How I Survived My Brush with the Wilderness

Or Labour Day Camping v2.0

If you remember, this summer Kim and I went camping at Bon Echo and had a perfect time. No bugs, lots of good weather, and just all round fun. So it was with a light heart we left on our Labour Day camping trip to Charleston Lake with Kim's parents and sister. We did the trip last year and had a good time, surely we can expect the same this year.

We arrived Saturday afternoon and began setting up. Just as we were getting the tarps up light rain began to fall. Ok, no biggie. Clouds aren't too dark. Hey, what's that rumbling noise?

Downpour. About 10 minutes of heavy rain which quickly formed little rivers running down the hill through our campsite. Thank goodness we had the main tarp up or we would have been soaked. The rain stopped and we finished putting up the small tarps and settled in for the evening.

Now, my father in law gets up early every day. That man just cannot sleep in and usually its not a big issue. But Sunday morning he needed his coffee and he didn't think of using the camp stove to cook it. Instead, he needed to start a fire. To start the fire, he needed to split some wood. So at 6:30 am he started swinging the axe. The rest of us were not appreciative of his actions.

So we get up grumbling and start to get ready for the day when we notice that the rear passenger tire of my car is flat. *expletive deleted* So I begin working on taking the tire off and putting the spare on so we can take the tire in to a garage somewhere to be repaired. After much grunting I was able to get the lugnuts off but the tire would not budge. Would not, could not move. It was like it was welded to the axle. So, I tried to call CAA but the cell phones did not have a good enough signal. We hoped in my father-in-law's car and drive out to a pay phone, call CAA, and then proceed to wait for an hour at the gatehouse for the tow truck to arrive. He looks at the tire and says "no problem!" with heart warming confidence.

Thirty minutes later, the flat is still on the axle, the CAA guy is leaving and is shocked that he could not get it off, and I'm running out of patience with the world. Desperate, we inflate the tire as best we can with emergency puncture seal can (which backflowed on my hand and required nail polish remover two days later to try and get off successfully) and drive into town. The Canadian Tire in Gananoque is open and they are able to quickly find the small nail and repair the tire. Heck, they even managed to get the tire off the axle!

We make our way back to camp and can finally relax. It was late afternoon by that time and my mood was quite grim so I took a nice relaxing walk by myself and let nature relax me.

Monday morning we got to sleep in til after 8:30 (we made sure the old man had chopped wood the night before so his morning fire would not wake us) and began packing the stuff to go back into the car.The weather was once again beautiful and we quickly broke camp. After checking out we parked and did a hike up to the lookout, and then said our goodbyes before hitting the road, stopping only at Dairy Queen in Smiths Falls for some much needed ice cream.