Camping:Fail & Redemption
So, this past weekend, we (myself, Meg, and our friends G, J, and S) all decided to go camping for J's birthday.
I've not been camping in 25 years or so. Especially tent camping. So, this is likely to be quite an experience.
First of all, it seems that you can reserve camp slots now. This is kind of interesting, but takes some of the 'fun' out of it, I understand. Now, not being able to get out to look for camp sites bright and early Friday morning, we decide to take our chances and head up Highway 1 to Banff to try our luck and see what we can find.
We are late leaving the city. Meg ran into a lot of traffic trying to pick me up from work, so we start out being late for everyone gathering at our place. We get some of the final stuff in order (food, etc) load up the car and head off to the information station that is to be our "meet here so we can decide where to go next" staging point.
We get there without any problems, and upon arrival, G and J discover that they've forgotten the ketchup and mustard (How they discovered this, without eating hot dogs en route, remains a mystery...) It's a bit later than we wanted, and a communication error occurs here.
We decide that we'll drive down hwy 40 for 1 hour to look for a campsite we can use, and if we find nothing, turn back to a 'sure bet' one that G knows of. Ok. On our way, we'll pass by Kananaskis Village, but we will skip that for now, figuring we can go back after we get a spot.
We head off, with Meg and I in the lead. After about 10 minutes, we've lost G, J and S. We text them, and find out that they decided to stop at KVillage after all. We tell them we will continue on and see what we can find. At this point, we lose network coverage...
Meg and I find a place that doesn't say "Campground Full" and drive on in. We drive the entire site (it's not big) and it looks full to us. So we find the Site Manager's spot. I head over to talk to him. He says that his ground is full, but he used to be Site Manager of a place that he knows for sure isn't full. He'd just talked to the new SM an hour ago on radio, and he still had over 75 open spots (of 101). He said that it was a little known and rarely used but very beautiful campground that he used to be Site Manager for. Said that almost no one ever went to it because, to get to it, you had to know it was there, and travel down 13km of gravel road. Well, think we, gravel road is no big deal. He tells us how to get there. It's about a half hour away from our current location.
So Meg and I set off. After driving for about 20km, we've still not seen any sign of G,J and S. So we find a little area off to the side of the road and pull off there. We figure to wait for them, since our phones are now 'dead'. As we stand by the side of the road, Meg decides she's a little cold, and goes back to the car to get her sweater from the clothes bag. It's pretty much at that point that we realize that our clothes bag didn't make it into the car, and is still back in the apartment!
After realizing that we now have only the clothes on our back (both of us in jeans and tshirts), no swimsuits, no towels, no toothbrushes, no combs, etc...there's a little freakout. We wait for about 20 minutes, then decide to head back to see if we can find our missing campers. Less than 5 minutes back on the road, and we pass them. We get things sorted out, and realize that we are now essentially in an "all in" situation. We need to find the campground the SM recommended and hope there's a spot...or we'll be over an hour away from the 'sure bet' of G's, and it's already starting to get a bit dark (it's around 8pm at this point). We decided to push on.
We find the gas station mentioned, and then the dirt road. 13-ish KM along the dirt road, we find a campsite with 101 spots. It's hard to tell in the encroaching dark, but Cataract Creek looks rather pretty. We pull up into "Loop B" and find that the first campsite is empty. It looks easily large enough for the 3 tents we have, so we claim it and begin setting up by the light of 4 headlights.
It's right about NOW that we realize that Meg hasn't been camping in 8 years and I've not been camping in 25...and that the tent that she's never seen before doesn't come with instructions on setup. We are also getting a bit cold, and none of the 5 of us have really eaten, so everyone's getting a bit snippy. We manage, without too much sniping at each other to get the tent set up. It's a HUGE tent, and rather nice. We go to get the food set up and register the campsite to us (it's a self-registration thing). It's at this point we now realize that we didn't pack along either of the propane powered lanterns that we borrowed. It's about 5 minutes later that the party realizes that the only light we have among all 5 of us is my maglight, which I had tossed onto my belt at the last minute before leaving the house. We manage to get a fire going and food going, and that helps settle things.
Until bedtime.
As Meg and I head off to sleep, there are 2 sleeping bags. A 'small' purple one, and a 'large' brown one. But they both kind of look roughly the same size, so 'small' and 'large' are really just qualifiers. I ask Meg which she wants, and she claims the brown. I take the purple. Meg gets into hers, and gets comfy. I...try...to get into mine.
Look, I realize I'm not the world's smallest person. But I'm not that bad. I manage, somehow, to wiggle my way into this sleeping bag. Sort of. But it's so small and tight that I can't even fit a single arm in the bag with me. Ok, this won't be too bad, I can cope, just grab a blanket and move my pillow...oh, wait, right...we forgot both pillows and ALL THE BLANKETS. I try. I really do.
