Failed camping trip

It was put together on far too short notice, but it almost worked. My brothers and I were going to go on a one night camping trip to Dollar Lake on Wednesday night – and I guess you could say that we did. Peter, Devon and I drove to Halifax to get Adam and then we headed out and found ourselves a campsite. We then went swimming at the the public beach part and had just bought some firewood when we decided that we should probably pitch the tent while it was still light out. So I got it out of the car and opened it to discover it wasn’t the tent I had thought it was. OK not a problem, it was actually a bigger tent than I had expect, which was OK because it would be a tight squeeze with the four of us.

However it wasn’t long before we realized that despite having the bigger tent, it didn’t have any poles. Well this was a bit of a concern. I definitely broke a cardinal rule because I didn’t check the tent before we left. Still – we were determined that we would be able to deal with this somehow. So we went swimming again. This time to a deserted campers beach. It was nice, but not as nice as the other beach and before long it started to rain lightly. So we decided to head back and before we even got back to the road the skies opened up and it started to pour. So we ran back to salvage what we could at our campsite. All three of my younger brothers had decided to leave their bags sitting by the picnic table. And the firewood was soaked.

By draping our tent fly over the back of the car’s trunk hatch we managed to create a shelter of sorts as we struggled to get things back into the car in a reasonable order. You would think that we were planning a week away with the amount of stuff we brought. But we got it in the car and decided that with everything (including the ground) wet – and without knowing how long the rain would continue – we would head home. And so that ended the would be adventure of the brothers’ Bate camping trip. It was certainly fun the little time we did get in. I don’t think the four of us have ever done anything together without our parents before. It was an experience to say the least.