Days 7, 8 & 9

It rained last night. And the thunder ROOOOLLLLED, Garth Brooks. It was so long, I had time to think complete sentences. It was so loud, I felt it roll through me. It wasn't scary, just like the sky was going "Look what I can do!" very emphatically.


At some point, Gord gets up and takes everything except the sleeping bag to the car so it won't get wet in our leaky tent. Also, we were idiots and left our shoes outside the tent, cause god knows you don't want dirt in the tent. So we wake up to soggy shoes, but the sun is shining and we don't have to drive ANYWHERE today. What a freaking relief that is.

We didn't take any pictures, or even really do anything. Wait, we did laundry. Glorious clean clothes, no more bean and chili pants. We feel like kings. We also leash the cats and bring them outside for a while. They don't like outside, or being leashed. A train hoots in the distance, and both cats loose their shit. Ruku bolts into the litter box and burrows in the back, Penta dives into the duffel bag and almost knocks it off the picnic table in panic. The cats are put back in the car.

And for dinner, replay the fire woes from the previous post, minus the eventual fire. Tonight we try toilet paper and a hockey magazine. No go. It's especially embarrassing because there are witnesses in the camp to our right. These people have a camper, a tarp village, a bbq, CHRISTMAS LIGHTS...these people are equipped. These are the people that watch the Canadian Tire commercials for the outdoor air conditioning units, portable showers, and solar powered big screen tv and entertainment units and think, well, now it's possible to survive in the wilderness. I shouldn't mock them though, because the nice man had some lamp oil that he offered to pour on our logs. We had another brief fire, cooked some smokies and went to bed.

Only a light rain that night.

We wake up, and go directly back to sleep. Seriously. It starts to rain, and there wasn't anything else to do.

Second wake up, and we go to the store to get food, because I think we've pissed off the fire gods.
I'm hoping they have bread, and sandwich meat and cheese. They don't. We get:

2 cans of Pringles chips
2 chocolate bars
1 box of Gobstoppers
1 deck of cards
1 Coke
1 Fresca

We eat the Pringles and play cards in the tent for a while and it starts to rain. Again. Only HARD this time, and it's dripping into the tent.

Gord's shoes, that were almost dry, are filling up with rain outside the tent. We send whiny text messages to our friends and wait for the rain to end.

When it does, we reconfigure the tarps so that our tent is completely covered. Screw the picnic table and firepit, they're no use anyway. We sit in the tent in a gentle rain. We have one can of vegetarian chili and Gord snuggles with it for 2 hours to get it to body temperature. We eat in the tent and go to sleep. The new tarp deployment is a success. We hear the patter of rain all night, but nary a drop enters the tent.

I'd like to take a moment and thank Gord for being stuck in a tent with me for almost an entire day, and not only NOT fighting, but making it fun. There are very few people who could sit in a tiny 2 man tent with me for that long and not think standing in the rain is preferable.

Tomorrow...after a year of planning and 6 days of driving, 2 days camping in a leaky tent with fire woes, we will finally get to Montreal.

OR WILL WE?
(CUE OMINOUS MUSIC)

PS. The chili was still in the can. Gord did not smear chili all over his body to warm it up, and we didn't eat lukewarm chili off his naked torso with plastic forks. Just in case you didn't have that picture in your head already ;)