#toolegitauntcamp2020 day 1

i met up with tracy at the mcdonald's in sydney.  while i was getting gas at the adjoining chevron, tracy had a case of the doubts and left the mcdonald's to go in search of another one because she had given me the instructions to a wrong one, but i already figured that out and went to the right one but she didn't see me so she went off in search of the right one... yah.  meanwhile i ordered some breakfast and  that's where we met. she came in and ordered breakfast for jane and an old man talked to us but i couldn't understand anything he said.

 i went out to greet jane and the rest of the kids. jane is indeed 6 feet now, as she warned me on google 

hangouts.  she has sprouted super long legs.  which is cool.  "are you ready?" i asked her.  she was.  "let's go man." i said.  but first i had to come see mr. blue eyes simon, and get hugs from isaiah, gideon and kate.  kate was a brown nut.  "i wish i could come camping!" wailed maria.  tracy showed me the garbage bags and dish sponge and other sundries in jane's little grey bag of supplies and non refrigerated items.  we lugged their cooler and jane's other gear into the back of sahib and we were on our way.

our first stop was the lanford superstore so i could buy my food contributions.  on the way there jane kept up a steady stream of chatter.  we talked about different movies she has seen lately one--a drama about sharks, she told me the whole twisted plot because she said, "you are never going to watch it.  it is SO horrible!". fair.   i also heard all about the adventures they had with ava on her recent visit and about the different personalities in maria's friend group and about how there are visionaries and there are...something else...organizers? and how her dad shared that book with his partners at work and then got more work that was akin to his visionary style.

it felt like we made it to langford in no time at all. jane helped me shop.  she pushed the cart that "a nice old man gave her for free" and we kept chatting as we went. "maria loves this.. oh! maria loves this!!  kate loves broccoli. she gets it from me..." and so on. haha.  when we got to the check out i looked at all the food laid out on the conveyor belt.  hot dog buns. no hot dogs.  i sent jane running for smokies and she came back just in time with 2 different kinds for me to choose.  i made my choice and continued bagging the groceries.  i heard the cashier said "no. you have to give it to me.  it has to be refrigerated".  i looked up to see jane sheepishly pulling the other package of smokies out from the shelf of chocolate bars where she had been sliding it and hand it to the cashier.  

at this time i was blissfully unaware that i had forgotten propane, pesto, ice and dish soap.

half an hour later we were pulling up to the stratton house.  sloan and adriel were sitting on the road in front of their house. arlo was so happy to see us he was almost pained by it.  he's my favourite doggo.  they had a big pile of gear at the front door.  i yelled up to kyle "hiii kyle!"  he came to the top of the stairs. "that's it? that's all i get? a hi from the bottom of the stairs??"  "that's all i get?" i challenged.  "you don't even come down??"  we are not new to this game.  kyle came down and we hugged it out.  meanwhile jane and sloan had started shoving stuff into the car.  the back was totally full. we had to use one of the middle seats.  adriel had disappeared.  "where's adrinone?" i asked.  "i'm going to the bathroom!" boomed a deep voice from the bathroom.  that totally made me laugh. i don't know why.

i went to check on the loading of the car.  that's when i saw it.  a pot shoved in, sitting tilted on some sleeping bags and pillows.  "what's this pot?" i asked.  "it's the chili!" says sloan. "uh what??" i question.  it's can't be just a pot of chili shoved in all willy-nilly, that wouldn't happen.  "it's normal." says adriel.  i pull it out.  yes.  it's a pot full of chili and it was a miracle it hadn't dumped all over our stuff already.  "we can't take the chili like this!" i say incredulous that i have to say these words, explain this thing.  "it's normal." says adriel again.  "yes we can!" says sloan.  "i wondered why that was heavy!" says jane who is the one who shoved it in.  i'm focused on sloan. chili was his meal choice.  "sloan.  we can't bring the chili like this.  we have to put it in something.  it has to go in the cooler.." i begin. "no it doesn't.  it's been sitting on the counter for 2 days" says sloan. this argument doesn't encourage me.  i try again. "sloan you have to take this upstairs and put it in ziplock bags or something."  more arguing issues forth from sloan which, even as i'm in the middle of it i find so funny and yet so unbelievable.  is this how boys think? i had already seen him shove 2 of sarah's ceramic bowl plates in adriel's duffle bag with some real cutlery. "it's fine." said kyle.  in the end jane and sloan and i went up to the kitchen together. we couldn't find big ziplocks so we settled on some plastic containers with lids.  after the chili pot debacle everything else got shoved in, camping chair legs that were jutting over heads were shoved to the side and we all piled in.

