Craigleith, the second day

  Up with the lark on a sunny but unseasonably cold morning by the water; 12C is not summer weather!

I found the showers and, despite it looking a little tired, the stall was clean and the water was copious and hot. I know that I say it all the time but the washing facilities at Ontario’s Provincial Parks are really very good, and come as part of the price, too, with no slot meters that eat quarters. Some of the commercial campgrounds could learn a thing or two.

We breakfasted on toast; jam for me and Marmite for Mrs T, and headed into the busy metropolis that is Collingwood. I won’t go into the detail of hanging around the Ontario Courts of Justice all day but a result was achieved, albeit not with the perfect outcome. Anyway, that’s an end to the process so we can get back to normal now. It was quite nice to have a sort of picnic lunch in the car, tearing off chunks of bread from a big, crusty loaf; it was quite reminiscent of family holidays when sandwiches were eaten in the car. What was different here was that the sun was shining, unlike my memories of childhood car picnics which usually involved rain and wind.

Given that we were on a business trip, we neither of us felt like doing much after the business was done, so we mooched back to Craigleith and squatted in the Airstream for the rest of the evening. It was just too chilly to sit out for too long so we sat in, had our supper, had some beer and watched people in very expensive motor homes set up their camp sites.

One of the modern facets of camping is having some Internet access, but Craigleith isn’t too good for that. It’s in the lee of the Niagara Escarpment, known as the Blue Mountains here, and the mobile signal is poor. It doesn’t help, either, that the Airstream is a very effective Faraday Cage and is quite good at keeping radio signals out. Still, we were able to do a bit of Facebooking and send a few texts. I know that we shouldn’t be wedded to the technology but it’s quite hard not to steal a glance at Facebook every now and again. I’m sure that the Provincial Parks people will set up some WiFi systems and, if they do it right they could make some money from it, but they’re not there yet. A tip for the authorities is that you don’t offer free WiFi, because then people kick the arse out of it and it becomes next to useless (Kampgrounds of America please note). Charge for it and people will use it wisely and not be streaming movies all day!

Tomorrow is leaving day so activity will be at a slightly higher pace. Tonight we head to bed in the hope that the kids running around the campsite at 11.30 pm and making an unholy racket will be corralled by the Park staff and fed to the bears. G’night all.