump station I chatted with a couple of other campers, and was delighted when one of them asked how the Toadmobile was coping with the trailer, and he said "they're great little tow vehicles, those minivans". Such a far cry from the usual dire warnings of it being illegal, an insurance liability, a mechanical disaster or a death trap, or, indeed, a combination of all of those things. Not everyone is blinded by Truckitis apparently.

Then it was time to head for home. Naturally the wind had sprung up again and we motored at 90kph into a fierce headwind. The Airstream was being buffeted about and the fuel consumption was looking awful, but a change of direction and all of a sudden things calmed right down and the consumption figure steadied. Even with the Airstream's curvy shape and the low front profile, headwinds can really make your car work very hard.

Back home, I put Towed Haul back on the driveway in one fluid movement, and did absolutely no backwarding and forwarding to get her straight, which is probably a first for me. Like hitching up, though, after this long I really ought to be able back the old girl up accurately.

So, that was the first trip of the year. The hitch receiver stood up to the test, the exhaust system failed to melt any plastic bags in the trunk, all the Airstream's systems functioned as they should, and we didn't experience anything out of the ordinary. Except, that is, that we ran out of fresh water on the morning of the last day. These things happen.

The weather was uncommonly warm for mid-May, too, which caught not just us on the hop, but all the plants and water sources in our yard at home. Still who's going to complain about sunshine?

Our next run out will be in June, although I think I might blog the non-Airstream trip next week, as a counterpoint to the usual. See you then.

First Of The Season - Part III

Rondeau Park - X marks the spot - where we camp

 

Day three started slowly and continued in that vein. Despite every day’s weather forecast being for thunderstorms and rain, it had been storm-free since we arrived. I do understand that such storms are incredibly local, where we can be dry and warm in Rondeau, but not ten kilometres away there could be a deluge. I suppose we’d been lucky thus far. Wednesday was cooler with quite a wind blowing up from the south-west, a wind that had brought all the wind and kite surfers out onto Rondeau Bay.

The day’s primary activity was to walk all the “loops”, the roads around the campground, and size up every potential camping spot, with a view to future camping expeditions. We’d come armed with a lovely, printed map, courtesy of Ontario Parks, and a set of Dollar Store highlighter pens that singularly refused to work properly on the map’s shiny paper. It didn’t daunt us, though, as we strode off in the sunshine. The sites within the Provincial Parks are not like those you get at commercial campgrounds in that they’re usually just a scrap of land carved out from the woods. They don’t have hard “pads” to park on, and are rarely flat, so choosing one requires an eye for what will work for us, plus some practical stuff like shade, traffic, and how far from the electrical pillar you’ll likely be. After surveying all ninety or so usable sites, we only had ten definites and seven maybes, which shows just how darned picky we can be. To be fair, most of the sites we rejected we did so because of the shade issue. Nice sites but likely a bit warm should the weather be like it has been on this trip. Still, it was good to wander around and see what was available.

On that note I should take the time to say, again, just how lucky we are to have this wonderful park so close to us. It’s on a spit of land that juts out into Lake Erie and is home to one of the last stands of Carolinian forest in North America. Because of its position and its indigenous flora and fauna, it’s a regular stopping off point for migratory birds, where they can feed and rest. It’s also home to a ton of plants, insects and animals, from Coyote to Turtle, Deer to Squirrel, and Raccoon to Chipmunk. Indeed, as I write this, there’s a Chipmunk three feet away from me searching for food at the edge of our camp mat. Delightful. Not so delightful is the army of biting bugs, but of course they’re bird and bat food so I’m reasonably happy to be part of the food chain. Ticks, and the accompanying Lyme Disease, are a problem here, but they are all over this part of the country, so we simply remain vigilant and enjoy the outdoors anyway.

We did chat about our trip next week, not an Airstream trip but a run over to Fremont in Michigan to meet up with some distant cousins of mine. I made the fatal error of looking at the family tree website before supper, just checking out the family connections to those cousins, and I ended up falling down another rabbit hole, updating new hints from Ancestry.com and creating fancy graphics to explain what “Fourth Cousin, Once Removed” looks like. The call of the wild, or rather supper, hauled me back out again and I put the computer down, which was a sensible move.

We sat out in the Pleasure Dome again while the darkness fell. The birdsong was a joy to listen to, and as DW pointed out, it stopped, mostly, almost all at once. There was still the honking of the geese to be heard, and last night we heard the elusive Whippoorwill, a bird that hunts insects at night and has a call, a repeated call, that really does sound like they’re saying “whippoorwill” over and over again. That was a first for us. As we sat, we watched the flashes of lightning out over the lake but heard no thunder. The weather app’s radar function showed a long band of thunderstorms heading up from the south west, but a good distance to the south of us, pretty much over Cleveland on the lake’s south shore. Lucky Cleveland.

