Rondeau in June (1 of 4)

 

Monday

We’re back on the road. When I say road, I mean the road to Rondeau Provincial Park, just forty-four kilometres away, but it is still a road.

Rondeau again, site sixteen again; goodness, we don’t like change. But why would we want to change? A short hop, hardly any driving, and a beautiful park to enjoy, there are all the ingredients of a nice couple of days away, and without too much effort.

We’d booked this trip in April, wedged in between a run over to Michigan, and Charlie’s birthday, and it’ll be our last trip before the schools finish for the summer vacation. We tend not to camp in July and August, partly because that’s the time working parents get to take their kids away, but also because we never plan far enough ahead to be able to book a campground during the school holidays, such is the demand. Anyway, I refuse to be up at midnight the day the sites are released for booking, just to fight with a load of eager beavers who block book sites and then don’t use them (some 46% of booked camping sites in Ontario Parks are not occupied, despite them having been paid for in advance).

This trip was somewhat lacking in its preparation. Indeed, at 0930hrs this morning I hadn’t even opened up the Airstream, let alone packed anything in it. To complicate matters we had decided to keep the trip from Charlie as he tends to get a bit “helpful” when we’re prepping, and just to make it interesting I had to attend a doctor’s appointment mid-morning. Ah well, there’s no real rush for us retired peeps.

We were ready to roll at twelve, but decided to hang around for lunch, and to re-water a load of new plants in the garden. A keen north wind had brought the ambient temperatures right down, so I wasn’t my usual sweaty mess as we exacted a surprisingly slick hitch up process, which was a real bonus. At a little after two, I let the emergency brake off the Toadmobile and we rolled gently into the road, you remember, the one I mentioned in the opening paragraph. The first thing I do as I roll onto the road is to check the manual override on the trailer brake controller, just to make sure the binders are working. The brakes on Airstreams are old fashioned drum brakes but are operated electrically using the car’s brake pedal at one end, and a series of magnets at the other. There’s a lot of scope for things to go wrong in that system, so a pull on the manual override is essential before heading out. Yup, the brakes were working.

Actually, there are a lot of checks you should do before hauling a couple of tons of trailer onto the public road, and I’m pretty disciplined at doing them. I did forget to connect the emergency breakaway cord last time (it’s a device that if your trailer gets separated from your trailer, the cord pulls a pin out of a control box and the brakes are automatically applied to the trailer’s wheels). It was all good this time though.

As well as being quite cool for the time of year, it was also quite windy on the drive down. Side winds will make the whole combination, trailer and tow vehicle, feel like it’s being pushed off the road, although it’s comforting that both vehicles act as one and it’s easy to compensate for with a little tweak of the steering wheel. Head winds are the real problem, even with the slippery shape and low frontal area of the Airstream. The car has to work so much harder when towing into a headwind, and goodness knows how the less slippery and taller trailers cope.

Down at the park we took on water and drained down the waste tanks, although all they contained was a small amount of liquid from my efforts at cleaning the shower, sinks, and toilets. Obviously we drain our waste tanks down before leaving the park, too, because you don’t want to leave any nasty stuff in them. Once drained, we drop a bit of water in and add some tank treatment to neutralise any bacteria, and to make sure they don’t smell. There is a huge debate in the RV community about what you use to clean and/or neutralise the tanks, ranging from gallons of bleach to Dawn washing up liquid. We have used an enzyme-based treatment since the Airstream was new and have never had the dreaded “smelly tanks”. The enzyme-based stuff is also kind to the joints and seals, unlike bleach, so we’ve also not had any leakage issues.

Checking in at the campsite office, I took great pleasure in seeing the significant Seniors’ discount applied to our camping fee; being sixty-five can have its benefits. No one has yet challenged me to prove my age, so I guess I don’t look as youthful as I think I do. At Ontario Parks, they always ask if they should let people know our site number if they should come looking. I always say, “Only if it’s not the Police”, but I suppose it’s a genuine thing, and you may want to remain undisturbed should someone be looking for you, much like in a hotel.

Given that this was a Monday, the campground was looking quite full, and while mostly old farts like us, there were a few young people around. Ever since COVID hit, camping has become extremely popular. We’re surrounded by nice new RVs in the park, and it gets ever harder to get sites booked, but I’m not complaining, while its nice to have a quiet campground, it can be quite nice to hear people around and smell the smoke from many, many campfires. The air pollution might be terrible, but at least people are (sort of) getting back to nature.

Like the slick hitching procedure earlier in the day, the parking and unhitching was similarly slick, and again the coolness of the weather was a real boon. Then we had to erect our little portable gazebo, The Pleasure Dome, and things went sharply downhill. It does “pop up” quite quickly, but the floor mat we use doesn’t match the gazebo’s hexagon shape, and we spent an age just moving the gazebo and the floor mat to get the best position. That took longer than the unhitching.

Anyway, all set up and in preparation for supper, we had a nice walk around the campground (trying to stay in the sunshine for the warmth), and sat on the beach for a little while, just enjoying our surroundings. I keep saying it, but we’re so lucky to have this gem of a park right on our doorstep.

The evening in the the Pleasure Dome was shortened a little as the air temperature dipped down to 11C and we were getting a little chilled. Still, we were happy listening to the bird song, and watching the Chipmunks go about their business. Back in the Airstream, we did fire up the furnace for a few minutes to take the edge off the chill and broke out the duvet to put on the bed. The temperatures looked set to go down to 6 or 7C overnight, not really June weather, but Towed Haul is reasonably well equipped to deal with any weather, so we turned in prepared for a cool night, but looking forward to a few quiet days.