Airstream Camping 2025 - Last Day (This Trip)

I had a bit of a rough night, and realised that the temperatures outside, and in, had suddenly shot up. DW had the A/C going at some time past two in the morning, and I awoke at four, but just couldn't get back to sleep. I retired to the couch at the front of the Airstream, set up a podcast on my phone, stuffed some earbuds in my ears and settled back for the final instalment of the Fidel Castro story. I awoke an hour later having missed the entire episode, but it was nearing six o'clock by then so I felt decidedly happier about my sleep, or lack of it.

It was hot, too. I went over to the Comfort Station and found that my elation at having a clean shower stall the yesterday and the day before was to be short lived. The floor of the vestibule area was clean, but the shower pan was full of sand, and there were the ever-present hairs and smears on the walls. Standards have been going downhill for a while, ever since the park ditched its contract cleaners and left the hygiene work to the kids they employ as uniformed park staff. I sent the Ontario Parks HQ a complaint form after the last trip, and thought things were on the up after seeing clean stalls earlier in the week. But things had not improved, at least not by much. I get it, uniformed teenagers who think they're going to have an exciting job in the park really don't want to be cleaning the Comfort Stations. I put the blame squarely at the feet of Ontario Parks and their abysmal attempts at cost cutting. I wouldn't mind so much if the parks were free, or a bit cheaper, but we pay serious money to camp in the park, and I reckon the paying customers deserve better. 

Still on the weather, the forecast had some rain in it, so I dismantled and stowed the bug tent, its chairs and its mat, in the car. I didn't really want to be dealing with it while it was wet. But, as has been the pattern this summer, the rain did not materialise, although the air was very hot and muggy and I was wet with sweat after what was only minor exertion.

The rest of the morning was spent doing a slow tidy up inside and spending an age deciding whether to stay right up until the 2pm check-out time. By the time we committed to actually preparing the Airstream for travel, it was almost one o'clock anyway. As I've said before, we are getting much better at setting up and breaking down our camp, and it seemed like no time at all that we were hitching the Toadmobile to the front of Towed Haul. I had occasion to use my shiny new aluminium step ladder that I had brought with me. Securing the awnings for travel can be done from the ground with the long pokey rod that's supplied, but nothing beats climbing up on a step ladder and working on the securing mechanism close up and with my hands. It's only taken fourteen seasons of camping for me to finally get a lightweight ladder for the purpose.

Hitching up is getting traumatic these days because our hitch receiver on the car is seriously rusty now and I don't know who long it'll take the strain, and it is a strain with the tongue weight of our camper; thank goodness for the weight distribution system. It's all been OK so far, so I keep my fingers crossed when hitching, but I probably should have had the whole thing replaced long ago. I will keep a close eye. There's a reason that I haven't replaced the hitch receiver up until now, and that may become apparent in the medium-term future. Watch this space.

Hitch worries aside, we dumped the tanks as usual and also as usual I was bitten by the myriad bugs that hang around the poop tank area. It was hot, too, which makes the already unpleasant task all the more nasty, both in the concentration of the inevitable smell, and in the general sweatiness.

The drive back was notable for the very strong wind, one that had been barely noticeable while we'd been tucked away in the campground. I could feel the crosswind tugging at the trailer when we were at speed and was relieved to think that I'd tightened up the anti-sway bars properly. People look at our tow vehicle and imagine that we can't do hills, or go fast, which is not the case. What we do struggle with is wind. It'll trash the gas mileage if you're driving into it, make the engine and the transmission get very hot, and if there's a cross wind, you thank your luck stars for a decent anti-sway setup. When we bought the Airstream, we were told by those that know that driving into a headwind all day is going to tax your tow vehicle far more than hills will, and they were right. Fortunately our run today was only forty-minutes.

Our next jaunt in Towed Haul isn't until late August, so we have a few weeks of non-trailering. There are a few days booked in hotel in St Catherines before that, so I'll probably document the trip here as well. Until then, happy camping!