Day four will be packing up day, as three nights is all our waste tanks can stand. I don’t have the inclination to drag the Airstream over to the dump station and bring it back, nor do I want a “Blue Boy”, a plastic tank on wheels that you can decant your onboard waste into and walk it over to the dump station. I have no idea how you’d keep one of those things clean, really, so unless we have an onsite sewer connection, three nights is our maximum stay. Until then, we’re looking forward to another early night, and relishing the relatively cool evening.

The First Of The Season - Part II

 

Day two started quietly, although there was evidence of a fair bit of rain through the night in the shape of a mass of tree debris covering every flat surface outside, and a wet Pleasure Dome and picnic table also gave the game away. That said, the sun was climbing in the sky and the temperatures also, as I sat outside and performed my ritual coffee making ceremony.  We live in a part of the world where getting up early is considered a virtue, so there were plenty of people out walking their dogs or cycling to the wash house, so I was far from alone.

As I mentioned earlier, we had nothing on our To Do list, so apart from my other ritual, walking over to the Comfort Station (what a lovely euphemism) for a shower, it was a quiet and uneventful start to the day. I’ve been using Provincial Park showers for many years now and every time I’m struck by what a crazy design the shower stalls are. It’s nice that you’re in a little cubicle, and it’s nice that there’s an area to dry off in, but the shower head is on the wrong wall. When it’s in use, the water sprays out into the drying area, so no matter where you put your shoes, they always get wet, and there is no dry floor anywhere. I often think that someone had the plans back to front, but the design is consistent across all the Ontario Parks I’ve been to. The showers were obviously designed by someone who was never going to use them, which is a common theme these days – see Tower Blocks and School Buses. The other moan I have is that the Park’s management have stopped using a professional cleaning company in the Comfort Stations and rely on the summer intake of students who become “Park Rangers”, to do the work. It’s not that the showers are horrible, they're not, but they’re not cleaned well and there is always a residue of sand in the shower pan. I get it that they want to save money, but the fees go up every year, and the service goes down. It’s sad but true. It would help if the receipts for the campground, and at the Parks’ gates, and from the Parks’ stores, were used to offset the costs, but that’s not how Government things work. Everything in the park, from roads maintenance to shower cleaning is looked at as a cost, and all the receipts end up in a central account back at Queens Park, which means it’s gouge the paying customer time, unfortunately. Anyway, enough of the social commentary.

Before lunch we did have a walk to explore the flora and fauna. There are a lot of oak trees here (Carolinian Forest rules), and a fair few species thereof. We had an idea that we might like a native oak in our garden at home, but like the venerable English Oak, all the native species grow to at least sixty feet tall, which probably won’t work in a suburban front yard. Still, it’s a pleasant task to check out the trees. We had a brief walk along the sandy beach, sadly strewn with the detritus of celebratory balloons, and plastic bags, then headed back to the camp site as the bugs were beginning to bite a bit.

Lunch was taken in the Airstream, an attempt was made to spend some time in the Pleasure Dome but that was aborted on the grounds that neither of us were in the mood for a sauna, then it was nap time. I could feel a bit of head coming on so went and lay on the bed, like the good old codger that I am, and slept for over an hour. I will claim that to be part of the decompressing regime, and it worked, because I felt a whole lot better for the experience.

Come four-thirty, we repaired to the Camp Store to get ice cream. Poor old DW took one lick of the pile of non-dairy ice cream perched atop her cone and the whole heap of it fell on the floor. To give the store staff their due, they did replace said ice cream, free of charge, so DW wiped away her tears and ate the new heap on the walk back to the camp site.

Supper was a home favourite, rice and “Tuna Gloop” (tinned tuna mixed with tinned mushroom soup, sometimes with peas, occasionally with crisps, but this evening neither peas or crisps) for me, and rice and homemade curry for DW. The food was great, and we were able to use our little rice cooking gizmo that we carry in the Airstream, but the cleanup wasn’t so easy. Washing up in a tiny sink and being concerned about what goes into the wastewater tank made it an easy thing to say let’s not do that meal again in the trailer.

As the evening rolled around and the temperatures dropped, we were able to make use of the Pleasure Dome, with the aid of a bug lantern and some beer and wine. We bought new chairs to go inside the Pleasuredome and I have to say that they’re very comfortable indeed. Sitting out there in the fading light we saw two Raccoons, or maybe it was the same Raccoon twice, ambling through our camp site. They’re not cuddly creatures but they do look cheeky with their little robbers’ masks. Mind you, leave any food out and they’ll definitely rob you.

