This camping trip had a little bit of all kinds of weather – something we’ve been going through all summer. Not on weekends when we’re home, the clouds only seem to come out when we’re going to be in a tent. We had a full day of solid rain, followed by a couple of beautiful days, a great canoe picnic and some hiking around the area.
We’ve definitely had some good practice at putting our tarps up this year. This is the fourth camping trip this year that had at least a solid day of heavy rain, and it went hard into the night. At least we had planned for it this time, putting up extra tarps in case things got nasty.
Since it was just sprinkling a bit, we headed out for a hike down by the lake, and then across the river and up into the mountains where it links up with the Trans Canada Trail. The pathway followed alongside the rushing river, and the kids discovered a trickling waterfall that they liked holding their hands out and let it drip on them. Big trees mostly covered us, so we didn’t realize how hard it was raining, so we started making our way home to make a nice warm campfire.
We woke up to a mostly sunny Saturday morning, so we decided to pack lunch and do a picnic somewhere out on the lake. We jumped in the canoe and paddled for almost an hour when we came across a great little beach, and we knew that was our lunch spot. We pulled the canoe out of the water and proceeded to interrupt a lovely couple’s quiet getaway by joining them on the beach. After eating our lunch, we jumped back in the canoe to fight the lake’s infamous afternoon wind on the paddle back, which seemed to take quite a bit longer to do than on the way there. We pulled up on the beach and spent the rest of the afternoon playing and swimming in the lake’s shallow water and super soft beach, which extended out into the lake at good 50+ feet. The kids loved just playing on the beach, making and destroying sandcastles. We took off to make some dinner, then go for a quick hike around the campsite, and then get another campfire going and make some smores – nothing like loading the kids up with sugar just before bed!
We returned to the same beach early the next day so that we could pack it all up and be home early on Sunday afternoon for a change.
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