We are (trying to) sleep on an air mattress. But the site isn't very even...and so I constantly feel like I'm going to roll off the mattress and out of the tent. Not very conducive to sleeping, especially as I'm actually starting to get cold. I try to turn over...and the sleeping bag zipper gives up trying to hold me in, unzipping itself (thankfully, not ripping) down to my calves. We've been trying to sleep for probably 2 hours at this point. Meg and I decide to switch bags, seeing how the bag she's in is "larger". We swap, and she starts freezing. She gets herself into the small bag, but isn't much better.
I get into the large bag, and while I can now fit one arm kind of in the bag with me, it's not much better. I also now feel like (since Meg and I swapped places) like I'm going to roll over HER on my way of rolling out of the tent. I can also hear her teeth chattering. She tells me that "she's never been this cold before." I can't get even partially comfortable to even begin thinking about sleeping.
Earlier in the night, we'd been batting around the idea of driving back to Calgary Saturday morning to pick up our clothes, back when we (ha ha) thought that's all we'd forgotten.
She asks me if I think I am going to be able to get any sleep at all (it's about 3am now) I tell her there's not a chance. I ask her if she's going to be able to get warm at all. She thinks that she might. We back and forth this a bit, both of us kind of feeling like we're giving up and "pussing out" as it were, but decide "f*** this, we're not comfortable, warm, and at best we'll sit here bit**ing about it for 3 more hours until it's sort of light. Let's just go home and get our stuff now."
So we get up, dash off a note to G,J and S, and head off into the night. The SM who told us about the campsite also said that it'd be faster to get back to Calgary going via hwy 22 via Longview than going the "long way" back around. So we get off the dirt road and see a sign that says "Calgary 122km". We head off that way, and sure enough, around an hour later (Hey, at 4ish am, there's almost no traffic, even on the highways) we're back in Calgary.
It's dark. We're exhausted. We're upset with ourselves and each other. We park the car out front of our apt building (we'd let S leave her car in our underground spot), stumble upstairs, set the alarm for 8, and head to bed.
The alarm rings, and we get up. The plan is to text and ask my dad if he's still got the uberawesome military sleeping bags he used to have. They are good to -30c, and spacious, and just all kinds of awesome.
I head out to the car to get my phone. It turns out that in the dark, and with us being as tired as we were, we didn't pay exact attention to where we parked. 5 minutes before I went out to get the phone...a nice parking officer person came by and left us a $36 reminder to take more care in where we leave our car. Yeah, it's looking like a good day already...
I drop dad a text, but get no answer. I figure he's still asleep. Looking around the house, we determine that we'd left a few other things, as well. Go, us. So around 8:30, we decide that we really want to get back to the campsite. So we figure that since the brown bag worked for Meg, we'll take a lot of blankets, and just pile them high over top of me.We load up with every blanket we have in the house (and our clothes. And lanterns. And dice), hit up a gas station and Timmy's on the way out. We're back on the road headed back at around 9am.
I get a text from dad around 9:30 saying he does have the bags. I thank him, and file this information away for the next camping trip.
We head back the same way we came, but it takes a bit longer. We pull in around 11am. This time, we change the direction of the air mattress in the tent. We flip the thermal pad and foam padding on top, open up the purple sleeping bag and lay it out over that. We put a blanket over top all of that. Meg puts the brown sleeping bag and her cloak on one side, I fold some blankets onto 'my' side. It already looks better.
The day goes very well. Cataract Creek IS a very pretty place, and our campsite was nicely shaded and kept cool by a breeze. Food was a hit, J enjoyed her birthday aspects. Some hiking was done. Some gaming was done, there was light provided by the lanterns. Much fun was had.
Then it was bedtime again.
I figured that this time, Meg and I had this thing licked...and I was right. She was warm and comfy. I was warm and comfy. I slept a good, solid 9 hours, she got 9 1/2 or so. I got up and got the fire going again and put the kettle on. Breakfast was had, and all in all, we agreed that after 8am on Saturday, our camping trip was "pretty darn good".
Learned a lot, and plan on at least one more trip before the snow flies. But we'll be better prepared this time. Which is something that I kept coming back to. I'm a big fan of 'knowing your gear'. Knowing what you have, how to use it, and how it works BEFORE you need it...and yet here I was out in the woods for the first time in 25 years with a tent I'd never seen before in my life, sleeping bags that I had only ever seen rolled up in their little sleeves, and nothing but the clothes on my back because I didn't do a final sweep of the apartment, despite it being the 'final staging ground' in the city.