It was a much warmer evening than last, and we both knew that it may be a bit sticky in the night, even with the constantly forecast storms lurking on the horizon. You can’t sleep in these Airstreams with the air conditioning system running because it’s just too noisy, so we opened as many windows as was feasible and I went to bed. Wednesday was looking as busy as Tuesday had been, which was excellent news.

The First Of The Season

 

Well, here we are, the first trip of the season. It’s the last day of the long Victoria Day Weekend and us retirees have arrived at our other home, site 16 at Rondeau Provincial Park, amid what we Brits would call a heatwave. It’s high twenties (Celsius), not a breath of wind and, having set up the Airstream (and the Pleasure Dome) I am bathed in sweat and hiding inside the air-conditioned camper. I don’t think I’d be any wetter if it had been raining.

It's been an odd week of preparation. The garden, the shower, the water in the basement, and a trip to Hamilton all conspired to rob us of time to get sorted out, but here we are. Fortunately, the camper was clean, and I’d only had to give the outside a wash and the floor inside a wee bit of attention from the mop and she was good to go. Certainly, we had to put back those things we take out for the winter hibernation, and I did some little bits of maintenance, but she was more or less camping ready by the time Monday rolled around.

Hitching up isn’t the drama it once was because we know what we’re doing, and given that this is our fourteenth season, we really should have the hang of it by now. There’s always that little bit of worry, though, when you lift the tongue jack and let the car take the weight of the trailer, and the worry is repeated when you test the trailer brakes, and when you hit the first bump in the road. Of course, this time, with the new exhaust, we were hoping not to fuse any more plastic bags to the lining of the trunk, and we didn’t, which was a bonus.

Most of us have been behind a caravan/trailer as it lumbers down the road, so I do understand what it’s like, but we managed to collect a few eager beavers behind us as we rolled towards Rondeau. It’s not that I was driving slowly though, I was on the speed limit, but you know how it is, you see a trailer and it has to be passed. Most of those that did pass us didn’t really outpace us, either, which was a bit odd. Ah well, that’s driving in Ontario for you.

On arrival at the park, we had to sit patiently in the line to get to the waste tank dump station, which doubles as the water fill station, too. Nearly everyone was dumping, that is leaving after the long weekend, so the water fill island was free, allowing me to scoot around and approach from the other end, and without upsetting everyone else in the queue. Water tank filled, we still had to dump the waste tanks, part full as they were with anti-freeze and flush water from winter storage. I chatted briefly with a man who was just emptying out his big Fifth-wheeler’s black tank but had to make a sharp exit as it smelled like he’d been staying the weekend with a herd of incontinent buffalo. Emptying the tanks is never a great part of camping.

Given that this is our first trip of the season, surprisingly I did manage to get the Airstream well positioned for the back up on to the site, which was a good start. We took our time to back in and with hardly any wiggling around, set ourselves up with only the tiniest bit of sideways lean. It wasn’t the mechanics of parking that was the issue, it was the heat. Temperature in the high twenties isn’t really seriously hot, but I don’t think we’re used to the heat yet this year, and it was humid, too, as it often is down here by the water. We had a bit of a time crunch as well, with Emma and Charlie about arrive at any second. Setting up camp can be a bit of a chore, but it gets fraught with frustration when there’s a three-year-old trying to help. They did arrive and we did finish setting up, but I was a big ball of sweat and irritation by the time we were done, so DW whisked the young ‘uns off to the Camp Store for ice cream while I sat inside, cooled down and decompressed. All praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for inventing air conditioning for travel trailers.

Supper was taken, another ice cream was taken, and the kids were hustled back into their car so they could go home and leave us in peace. We in turn broke out the booze, sat out under the awning and relished the copious birdsong echoing through the woods, and stayed doing that until the bugs started to bite, and then we repaired to the Pleasure Dome, our fancy new bug tent (it really did take just a couple of minutes to erect this time), to continue the relaxation. The weather was looking a bit grim as the light faded, with forecasts of thunderstorms and heavy rain, so the somewhat fragile ZipDee awning on the Airstream was rolled in for the night, and the tables and chairs put in the car. We left the Pleasure Dome up, though, as it was securely pegged in place. An early night coincided with the start of the rain, but we both crashed out quickly despite the thunder and the hammering of the rain on the roof.

A not unsuccessful first day, or rather afternoon, and we survived the hot and humid weather. Tomorrow we are on our own and the number of things we have do is resolutely stuck at zero.  Happy days.