i put china beach into my google maps but it was sending us the wrong way so i fixed it and then we did a group high five.  i was high fiving blind and hit adriel directly in the face. haha,  a good start.  at some point i remembered to have a prayer.  jane said it and she made sure to ask that we made it there safely and that we would get a camping spot.

adriel picked billy joel out of my collection of old cds and we blasted it as we drove, windows down.  spirits high.

i remembered about the dish soap first.  we thought maybe there would be a store in shirley or jordan river.  when we passed shirley we didn't see anything but the bakery.  further down the road we saw some businesses, which turned out to be a restaurant.  we asked a guy in the parking lot if he knew where the closest store was.  he sent us back to shirley.  indeed none were there.  we headed back.  there was an rv in front of us and we planned 'the rv heist'.  i told adriel i would go to pass the rv and get really close to the back ladder.  he was to lean out the window, snag the ladder, scale it, inch along the top, open the hatch on the roof, hang down into the rv and snatch their dish soap.  then to get back to the car we decided that at one point i had to veer away and jane had to dive out the window to grab adriel and sloan would be holding her by her ankles.  obviously mission impossible music would be playing. jordan river had a little shack with people lining up.  it looked like a coffee shop kind of deal but i told jane to go ask if they had dish soap.  so jane, walks up to the window and is all conversational, "hi do you have dish soap?"  "uh... yes we do" says the lady.  "ok great." says jane and just walks away.  this made us all laugh so hard.  next i sent sloan with 20 bucks.  he came back a while later, "they weren't selling dish soap!" he said, but then he flashed his impish sloany grin "but she gave me some in this!" he was holding up a take out container with a plastic lid with some green liquid gold in it.  dish soap solved.

we headed on in high spirits still.  it wasn't long until we arrived at china beach.  the sign at the entrance said "campsite full".  my stomach dropped but i continued in to have a look anyways.  we thought we found an empty spot.  spot #12.  the kids started bickering about setting up the tent.  but i had an uneasy feeling and went in search of the camp host.  instead i found man tracker in caretaker form driving a little vroom vroom camp vehicle.  he said yeah 12 was already paid for but that there were some double sites on the back stretch which we could probably nab if we were willing to pay double.  what  could we do?  i jumped in the car and so did jane. we left sloan and adriel to grab the partially unpacked tent and meet us at the new spot.  our new spot was spot 27.  it was very spacious and with two campfire rings and two picnic tables and backed onto a bit of woods.  sloan later said that man tracker probably bought up all the other sites to force us onto that site because his hidden lair was in the woods behind our site.

man tracker features heavily in our  camping stories.  for those who don't know, man tracker is a story we made up one time i was on an adventure with sarah and kyle and family.  was it the cape scott adventure ?  i don't remember.  anyways he's basically a guy who is always tracking me.  he can take different forms and disguises and he can find me with any slight whiff or dna evidence on the wind.  man tracker is ever in pursuit.

anyways there was a lot of angst surrounding the tent set up.  i pointed out a comfy ground area for the tent and adriel said he would move it there after he set it up.  which made no sense because he hadn't done anything yet but lay it out.  "it's EASIER!!" he intoned dramatically, "to move the tent WHEN IT IS ALREADY SET UP!" i didn't try to reason with him that long, just chuckled to myself.  meanwhile adriel was both complaining that no one was helping him and not letting anyone help him.  the drama.  sloan was busy pumping his deluxe triple high air mattress that he brought for himself.  jane had a thin skin of a foamie and adriel told me that he wasn't going to pump up his mattress because it was too hard to make a seal. sloan hotly contested this, so adriel idly hand pumped and bit by bit it got kind of blown up. there was much 'ween' talk by sloan.

 by this time sloan was making us lunch.  he thought my metal flipper with the melted curved handle was hilarious. "what is this?" he crowed as he pulled it out of the bag. i had organized all our food stuffs and put everything in the cooler etc and realized.  the lettuce was not with us.  i also realized that i forgot to get ice and another propane and pesto sauce.  so we had bacon tomato sandwiches and sun chips.    which wasn't bad.  sloan almost lost it when adriel started eating the sunchips before he was totally finished making the bacon.  sun chip controlled eating was very important to him. then like doobs we tried to wash our dishes with cold water from the tap which really didn't work for the bacon plate.

