We Have Returned - Day 1 of 4

Following almost three months of summer inactivity (don't ask, it's a long and tedious tale), we finally hit the road again and dragged Towed Haul to Rondeau Provincial Park. I say dragged, but the Airstream may well have been water-skiing behind the Toadmobile, there was that much rain.

Monday morning saw warm and sunny weather as we packed our final bits and bobs into Towed Haul's interior and waved the Tadpoles off with their dear Papa as they went for an exciting break "oop north".

The rain started after lunch and down it came in a veritable summer deluge but, as luck would have it, eased off just in time for me to get out there and hitch the trailer to the car. Did I say it had eased off? I was lying. The rain started down again after I'd been out there a minute or two and just kept coming. Working quickly I soon became a Category II (Damp) Camper, and as we set off with the windows of the Toadmobile fogging dramatically, the watery stuff just became heavier and heavier. 

Every pull away from a standing start had the front wheels spinning, the result of rain on the previously dry roads, but we enjoyed peering through the murk as we trundled through the corn and soya fields to the park. 

At the park, I became a Category III (Quite Wet) Camper as I stood outside emptying the trailer's waste tanks and filling up the fresh water tank, before progressing to a Category IV (Really Wet) Camper as we backed into a tight and quite well waterlogged site. Mrs T soon joined me at a Category V (Soaking) Camper as we busied ourselves unhitching and setting up, before finally succumbing to a Category VI  (Drowned Rat) Camper. 

We deployed the awning in an attempt to provide some shelter whilst we worked but so much water was cascading off the corner that we sort of gave up and just wished more rain to complete the full power shower effect.

Once set up, though, and inside our little aluminium cottage, things started to look better, especially with the coffee on and wet clothes jettisoned. Sitting inside and looking at the rain coming down outside was far better than being outside, looking at the dry interior.

We ate, watched a video and had a drink, all the while watching the lightning flash in the sky through the uncovered skylights. It was a wild and stormy night that did, eventually, peter out enough to allow us to splash around the campsite in the dark whilst exercising the hound (her first mention today). I brought the awning in before retiring to my pit, it being a trifle fragile for these stormy conditions. 

What would the morrow bring? Drowning? Electrocution? Crushed by falling trees? Read on, fair Toad fans, for all will be revealed in the next installment...

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