We arrived later than we had intended on Sunday, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It meant that we only waited 30 minutes for the rain to stop instead of 60+.
I love camping, but bad weather – especially given the amount of rain we’ve had these few couple of months – was weighing heavily on my mind and I was secretly dreading we were going to be a soggy mess the entire time. Also, related to that: bugs. Bon Echo had been buggy to the extreme the last time we were here so I drew a natural conclusion and assumed it would be just as bad, if not worse this year. So, that extra time in the car waiting for the rain to let up was enough for me to take a deep breath or two and get zen with the situation before forging ahead.
I should also mention that we had no real sense of what the forecast was. Bon Echo is in a black zone in terms of the 3G network and there’s no wifi, so we were definitely going to be offline for the foreseeable future. (We discovered later that you could get a weak signal in some areas at the edge of the water. The best reception was at the end of Cliff Top Trail, atop Mazinaw Rock, but you’ll have to paddle across the water, or take the ferry, and hike for a bit to get there.)
Finally it cleared enough for us to emerge from the dry comfort of our rental vehicle and get on with it. On first view, our site (which was #235 in Midway campground, and had an Ontario Parks rating of “good”) looked small, too small for our large family tent, screened in dining tent, and our minivan. Once we disembarked we saw it was a fairly decent spot. It went back further than we had thought, had a well-placed fire pit, and good privacy, as promised on the Ontario Parks website.
We got busy unloading our supplies and setting up the tent in case it rained again. The girls are a big help and set up is quick now. They put together our new screened tent and placed it over the picnic table. We bought it at Cabela’s just before we left. It did what it promised and also protected us from rain and proved to be a good shield from the bits that fall from the trees (including bird poop).
For dinner that evening we enjoyed chicken that I had marinated before we left (roasted over the fire), along with one of those bagged salads that come with dressing and crunchy bits because convenience trumps all when you’re living out of a cooler for five nights. For dessert, we had Nanaimo bars, made by my MIL, which were heavenly. After dinner, we walked down to the beach, twice (once to see it and a second time to star gaze), before we settled into our sleeping bags with our assortment of books and magazines. This is my idea of camping!
It rained overnight. Amazingly, neither daughter woke up during the deluge. It was a full onslaught of wet weather: thunder, lightning, and rain, which began as a gentle patter and grew to a pounding downpour. Frankly, I was amazed, and slightly alarmed, that the girls slept through it. After all, we were sleeping outdoors, in a tent (!) which means the only thing separating us from the weather was a millimetre of FABRIC. Fabric! I could only hope they’d wake up during any other serious emergency, e.g. a deranged bear wanders into our tent, a tree falls on their parents, our van explodes, or an angry elephant barrels through the woods. Sigh.
It was then that I realized that my rain coat and umbrella were in the car. I thanked the heavens above that I didn’t need to pee overnight and the rain cleared by morning. It was a dramatic rainy episode, that’s for sure, AND it marked the end of the rain for us during our trip. AMAZING.
Our tent leaked a bit, and Mark knocked a small bathtub’s worth of water that pooled on part of the roof (twice), and someone’s shoes got soaked, but otherwise, we survived unscathed. One night down, four more to go.