Oh, yes...I will go camping again. But I will be much better prepared for it.
I've not been camping in 25 years or so. Especially tent camping. So, this is likely to be quite an experience.
First of all, it seems that you can reserve camp slots now. This is kind of interesting, but takes some of the 'fun' out of it, I understand. Now, not being able to get out to look for camp sites bright and early Friday morning, we decide to take our chances and head up Highway 1 to Banff to try our luck and see what we can find.
We are late leaving the city. Meg ran into a lot of traffic trying to pick me up from work, so we start out being late for everyone gathering at our place. We get some of the final stuff in order (food, etc) load up the car and head off to the information station that is to be our "meet here so we can decide where to go next" staging point.
We get there without any problems, and upon arrival, G and J discover that they've forgotten the ketchup and mustard (How they discovered this, without eating hot dogs en route, remains a mystery...) It's a bit later than we wanted, and a communication error occurs here.
We decide that we'll drive down hwy 40 for 1 hour to look for a campsite we can use, and if we find nothing, turn back to a 'sure bet' one that G knows of. Ok. On our way, we'll pass by Kananaskis Village, but we will skip that for now, figuring we can go back after we get a spot.
We head off, with Meg and I in the lead. After about 10 minutes, we've lost G, J and S. We text them, and find out that they decided to stop at KVillage after all. We tell them we will continue on and see what we can find. At this point, we lose network coverage...
Meg and I find a place that doesn't say "Campground Full" and drive on in. We drive the entire site (it's not big) and it looks full to us. So we find the Site Manager's spot. I head over to talk to him. He says that his ground is full, but he used to be Site Manager of a place that he knows for sure isn't full. He'd just talked to the new SM an hour ago on radio, and he still had over 75 open spots (of 101). He said that it was a little known and rarely used but very beautiful campground that he used to be Site Manager for. Said that almost no one ever went to it because, to get to it, you had to know it was there, and travel down 13km of gravel road. Well, think we, gravel road is no big deal. He tells us how to get there. It's about a half hour away from our current location.
So Meg and I set off. After driving for about 20km, we've still not seen any sign of G,J and S. So we find a little area off to the side of the road and pull off there. We figure to wait for them, since our phones are now 'dead'. As we stand by the side of the road, Meg decides she's a little cold, and goes back to the car to get her sweater from the clothes bag. It's pretty much at that point that we realize that our clothes bag didn't make it into the car, and is still back in the apartment!
After realizing that we now have only the clothes on our back (both of us in jeans and tshirts), no swimsuits, no towels, no toothbrushes, no combs, etc...there's a little freakout. We wait for about 20 minutes, then decide to head back to see if we can find our missing campers. Less than 5 minutes back on the road, and we pass them. We get things sorted out, and realize that we are now essentially in an "all in" situation. We need to find the campground the SM recommended and hope there's a spot...or we'll be over an hour away from the 'sure bet' of G's, and it's already starting to get a bit dark (it's around 8pm at this point). We decided to push on.
We find the gas station mentioned, and then the dirt road. 13-ish KM along the dirt road, we find a campsite with 101 spots. It's hard to tell in the encroaching dark, but Cataract Creek looks rather pretty. We pull up into "Loop B" and find that the first campsite is empty. It looks easily large enough for the 3 tents we have, so we claim it and begin setting up by the light of 4 headlights.
It's right about NOW that we realize that Meg hasn't been camping in 8 years and I've not been camping in 25...and that the tent that she's never seen before doesn't come with instructions on setup. We are also getting a bit cold, and none of the 5 of us have really eaten, so everyone's getting a bit snippy. We manage, without too much sniping at each other to get the tent set up. It's a HUGE tent, and rather nice. We go to get the food set up and register the campsite to us (it's a self-registration thing). It's at this point we now realize that we didn't pack along either of the propane powered lanterns that we borrowed. It's about 5 minutes later that the party realizes that the only light we have among all 5 of us is my maglight, which I had tossed onto my belt at the last minute before leaving the house. We manage to get a fire going and food going, and that helps settle things.
Until bedtime.
As Meg and I head off to sleep, there are 2 sleeping bags. A 'small' purple one, and a 'large' brown one. But they both kind of look roughly the same size, so 'small' and 'large' are really just qualifiers. I ask Meg which she wants, and she claims the brown. I take the purple. Meg gets into hers, and gets comfy. I...try...to get into mine.
Look, I realize I'm not the world's smallest person. But I'm not that bad. I manage, somehow, to wiggle my way into this sleeping bag. Sort of. But it's so small and tight that I can't even fit a single arm in the bag with me. Ok, this won't be too bad, I can cope, just grab a blanket and move my pillow...oh, wait, right...we forgot both pillows and ALL THE BLANKETS. I try. I really do.
