Last Run. Short Season. Tuesday

 A different start to the second day's camping, at least for me, as I jumped into the car and headed back into town. At 7am!

I had a breakfast appointment with the world's greatest school bus drivers (it says here), but I wanted to do double up the run with a haircut in preparation for our travel to the UK. It had been raining in the night, quite significantly if the puddles in the campground were anything to go by, and yet I hadn't been woken up by it. Anyone who's been inside an Airstream in the rain will know what it's like to be inside a drum; it's very noisy, but clearly I have become used to it.

That said, on the run back to town, just a few kilometres north of the park, the roads were dry. So, it was localised rain then.

While in town, I dropped in at home to shower and get a change of clothes, then headed over to the Links Golf Course for breakfast. I did get my hair cut afterwards, a process I do not enjoy, although I always like the end result. Then it was back to Rondeau.

We went out for a walk, given that the rain was holding off, but didn't stay out as long as we'd have liked. In the summer it can get very "buggy" in the park, although it's not usually so bad in the autumn. Unfortunately, the east side of the peninsular seemed to be under attack from some horrible little flies that were, to say the least, a bit nippy - as in bitey. We met a woman pushing a baby in a buggy and the poor baby was getting bitten, this despite there being a net over the buggy itself. We put up with the nipping for only a few minutes before retreating to the safety of the trailer and its nip-free environment.

 

 

The remainder of the day was spent in full relaxation mode, doing a whole lot of very little, which was the aim of the trip after all. 

Just as the night was drawing in, and with the prospect of some heavy rain and thunderstorms, we decided to take the gazebo down and stow it in the car, it being largely dry at this point. I say largely dry, but what rain and mud it had on it was quickly transferred to me and my clothes as I manhandled the beast into the car. Still, we didn't want the thing damaged in a storm, nor did we relish having to take it down wet, so it was looking like a wise decision.

The opportunity to spend time simply unwinding should never be underestimated. Sometimes to sit and do absolutely nothing is good for the mind and the body. There are many people who are not happy unless they're busy, and many that think to be constantly busy is a virtue. Well, that's not us thankfully, and we both enjoyed just sitting around chatting and idly browsing the Internet for, well, nothing of any great value. We didn't even fire up the TV for a movie, but put our brains in neutral and relaxed. 

That is the essence of quick and easy camping.

Last Run. Short Season. Monday.

 

Here we are, back at Rondeau, and back on site 16 of the South Campground. Same old, same old, but easy when you're in need of uncomplicated camping.

It's been a short season for us, with other travel at either end of the summer, and our usual self-imposed hiatus when we don't camp in July and August. I say self-imposed, but since COVID it's been impossible to get camping reservations at Provincial Parks during the school holidays, unless you're prepared to get up in the middle of night when the booking system releases the sites, which I'm not. There's the double irritant there of some 44% of booked camping reservations that are never taken up, which is a product of people over-booking blindly, usually to make sure they get something, then being happy to swallow the cost of not taking up the site. But I digress.

We're heading off to the UK in a couple of weeks time so after this trip we'll clean Towed Haul up and put her into winter storage, around a month early. The camping season in this balmy part of Canada now runs into the first couple of weeks of November, but we've opted not to camp late this year,

September's weather has been hot and dry. I was in the pool up until last week, and still watering this year's new tree plantings, such was the fine weather. So, our first real rain came at the weekend, and now we're looking at a very wet couple of days here at Rondeau. Still, a wet day's camping always beats a dry day's working.

We hadn't really cleaned the trailer up since the last trip, but I re-sanitized the fresh water tank, and cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, even if I didn't get the duster or the vacuum cleaner on the job. I had worked hard at maintaining the batteries over the summer, and even though I'd hooked her up to the house's power a week before so that I could run the fridge up ahead of time, I was pleased to note that when I hit the electric jack button, she sprang to life without a hiccup. 

When you've not been camping for a while, there's always a nagging thought that you're missing something, or not doing something right, but we loaded up, and hitched up, all without incident. We use something called a Weight Distribution System on our trailer hitch, and put simply it acts a little like the handles on a wheelbarrow and pushes the weight at the hitch ball both forwards and backwards, to spread the load over all the available axles. In order to get the system attached, I have to drop the tongue of the trailer onto the ball of the hitch on the car, lock it in place, then lift car and trailer up together a couple of inches using the trailer's jack so that I can get the mechanism hooked up. Dropping it back down and letting the weight distribution system take the strain is always a worrying time because if anything is going to break, that's the time it will do it. Happily, it all went well.

All loaded and hitched, we put our grandson into his seat in the back of the car with strict instructions to watch the trailer and let me know if it became detached. He's only four, but even he didn't fall for that one.

On the way down to Rondeau, we usually negotiate Indian Creek Road, just on the south side of town. I think the various tranches of sewer work in the street has made the road sink in places, and watching the trailer in my driver's mirror as it lurches up and down over the dips and rises in the road surface is quite alarming. Still, both car and trailer seem to deal with it.

I think we must have had the wind at our backs this day as the drive down to the park was very smooth and easy. I record the gas/petrol usage as we go, and it bottomed out at 17.4 litres per 100 kilometres by the time we arrived at the park. That looks seriously scary as it's more than twice the usual consumption, but it can go up around the 20-21 mark if the weather's against us. It's a fact that steep hills don't really bother the tow vehicle when it's under load, but driving any length of time into a stiff headwind really puts some strain on it, and the gas mileage suffers. Given that the Airstream is quite aerodynamic compared to other trailers, I hate to think about the gas mileage you'd get with a taller, flatter-fronted model.

Down at the park we filled up the fresh water tank, then dumped out what was sloshing around in the waste tanks so that we could start completely empty. We camp three nights at a stretch, usually, and the tanks will deal with three showers for the missus, and all the general toilet and water usage that ensues. We are careful with water consumption, not least because there's a finite amount of water, and a finite amount of capacity in the waste tanks. However, we manage the fine balance between supply and waste quite well these days. One little trick you can do is to tip any washing up water you have into the toilet. That has a two-fold advantage of both keeping your toilet solids from drying out in the Black tank, and spreading your waste Grey water across the two waste holding tanks. 

Backing onto the site was fairly easy, which is one of the reasons we like this site, but we readjusted because there was a lot of Poison Ivy in the bush right next to the trailer and, as I have to get down the side of the trailer when setting up, we thought it wise to move the old girl a couple of feet away. Again, we do this sort of thing a lot when we're camping, so repositioning the trailer isn't a tough job for us anymore. I should perhaps add for the benefit of my European readers that these North American trailers weigh a couple of tons and have to be moved around using the tow vehicle; there's none of your grabbing it by the handles and manhandling into position.

Because we had Charlie with us (his mum had followed us down in her car), I strung up our fairy lights inside the camping gazebo, and set a camp fire, which is something we rarely do. With an inquisitive four-year-old around, you have to be super-vigilant with a fire burning, but we cooked some vegan sausages over the flames and no one was harmed in the process. Of course, we all stank of wood smoke, but I guess that's what camping's about.

Once the young people had left us, we settled into our grown-ups' camping routine of relaxing, relaxing and more relaxing. The beer and wine flowed, as did the chat, and we settled in for a few quiet days on our own. The weather had stayed dry all day, too, despite the forecast saying rain. Sometimes these things just work for you.