Gordon Bay – Day 1
Gordon Bay Provincial Park, our destination for the first camping trip of 2022, has over 120 campsites which are heavily booked in the summer months. It is renowned for its warm temperatures, and sandy beach, but it also has large campsites set in a forest of stately firs. In a word, it’s an ideal camping destination.
However, on the day we arrived, the park didn’t live up to its reputation for warmth. Perhaps their promotion material refers to temperatures in July and August. It was cool with rain off an on throughout the day which, quite frankly, has been the theme for the entire spring this year in BC. We had no choice, but to set up camp in the midst of intermittent showers.
The first task was to set up the screen tent. This provided us with some shelter when the more intense bouts of rain came through. We could also put some of our equipment in there to keep dry.
We had the usual “discussion” about the best location for the screen tent and the tarp in relation to the picnic table which we would use for cooking. It seems there are always at least two opinions as to which spot is the best! Once we sorted that out, David rigged up the tarp and pegged the screen tent down. Now on to our sleeping tent.
The main issue in setting up our sleeping tent in the rain is not to get the inside wet before you put the fly over it. It can take some delicate management to make that happen. However, we managed to get that done during a relative lull in the rain, and our sleeping accommodation was dry – for now.
What! You have shower curtains inside the screen tent? Yes, we do and it’s been a wonderful addition. When we bought the little red pop-up last year, we noticed that there were times when the rain would blow in the sides if the wind was high. So David ingeniously figured out how to rig up lines inside along the walls where we could hang curtains.
Inexpensive nylon shower curtains were the obvious choice since they don’t allow much moisture to come through and carabiners were chosen as the mechanism for hanging the curtains. I sewed some tabs along the sides of each curtain so we could fasten them back against the screen. You can see in the photo where the tabs are pulling the curtain back. The final piece was to sew tabs on the bottom corners so they could be pegged down in a strong wind. Voila!
So there we were, our campsite all set up. The new foldable aluminum table was placed in the screen tent (with snacks handy to go along with our hot chocolate); the stove was on the picnic table ready to make supper. The big blue water jug was filled up at the nearby tap.
David had added one more smaller tarp on the far end of the screen tent to help deflect the rain, and the shower curtains were doing a good job of keeping out the rain – and the bit of wind swirling around at times.
All in all, we felt very cozy. It had been a busy day travelling from Salt Spring to Lake Cowichan, but we had arrived, set up camp and made a nourishing supper. Now we were ready to settle down for a comfortable sleep.
After a short walk down the lane to visit the washroom and to have a chat with this interesting forest creature, we enjoyed a brief campfire before turning in for the night. Our first camping trip of the year had begun. What will Day 2 bring?
