Singing in the rain - long overdue!

Waaayyyy back in September, an event of some significance took place. Nope, it wasn't the first day of fall or even Super Saturdays at Sears... but rather my 31st birthday and the renewal of an event which i hope would become a tradition in life! I was just reviewing the forecast/recorded weather for that weekend and it talked a lot about showers, rain, fog and wind. Hmmm... ideal camping weather, is it not? Perfect for setting up tents, unrolling sleeping bags and sleeping under the starry skies! Heehee... what a total opposite! I have a hard time believing that that was only a month ago! Wow, so much has happened since then!

To be honest, the weather all the way up to my birthday weekend was fantastic and the weather after my birthday weekend was great but somehow, the weather on those three days we picked to go out into the great yonder was stuffed full with rain and rain and more rain. It rained all early evening as we headed up to good old Port Burwell - sometimes so hard that Lauren, who was trailing us, was unable to see us and we (Laura and I) who were leading, were unable to see anything on the road in front of us at all. We kept saying to each other "it'll pass" or "it's probably not raining at the park" or "it'll dry up, the forecast said so" and other hopeful little statements. We paused for a break in Simcoe, to nourish our hungry bodies and buoy up our dampened spirits. A fateful choice, we decided to soldier on and see what happened... at the very least, we would pack up again and head home - that's the good thing about being only a short distance from Hamilton.

The rain played with our psyches the whole way there - stopping now and then starting again with a very great vengeance as if trying to wash us away! But at last there was the familiar park office of Port Burwell and some bemused park officers waiting to receive yet some more crazy campers. We sloshed ahead to our site and a mighty fine one it was. Large enough for a couple of semi-trailers, it would easily accomodate three wet girls. In a perfect break between rain storms, we quickly and efficiently erected our tent and did what we

thought was a commendable tarping job.

However, as we were just arranging ourselves in the tent for bed,

the heavens opened again and it became painfully clear as the puddles in the corners of our tent grew with each passing moment that we would be unable to pass the night in our little shelter. So in a flurry of sleeping bags, airmattresses(i like that better as one word) and flashlights, we betook ourselves to the shelter of Mom and Dad's van. We were so thankful we had it to shelter us otherwise we would have been up the campsite without a paddle!

We crammed ourselves into the van (thankfully also all the seats were out in the back!) on top of the air mattresses and played cards, tried to find ways not to breathe (three people in one van heats things up pretty quickly!) and shared a margarita in the rain! What memories!

I think maybe between the three of us, we may have managed 1.54 hours of broken sleep! Quite a feat to be sure.

Sweet dreams in the front seat!

All cozy in the back of the van!

The three intrepid rainconquerors!

Sleeping beauty wrapped in blankets!

Saturday morning dawned kinda cloudy and overcast but not raining thankfully! What would we do? Pack up and head home or stick it out? We came to the conclusion that if we tarped everything up well, that we would be able to stick it out so that is what we did. We took down our rather structurally unsound job of the previous eve and set ourselves the task of tarping the site with the end goal of making a job worthy of Dad's approval! (he is the master tarper in our family, our campsite is usually decorated in blue!)

Is that an ex-Calvinette that i spy? Just look at those knots!

Just look at the angles on that - see it and be proud!

And we managed it too! We were so proud of ourselves and man, we had right to be since there was not one area of pooling or collapse throughout the entire next day and night! Wow! We knocked our socks off to be sure!

The word for the rest of the weekend was "damp" but there was still a lot of fun had. We taught Laura how to play Carcassonne and got her thoroughly addicted! Yah! We also played Word Thief - another great game! Sugar sandwiches were part of our food from last year and that good tradition was renewed again. We didn't eat much all day, just grazing and drinking lots of coffee!! Yum! Around 3pm, Lauren left us to our own devices and Laura and I betook ourselves to the beach. What else do you do on a rainy day!? It was so wet and windy - such a contrast with last years weather, it was hard to believe that it was the same weekend!

Aah, well, more memories right? We will probably never go to the beach when it was so wet again. Our saving grace was that it was warm. Had it been cold, we would have contracted pneumonia and would have been in hospital instead of in our tent! So we had more things to be thankful for again!

I was thankful also for great friends who stuck this weekend out with me! We had been looking forward to this for quite some time and to have to cancel at the last minute would have been difficult indeed. So thanks Laura and Lauren for creating yet more Port Burwell memories with me - site 118 again next year??

Last year at Port Burwell, on my birthday weekend, we went swimming!
This year, at Port Burwell, on my birthday weekend, we went to the beach!

And it was wet! I suppose this could be called swimming? This is the parking lot!

This is my foot - gotta wash your feet before bed! Yeah right!

Lauren was looking a mite wet!
The three drowned rats!