Airstream Camping 2025 - Lazy Days

As anticipated, we had a lazy day today, Wednesday. Well, mostly, and the car didn't move, which is always a bonus.

I was awake early, showered early in a surprisingly clean and sweet-smelling stall in the Comfort Station, and was just settling down to write some nonsense for this blog when I was seized by the idea that I should go for walk. So, at eight-fifteen I sauntered over to the beach, took my slides off and proceeded to walk along the water's edge for an hour. I had come prepared, though, with a wide-brimmed hat and a shirt with a collar that I could raise up to protect my neck from the sun, because even at that hour, it was getting warm. There was a brisk breeze coming off the lake that made walking quite pleasant, but it's that kind of windy weather that leads to sunburn, so I was glad of that collared shirt. 

I walked half-an-hour southwards, and then half-an-hour northwards to get back to my original position. The waves were noisy on the shore, but it didn't detract from the cry of the gulls and the shrill "peeping" of the Killdears (A subset of the Plover family really, but Killdear is the local name, apparently so named for their distinctive call. I'd always thought they were Lapwings, but the Internet came up with the full difference between a Plover and a Lapwing, and should you be having trouble sleeping then you can read all about it here.). There are about twelve kilometres of beach from one end to the other at Rondeau, and while I only walked about two kilometres each way, I still saw just six other people in the hour or so I was out. Once you get past the public beach access points, it's only those that live in the cottages on Lakeside Road that are close to the beach, which is probably why the place always seems so deserted, even in summer.

The lake water was warm, I think because it's quite shallow hereabouts, and is great for kids to swim in, assuming you can look past the fact that it's not necessarily very clean water. The sand is fine-grained, although it is filled with all manner of detritus from the lake. Unlike the beaches on the edge of oceans, there's no tide to take stuff away, so there are whole trees washed up, goodness knows from where. But, it's a great beach, and as I say every time I visit, we are so lucky to live close by.

Then I settled into the serious business of doing not much of anything. I was getting my book read, which was nice, but still spent far too much time tooling around in Facebook and Bluesky. When we're at Rondeau we use our cell phones as hotspots for our laptops, and given that we have masses of data included in our (pricey) wireless family package, we never have to worry about breaching our data limit.  Now that the screen hinge on my Windows laptop has finally given up the ghost, I took the Hewlett Packard Chromebook laptop this time, one that runs a version of Android as its operating system. Given that it was just a fraction of the price of a full-blown laptop, it performed very well. It's an odd little machine, though, and whoever designed this particular model didn't test it properly because quite often you can't read the grey letters and numbers on the silver keys. Maybe that was why it was so cheap?

Continuing with our rock 'n' roll lifestyle, both DW and I settled in for an afternoon nap; well, we are Seniors. The trouble was that it was past six by the time we woke up and we'd promised ourselves a joint run (walk, definitely not a run) to the beach. Still a bit groggy from the sleep, we staggered beachward and did make while still standing upright. The wind had died down quite a bit, and there were still a few people about, but it was still glorious on the water's edge.

After a supper of stew, a vegan-friendly stew, we sat out in the bug tent, under the string of coloured lights I'd rigged in there for Charlie, and chatted as the daylight disappeared. The park has been busy this week and I'd expected the campground to be noisy, but everyone seemed to be settled in by ten, and we were some of the later people out and about. We took a minute to view the stars, mostly because the light pollution isn't too bad on the lake's shore, and goodness, aren't they magnificent? Mind you, there seemed to be a lot of aircraft navigation lights in among the celestial bodies. 

Tomorrow, Thursday, is packing up day. I love being out in the Airstream, but it's always nice to go home, too. There will be a lot of work between now and getting home, and the weather is promising a scorcher, so wish us luck.

Airstream Camping 2025 - July Dry Days

Tuesday dawned, dry and sunny, and this despite a cooler night than we've had for a while. Being just a few yards from Lake Erie will reduce the temperatures a little, and it's good to be cooler at night anyway, and it brings no temptation to fire up Towed Haul's noisy air conditioner.

