Camping

In order to celebrate our newfound hot water, we decided that it would be fun to replay our past week's experience of no hot water and go camping. We hopped in the truck with a few friends in convoy and headed to Thunder Lake Provincial Park. We got there just in time to get the last site that would fit all our vehicles and one tent. This is just as well, since there would have been an extra $20 per night PER TENT!!! For tents over one.

incidentally, if we had, say, three people camping each in a one-man backpacking tent, all on foot, we would have paid $65 per night in site fees. The people in the next site had 3 full sized pickup trucks and a 35 foot trailer, with air conditioning and satellite dish, and had a full dozen people staying there, all for $25 per night. The site is the site, no matter how many tents are on it, it should be one site one fee, anything else is absurd.

Needless to say, however, it was a successful trip. We ate and drank ourselves stupid, played crib and president, and generally chilled out around a campfire. I also discovered that my Coleman stove doesn't need new seals - it is about 20 years old and had been in storage with no fuel in it for about 19 of those 20 years, and the last time I took it out it seeped gas around the seals. No longer, however, sitting full of naphtha for a few months has reinvigorated the leather in the seals, and the thing should run trouble free for many years to come. Heck, it's probably the last camping stove I'll ever need to buy. We cooked a bunch of good stuff, both over the fire and on the stove, and we relaxed in one of the few totally dead cellphone zones I know.

Once we returned, we divvied up the remaining food and headed off to our respective showers to de-stink ourselves. I learned how to play crib again, which probably makes the fifth time or so. I also learned how to bake muffins on a campfire, and that you shouldn't drink red wine that had been lying in the sun for several hours.