At around 6 am I was trying to snuggle into a warmer position and grabbed a handful of blanket and threw it over me. Parts of it landed heavy on my shoulder, back, and leg, icy wetness soaked into my already frozen body. I was sooooo cold.

I got up to walk to the bathrooms. It was still raining. In my attempt to keep the tent clean, I had carefully left my cozy runners outside. I threw on my water shoes and grabbed my trusty ‘rain coat in a pouch’. My flannel pajama bottoms got soaked through from the thighs down on the way to the bathrooms. Thunder continued to rumble off in the distance. My hood kept my face dry and I peeked out from under the rim.

Bathrooms by the way mean a few toilet stalls like you’d find at McDonalds, but with toilets like you’d find on a bus, and a flush means that a little water runs in it and a door opens at the bottom into an otherwise normal outhouse foundation. There is a sink outside under the roof, but no walls or mirrors. Still, the sink and toilet feel like heaven.

I walked back to the campsite and looked around at the havoc created by the storm the night before. The road and the hill added the flash flood factor evident in the scene before me. There was a river trail just beside the corner of the tent and it met with a river trail that seemed to come straight down the hill. You could see where they’d joined and run down the hill from the middle of our site. A tiny flood, we named it our very own “Lake of Two Rivers”.

I was cold and wasn’t about to wake up Sue, who had spent a portion of the night running around in the rain while she let me sleep. I sat in the truck for 2 ½ hours while it rained. I couldn’t go anywhere, the truck was attached to the tent. I couldn’t make coffee, the wood was completely saturated, and it was still raining. I listened to the rain. I tried to have a nap. I couldn’t turn on the truck to get the heat going or I’d have asphyxiated Sue, so I’d turn the key to the accessories position and let the seat warmer heat my butt for about 5 minutes at a time.

I changed into a different pair of flannel pants and threw on a sweatshirt. I looked for something I could pull over me. That’s when I saw the flaw in our privacy fencing.

The tarp which could have prevented the flood had actually created a river inside the tent and now it hung limply from a hook doing nothing. It could have kept the wood dry, but that would have meant we thought it was going to rain. The sleeping bag which would have kept us warm and rather dry was instead blocking the view from the road. The towels we could have dried off with were hanging with water dripping off the bottoms. My shoes which could have kept my feet (the coldest part of me) warm stood as soggy sentries at the door of the tent.

At 9:30 Sue got up and I made her get in the truck immediately so we could go get coffee. We ended up going for a drive along the 60 through the park.

We went to the Nature Centre and played with the exhibits. We took a couple of side roads and almost walked to a lookout, but it started raining again and it was 1.9km walk. We didn’t know how steep the terrain would be and it didn’t seem like a good idea compared to sitting in the warm truck with our coffee and looking for moose. Yes we were still in our jammies.

We got back to our site at around 1pm. The rain had stopped for the most part, the trees were still shaking off all of the water they collected. Every time the wind picked up, the sound of big rain drops followed. We went and bought more firewood. We made fire and then coffee. The fire took forever. We were in flannel and sweaters when the sun finally began to shine again. The air was still cool, and the dampness lingered in everything including our clothes.

We put the mattress on the roof of the Kia, and hung everything that wasn’t already hanging on the line. We turned the tent and slid it back a little to get a bit of a drainage angle.

The critters had strewn the few pieces of recyclable plastic containers all over.

We cleaned up the campsite and went to the water for some pictures of the sun on the trees and us. Then we played with our cameras and the forest.

Back to the campsite to drink our coffee and sit and stare at the fire for this the last night of our camping trip. On this night, we could see stars up through the trees.