As is my usual practice when camping, I woke early (not that I wanted to), and sat outside with coffee and a book. I don't do that often enough at home, and I really should. The campground was quiet, strangely so given how full it is at the moment, but it certainly aided my concentration on my book. As the time ticked on, though, people started to move, and a steady stream of bicycles moved past our site.

Talking of bicycles, it's been a growing trend for people to use electrically-assisted bicycles rather than the traditional leg powered vehicles when they're moving around the campground. The bikes look bulky, often have big fat tires (a fashion rather than a necessity I think), and are equipped with disk brakes front and rear that wouldn't look out of place on a motorcycle. They are also undoubtedly expensive. The thing is, I don't really see the point of them. If you're unable to pedal a bicycle for some reason, then maybe they're a good thing, but the majority of people I've seen riding these bikes have looked perfectly capable of pedalling. Perhaps I'm being unfair and everyone who has an electric bike really can't pedal a regular one, but I'm not convinced. So if you can pedal a regular bike, why use an electrically-assisted version? Laziness? Fashion? Status? I don't know, it's probably a mix of all of those things, but for the able-bodied, for zipping around a campground, what is the point? Ah, it's just me being grumpy.

It has been very dry this summer, and despite constant threats of storms and heavy rain, Rondeau Park is looking parched. The threats, of course, simply have not materialised. Our little site here has turned to sand, which I've not seen before, and everything is dusty. I'd imagine that the standing water that is normally found deep in the woods here is still there, this spit of land is surrounded by water, fresh, non-salt water after all, but it is unusual for the non-wooded areas to look so dry. We have been here, even in summer, when everything has been wet and soggy, so I guess it's all cyclical, and I am enjoying having the awning out, unmolested by wind and rain. We leave on Thursday, and the forecast looks set fair up to and beyond that day, so I will make the most of it and enjoy the dryness. I will have to re-read this blog entry, though, the next time we're sat here in the Park and the rain is pouring down.

We chatted with some of our campground neighbours last night, and found out once again that the world can be a small place. Links were established over who knew who and what company did what, and it appeared that Mrs. Camper's work crossed over some work my brother does. As I said, it's a small world. We were also talking about what made Canadians Canadian, and Mrs. Camper came up with "Don't Insult the Butter Tart" if you're going to bond with a Canadian. That's as good advice as I've ever heard, and something I will remember, so think on if you're about to bond with anyone from Canada.

We spent a lot of our day at home when we should have been at Rondeau. Dear Wife had an appointment in town, and for various other reasons we didn't get back to Towed Haul until well into the evening. At least we were able to get some water onto the tomato plants, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. Please note the heavy use of sarcasm there.

I turned in relatively early again, but Dear Wife fell asleep on the couch and was snoring gently at 2:30am, with the lights still on. Such a rock and roll lifestyle. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is a down day. We are doing nothing that isn't camping related, and the car is staying put. We'll see how that pans out.

Airstream Camping 2025 - July Summer Days

Camping again, only this time it's in the summer holidays. We thought we'd given up rubbing shoulders with the family crowds now that we're retired, but a slot came up at our favourite campground and it was too good to turn down. I thought that we might be the only seniors around but no, the place is full of them, and not all are accompanied by grandchildren either. It seems odd that when you have quiet campgrounds in May and June, and again in September and October, that any retirees would opt to camp when the younger families are scrabbling for sites; it seems almost unfair. It's not unlike seeing all the old geezers grocery shopping on a Saturday when they, we, have had all week to do it. I don't know, maybe Ontario Parks should drop the Senior's discount for July and August to give the young 'uns a chance? Anyway, we're here, we're seniors, and it's very warm.

This past week we'd treated Towed Haul to a clean up inside and out, and she was gleaming. Or rather I thought she was gleaming. Being a total cheapskate, I'd used a pretend Chamois leather to wipe the water droplets off the skin of the trailer and it left horrible smear marks all over, which serves me right for being cheap. Not in my control, though, were the lovely birds that had crapped on the back of the camper; c'est la vie I guess.

