Probably the best Labour Day weekend I've spent so far has been this last one. John and I had the privilege of spending it with Milly and Quoc in beautiful Manning Park. When I say beautiful, you may have some sort of image in your head of a cozy little campsite that you drive into next to other little campsites that are driven into by other people yearning to get away from city life by sleeping in a trailer for a night. But this simply was not that kind of camping.
The campsite we enjoyed for two nights (called Strike Lake Camp) is about 7 km from a parking lot and nestled inbetween tall tall trees. The trail to it follows three sparkling lakes through the forest and the sound of rushing water is the last thing you hear as you fall asleep and the first thing you wake up to in the morning. There are ready made fire pits, a pile of wood to fuel the fires and logs surrounding them for stools.
The food cache is where the bears hang out, waiting for an unsuspecting camper to leave the door to the food open.
Quoc made use of the fresh water for his water purifier device. It served us very well.
We ate oatmeal for breakfast, supplemented by hotdogs and marshmallows. We ate hotdogs for dinner and marshmallows for dessert. Basically, whenever we were hungry we ate hotdogs and marshmallows.
We washed in the river. It was very cold and refreshing.
We hiked back to the lodge to get more food and to eat our traditional camping trip icecream.
It has been confirmed: camping with Milly and Quoc is a good time. Despite blisters, bad night sleeps, fear of bears (that was all me I think), weiner and marshmallow diets (I only mention this one as a con because by Monday afternoon the others longed for a salad - I could have gone on eating marshmallows for another week), setting up camp at the wrong location and having to take it down and march a little further on, ash and soot coating everything - camping is worth it.
The gorgeous landscape, eating everything over an open fire, being able to see millions of stars at night, spending time with friends in a unique setting, discovering again and again how blessed we are to live in British Columbia, seeing a black bear 15 meters away - it's all pretty rad. I give Manning Park two thumbs up.
