Turkey and Camping

First of all, happy turkey to everyone! This weekend went exactly as I'd hoped it would. Remi was able to get the same days off work as I had and I was able to take Tuesday off work at Shoppers as I had no class that day. We spent Saturday doing homework (me) and building the model boat (Remi), worked Sunday and then went camping for Monday/Tuesday. The weather actually held and we only got rained on overnight. More on that later.

Firstly, TURKEY! So as usual, I made a succulent turkey for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the evening, but we had a traditional West-style Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, salads, cranberry sauce) with cheesecake for dessert. It was an apple topped, praline cheese cake. Yummy ;) I invited several of the guys from my class over who weren't able to go home for the holiday and we ended up with four guys and us. Dinner was a hit and there were hardly any left-overs ;)

As for camping, we headed to Golden Ears Provincial Park, which is less than an hour's drive from here near Maple Ridge. We camped in the Gold Creek campground. It was car camping, but still awesome. We just went for one night and it was the first night of the off-season and the Monday night of the long-weekend, so once the weekend traffic left, it was pretty much just us and a few other parties who were far enough away that it felt like we had the campground to ourselves. We did some hiking on Monday. There is quite an extensive trail system in that park and it was really quite nice. The leaves are all turning out here and we had some sun on Sunday, so it was just a nice fall day. The area really reminded me of near my parent's place in Sauble Beach, ON.

Anyway, the biggest excitement of the weekend came Monday night. We were just settling in to our campfire, making some grilled sandwiches over the fire, and I turn around to see (but barely, because it was very dark) something appearing to roll across our campsite... "Remi, there's something on the site..." *no answer* "Remi, turn around and look! There's something on the site!!" He clearly had his head up his bum or something and it took him a minute to finally turn around. While he was coming back to reality, I had fumbled with my flashlight and had shone it on our assailant. A raccoon had had the guts to climb up onto our picnic table while we sat less than 10 feet away at our campfire, and had dragged an entire loaf of bread across our site into the trees on the far side. Needless to say, there would be no more grilled sandwiches that night!

But, the plot thickened when our little thief was joined by a "friend", another raccoon. I am so thankful that Maggie was in the tent and was actually too scared to try to come out because these two raccoons started fighting over the bread!! It was a vicious scene! Remi finally stepped into action and grabbed a rock to heave at them to get them to break it up. He must have hit one because it squeeled and started climbing a tree just off our campsite. The other one vanished. BUT, it came back!! Remi was cleaning up the picnic table and putting all the food away and it climbed up onto the table seat WHILE HE WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE!!! These are by far the tamest wild animals I've ever seen. We scared that one away, but spent the rest of the night with a bright lantern lit, gawking around every time we heard the slightest movement.

Other than the ruined campfire, the weekend was pretty good though. Here are a few pictures :)

Ahh, a nice fall stroll. This was on our first day there (Monday). The trail I am on was pretty much empty, but we descended to the trail below down a precipitous embankment (the one Remi is on) and it was crowded. Needless to say, while it was beautiful, it was a little too populated for Remi and my liking.

This is a picture of the "creek". The definition of a creek in BC and Ontario is obviously quite different. This picture was taken from a little private area Remi and I found after bushwhacking through a 100 m or so of brush. Below again is a picture of the "creek" and below that, the viewpoint over Alouette Lake.

Home sweet home! Our camp with some more of Remi's world-famous tarp technology. It was lucky he set these up over the table because, as mentioned, we got a bit of rain. Below that you'll see our big baby, happy as usual to be camping ;)

Remi and his tripod at work :)

Look at how green the water was!!

The end :)

Sarah

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