after lunch i knew i had to go for the missing supplies.  adriel came with me.  he talked me into going to port renfew rather than back to sooke, because he really liked the drive.  we talked.  i refused to roll my window up so he could hear his music better until we got deep into the mist.  there were some stunning views.  "see?' said adriel.  there was a little general store where i bought some cans of tomato sauce, some ice, and a six pack of paper towel.  you won't believe it but we used up 3 of those paper towels.  there was no propane there but she sent me to the trailhead resort store to find it.  adriel was a little saucy about trailhead. he knows it.  he didn't point it out to me until we passed it and then he was like "it's right THERE!"  so i gave him a purple nurple.  no i didn't.  but i could have.  the guy in the shop was suuuuuuuuper cheerful and sold me my 2 cans of propane like it was the best thing he did all day.

when we got back we found that jane and sloan had already ventured down to the beach and back. they went in in their clothes.  we decided to all go.  and this is when i died.  my knees were already swollen from my time with amy.  from coming out of the slug suit and into the land of movement.   the walk to the beach is 1km and many many stairs. sloan and i counted them on the way up.  259.  sloan stayed with me and adriel and jane went on ahead.  with knee things going down is tres difficile.  with being a chubbo slug for 4 months, going up is tres difficile.  lose lose.  but not really.  sloan and i had nice chats on the way down and the beach was, well, come on, the beach was another bc paradise.  

sloan carried the sunchips with him in what adriel and jane called "a garbage bag" but was really just a shopping bag.  it had a little hole in it so we had to be careful not to let it touch the sand.  adriel almost put a sandy hand in the bag but caught himself before he committed this great sin.

 the tide was mostly up and the waves were pretty big.  we went in.  so i was wading in, and suddenly i was falling down a steep pebble bank so i sat on my rumpus.  the wild thing about this beach was it was littered with big hidden rocks and crashing waves drive you into them.  then we would find a sandy spot and lose it right away and never find it again.  we had so much fun but we all came away with bloody scraped knees and feet as our war wounds.  

i found  a big log little log combo that became my throne.  jane taught adriel a tik tok dance on the beach.  two young couples were down the beach from us throwing a rugby ball. i told adriel to go intercept it and run off with it.  instead he asked them if he  could toss the ball with them and they let him.  sloan and i lay our towels on the sand by a log that had rocks and shells pushed up against it and we found lots of treasures.  it was more like i would see something interesting right out of reach and sloan would grab it for me.  then he started finding me so many treasures.  some of the best were some big intact muscle shells that were eroded to feel like rock.  i love that.  he also found some little round swirlies.  around this time jane and adriel said they were heading back up. adriel wanted to start on dinner.  it was his night to make breakfast burritos.  more on this later.  sloan and i decided we should get going too and started narrowing down our pile of treasures to the best of the best.  with our discards we made a shell pathway leading up to the log.

i was dreading the walk up.  but the stairs were not as bad going up as coming down.  i was just out of breath.  sloan was very encouraging and let me lean on him when i had to take a big step.  meanwhile he gave himself the challenge of walking up the stairs with straight legs.  he made it up most of them like that too.  he was quite dedicated.  part way up the path we started finding leaves in the path with eyes and mouths torn out of them to make faces.  every so often we would find one.  it was a fun quirky distraction from the huffs and puffs and swollen lead legs. we stopped and took a picture at each one.  we felt sure it was adriel and jane leaving them for us to find to make our journey better.  the last leaf installment was a twig full of leaf faces sticking out of a bench near the top of the trail.

finally back at camp adriel and jane said they didn't do the leaf faces and that it must have been man tracker.  

also there were no eggs.  sloan suddenly said "ohhhh! the lettuce and the eggs were in the fridge!".  both adriel's planned meals were bacon and eggs based but became bacon based.  so that night we had bacon wrapped in cold tortillas with some cheese and some salsa.  it makes me laugh.  it was a weird meal for sure.  if things went perfectly we wouldn't have these stories.  this time we heated water to wash the dishes but there was no wash bin.  we tried to use one of the bowls but it was no bueno.  adriel 'washed' the flipper by dipping it in the pot of hot water.  "there. clean."  i gave up for the night.

i sent jane and sloan to go buy some fire wood.  they came back with quite the story.  they found the host camp site and no one answered the knock on the door but they saw a package of firewood under the table and took it, leaving a ten dollar bill under a rock.  they also took down the sign that said the host was in.  they came back unsure if they had stolen/ purchased from the host's personal wood stash.

they started the fire right away and quickly burned up most of the wood.  the bacon grease paper towels came in handy.  we did interpretive dance charades in pairs about the events of our journey so far and had lots of laughs at everyone's antics and awesome dance moves.  we only had 2 camp chairs.  whoever wasn't performing was sitting on a camp chair.

adrillio and i stayed up a bit later than jane and sloan who were watching friends in the tent.  he helped me pack the food things in the car and we said good night. 

the first day was over.

some phone pics and vids of the day:

sloan making the same face as the leaf...

more to come laura...more to come...