We are (trying to) sleep on an air mattress. But the site isn't very even...and so I constantly feel like I'm going to roll off the mattress and out of the tent. Not very conducive to sleeping, especially as I'm actually starting to get cold. I try to turn over...and the sleeping bag zipper gives up trying to hold me in, unzipping itself (thankfully, not ripping) down to my calves. We've been trying to sleep for probably 2 hours at this point. Meg and I decide to switch bags, seeing how the bag she's in is "larger". We swap, and she starts freezing. She gets herself into the small bag, but isn't much better.
I get into the large bag, and while I can now fit one arm kind of in the bag with me, it's not much better. I also now feel like (since Meg and I swapped places) like I'm going to roll over HER on my way of rolling out of the tent. I can also hear her teeth chattering. She tells me that "she's never been this cold before." I can't get even partially comfortable to even begin thinking about sleeping.
Earlier in the night, we'd been batting around the idea of driving back to Calgary Saturday morning to pick up our clothes, back when we (ha ha) thought that's all we'd forgotten.
She asks me if I think I am going to be able to get any sleep at all (it's about 3am now) I tell her there's not a chance. I ask her if she's going to be able to get warm at all. She thinks that she might. We back and forth this a bit, both of us kind of feeling like we're giving up and "pussing out" as it were, but decide "f*** this, we're not comfortable, warm, and at best we'll sit here bit**ing about it for 3 more hours until it's sort of light. Let's just go home and get our stuff now."
So we get up, dash off a note to G,J and S, and head off into the night. The SM who told us about the campsite also said that it'd be faster to get back to Calgary going via hwy 22 via Longview than going the "long way" back around. So we get off the dirt road and see a sign that says "Calgary 122km". We head off that way, and sure enough, around an hour later (Hey, at 4ish am, there's almost no traffic, even on the highways) we're back in Calgary.
It's dark. We're exhausted. We're upset with ourselves and each other. We park the car out front of our apt building (we'd let S leave her car in our underground spot), stumble upstairs, set the alarm for 8, and head to bed.
The alarm rings, and we get up. The plan is to text and ask my dad if he's still got the uberawesome military sleeping bags he used to have. They are good to -30c, and spacious, and just all kinds of awesome.
I head out to the car to get my phone. It turns out that in the dark, and with us being as tired as we were, we didn't pay exact attention to where we parked. 5 minutes before I went out to get the phone...a nice parking officer person came by and left us a $36 reminder to take more care in where we leave our car. Yeah, it's looking like a good day already...
I drop dad a text, but get no answer. I figure he's still asleep. Looking around the house, we determine that we'd left a few other things, as well. Go, us. So around 8:30, we decide that we really want to get back to the campsite. So we figure that since the brown bag worked for Meg, we'll take a lot of blankets, and just pile them high over top of me.We load up with every blanket we have in the house (and our clothes. And lanterns. And dice), hit up a gas station and Timmy's on the way out. We're back on the road headed back at around 9am.
I get a text from dad around 9:30 saying he does have the bags. I thank him, and file this information away for the next camping trip.
We head back the same way we came, but it takes a bit longer. We pull in around 11am. This time, we change the direction of the air mattress in the tent. We flip the thermal pad and foam padding on top, open up the purple sleeping bag and lay it out over that. We put a blanket over top all of that. Meg puts the brown sleeping bag and her cloak on one side, I fold some blankets onto 'my' side. It already looks better.
The day goes very well. Cataract Creek IS a very pretty place, and our campsite was nicely shaded and kept cool by a breeze. Food was a hit, J enjoyed her birthday aspects. Some hiking was done. Some gaming was done, there was light provided by the lanterns. Much fun was had.
Then it was bedtime again.
I figured that this time, Meg and I had this thing licked...and I was right. She was warm and comfy. I was warm and comfy. I slept a good, solid 9 hours, she got 9 1/2 or so. I got up and got the fire going again and put the kettle on. Breakfast was had, and all in all, we agreed that after 8am on Saturday, our camping trip was "pretty darn good".
Learned a lot, and plan on at least one more trip before the snow flies. But we'll be better prepared this time. Which is something that I kept coming back to. I'm a big fan of 'knowing your gear'. Knowing what you have, how to use it, and how it works BEFORE you need it...and yet here I was out in the woods for the first time in 25 years with a tent I'd never seen before in my life, sleeping bags that I had only ever seen rolled up in their little sleeves, and nothing but the clothes on my back because I didn't do a final sweep of the apartment, despite it being the 'final staging ground' in the city.
Oh, yes...I will go camping again. But I will be much better prepared for it.