Prepping to leave on Monday, we had set a departure time, but that disappeared into the Coleslaw Vortex. As I'm sure you know, the Coleslaw Vortex is when your thrifty wife decides to use up some veggies that are laying around to make a Coleslaw, when you should have been hitching up. Frugality is important, and leaving on time for a short run to Rondeau really isn't, so I'm not complaining, and we were only thirty-five minutes off schedule. These things happen.

At Rondeau, we hit a line of other trailers at the water fill station. It's not the best idea to travel with a full freshwater tank, not least because even with our little camper, that near-fifty gallons of water weighs quite a lot. So most people will travel dry, or almost dry, and fill up at the campground, at least at Provincial Parks that don't have a water supply on the sites themselves. There were two trailers ahead of us at the single water point, and it turned out that the one filling had only just started. We waited, with the car engine running to keep its A/C going in the heat, and we waited. While the first one was filling, another trailer not in the line pulled up on the opposite side of the water point and started to unfurl a hose. There is indeed a tap at the base of the water point, and he connected his hose to that while the first fellow was still filling and started to fill his own tank. While I applaud his ingenuity, he had both jumped the line up, and made a very slow water point run at half-speed for the guy still filling from the proper water point. That's not really cricket, is it? Still, there was nothing we could do. While we waited for the person in front of us to fill, I emptied the black and grey water tanks of the residue from last week's cleaning efforts, and we continued to wait. Goodness, that trailer must have had a massive water tank because it took absolutely ages to fill. All in all we waited a good forty minutes before we could fill, and by that point I'm thinking that one watering point really isn't sufficient. 

There was a reason for my growing anxiety, and that was the fact that Emma and Charlie were due on site, and we had effectively lost our whole time buffer. Trying to set up while Charlie "helps" isn't easy, particularly in the heat, so we were rushing around and getting ever more flustered trying to beat their arrival. Sadly, we didn't quite make it. Curses!

Charlie wants everything at once, of course, so we had to finish setting up with the whirlwind around us. We did manage to get him away with his mother for a while, which enabled me to finish up, but on their return, things were back into rushing mode.

We had promised Charlie a fire and roasted marshmallows, so in the heat of the afternoon, he and I built up a kindling tower in the fire pit, set it ablaze and stacked some logs on top as the flames built up. It was a good fire, even if I do say so myself, but in the very hot sun it all seemed a bit unnecessary. DW had prepared some baking potatoes, in three layers of tin foil, so I positioned those at the base of the fire, while Emma and Charlie did their marshmallow thing. 

Now here's a Canadian thing I don't fully understand, S'mores. S'mores are sweet campfire treats that people go nuts for, but I just don't get. Take a Graham Cracker, put a square of milk chocolate on it, stand a freshly roasted marshmallow on the chocolate, then cover with another Graham Cracker. Squeeze the whole contraption together and eat it. The cracker crumbles, the melting chocolate goes everywhere, while your hands and mouth are covered in the sticky and crumby goo. Emma loves them, Charlie thinks he does, DW spills their contents all down her front and I look on uncomprehendingly. As I said, I don't really get it.

The upside of the fire, though, was three perfectly cooked baked potatoes. If you plan to cook in a fire, though, make sure you double or triple wrap the potatoes in tin foil, and turn them regularly. Oh, and a perfectly set fire helps as well - all that training with the Scouts wasn't wasted.

Once our visitors had departed, things settled down. We tidied the site up a bit, put a few things away, poured some drinks and retired to the bug tent for the evening. I'd strung some coloured lights up in there and it was quite jolly watching the light fade and listening to the campground quietening down. Despite the number of people here, by nine it was pretty quiet and while we couldn't see them, the Raccoons were abroad, if the noises outside were anything to go by. I hadn't intended to have an early night, but I was in bed by eleven, which is early for me, and in the Land of Nod almost immediately. 

Tuesday is going to be a bit of an odd day, but with fine weather forecast, I'm sure we'll make the most of it.