Phil Mercer

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Western Canada (Part 4)

 

Entry 4 23/5/07. Last night was the first under canvas. This was the first time in a while for both of us, so we found out very quickly what we had not got! Gas for the stove, prongs for the fire, mallet's for the pegs etc.
We did however survive.
All sorts of common sense training from when I was a cub came to mind. None of it useful! I managed to get a fire going within seconds though, which I was very proud of.
Dinner was a bit more of a failure. The buns for our hot dogs turned out to be a nice furry green, so we just ate the Dog! Noticing later that we had a fresh loaf of multigrain in the car!

After some thought, I think I'd remembered the romantic ideas of camping rather than the cold hard (especially hard) realities. Sleep was fitfull, more as a result of going to bed at 9pm for the first time in a very long time and underestimating the hardness of a gravel base. Then there is that amazing amplification of noise that seems to occur once snugly zipped in to the tent. Falling pine needles from the tree sounded like insects tapping on the fly sheet. I could have sworn that the person unpacking in the site next to ours sounded a like a black bear snuffling out the remains of our Sausage dinner. Gareths snoring probably kept the bear away from our plot. As for the pack of wolves howling to each at three in the morning. Well I'm still convinced that was real.

By eight in the morning we were both up and packing. We made our way to the shower block but rapidly decided to smell for the day as the water was a might chilly for our deinty skins.

The plan was to make our way to Port Hardy, a good seven hours drive away. I brought my little Tom Tom Sat Nav to help us with this task. Tom Tom has a sense of humour about this. It managed to plot a route avoiding some of the bigger towns and cutting one big corner. However this did mean two hours of gravel road driving along roads only used by logging companies. Some of the pot holes were larger than the car. But we survived and got back on to the highway and after 9 hours with a few breaks, pulled in to Port Hardy.

By 8pm we were both in bed!

Its an early start (0445hrs) for the Inside Passage tomorrow.

# posted by Phil @ 3:10 am

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