Hippy Camping!

[joysophine]

It was wonderful! We (Laura, Dale, Emilie and I) packed our bags into the car and headed for Galiano early Tuesday morning. The cabby who took us to our site was a sweet bald old man who answered our random questions as well as suggesting fun places or things to do (hitch hiking!). Anyways, our campsite was gorgeous! We set up the tent and got the stove out to make tasty tofu/veggie dogs. That worked fine, though boiling water for tea later didn't work at all. Essentially all our hot food ended up being cooked over the fire. Nice smoky flavour! Our wanderings that first afternoon took us around Grey's Penninsula... not such an easy feat with bare feet and a guitar (Laura can vouch for this). But the rocks and water and scenery were nice, easily made up for the difficulties. The night ended with marshmallows and random (true, oh yes) stories of unicorns and dinosaurs in Magicland and Rainbowland. Everyone woke up fairly early the second day. We hitch hiked the 8 km into "town"... more like the few stores by the ferry. Wandered around. Dale and I bought some wooden beads and cowrie shells for our dreads and we all nearly fell asleep in the sun waiting for the ice cream place to open at noon. Later, after much debate about the "KEEP OUT" sign guarding Emilie's uncle Marc's property, she asked a few guys at the pub and the told us to "go on ahead" if we were friends. Marc's place is GORGEOUS! Right on the beach, lovely fields and a huge, water lillied pond, nice gardens... my god I want to live there. He gave us a ride back to the campsite in the back of his pickup! So much windy bouncy fun! We went down to the beach in the afternoon again with Dale's fishing rod. Emilie and I hunted for hermit crabs and random bait while trying to avoid jellyfish. Laura ended up heading back to the tent not feeling great. A few little girls approched me, wanting to show off their newly acquired marine biology knowledge from the Marine Center somewhere on the island. I was especially delighted to learn that the purple jellyfish don't sting, "only the red ones". We proceeded to beachcomb and find various interesting things... dead fish, sea stars. We even found a sea worm that ended up on Dale's hook. Emilie caught a little bullhead with the thing. The little girls were delighted and squeaked about how slimy he felt. Emilie's uncle and cousin stopped by the campsite a little later, visited for a while. Apparently my Uncle and his family were camping there too cause they ran into us sometime that afternoon, completely catching me off guard. It made the whole adventure seem a little less adventurous, knowing my family was so close by, but oh well. Emilie and Laura hit the sack around 11 that night, but Dale and I wanted to stay out in the dark a bit longer. The fire was making awesome shapes at that point. Chinese dragons and aliens and mushrooms and the like. We had some great discussions and crashed around midnight thirty or so. Getting up the next morning was a pain. Everyone pitched in, tore the campsite down and then bummed around for most of the morning, moaning about wanting to stay longer. We made a "WELCOME" sign with sticks in the dirt for the next campers. Caught the ferry back at noonish and drove home with the windows wide open and music blasting. I wasn't ready to leave or go back to civilization and the city, so Dale and I pitched a tent in her backyard and camped out for one more night. Technically it wasn't "camping". We watched X-men on tv before heading out for the night, but it was fun regardless. And this morning was gorgeous! We ended up spending a lot of time outside exploring her jungle of a backyard, the beach, and her dreads. Also complaining about the excessive noise of the city. I did some crochet maintenance on her hair and wrapped one of her locks while we sat in the sun on crunchy grass with some berries from her dad's garden. This is the first day that really felt like summer. It's been wickedly HOT and I'm finally getting the outside time I've wanted since last December. Makes for  very content, dozy, warm kinda feeling : )

Anyways. It was a brilliantly successful trip (minimal mosquito bites)! Definitely one we'll do again sometime. It was pretty jarring to come back to Victoria though, even after two days. People don't smile much here, they're more likely to glare. Everything's busy busy busy. We hardly checked the time while we were on the island. Le sigh. Maybe I'll pitch a tent in my backyard tonight. Hmm.

Hope all your summers are splendid. Much love.