It has been so long since I went it is hard to even remember being off for a whole four day weekend, but I did have the time off and during it IndigoEve, another friend let’s call her DC, and myself went camping. (I hope you have a few minutes this is going to be a long post.)

Friday morning, after getting up way too early for a long weekend, I was picked up by IndigoEve. We crammed my stuff in with hers and headed to pick up DC, where we then tried to cram a third person’s camping gear into IndigoEve’s volvo. While the car is roomy it was still a squeeze for all, especially DC who was in the back seat with bags of food, a cooler and a wannigan.

We got on the road a little later then we originally planned but made surprisingly good time down to Victoria despite the heavily loaded down car and long weekend traffic. IndigoEve had never driven her car packed with quite so much stuff, the whole trip down she lived in ‘cautiously paranoid’ land thinking something might go wrong. Though DC and I kept telling her it would be fine and really it was, her car worked great the entire trip.

Anyway, we got to Victoria and made a stop in the Mountain Equipment Co-op Store, because well does anyone NEED a reason to go in? They have cool stuff! I picked up a new sling backpack and the three of us picked up turtle led lights (mine’s green). We finished up in MEC, made our way out of the city (much to IndigoEve’s joy as she doesn’t like driving in town but she “does enjoy Left-Bends” as opposed to left-turns.) and headed up along the West Coast of the island to the campground.

China Beach campground was really easy to find, as was our campsite as well. We parked the car and started pulling out things to set up such as the tent and the cooking equipment (it was just past dinner time by this point food was going to be required soon). DC and I got right to putting up the tent while IndigoEve took the time to relax from her driving and take some photos of us doing that. The tent went up fairly easily, hammering tent pegs into clay/gravel was a pain in the butt though. Not to mention stringing a tarp over the tent was difficult as our campsite had lost most of the surrounding trees due to windstorms. Actually the whole campground was all these really tall really stick-like trees. Not a whole lot of privacy since ground cover was nonexistent. Fortunately we had some pretty good neighbours who were only a little noisy. I should also note here that the campground had the cleanest and nicest pit toilets (outhouses) that I’ve ever seen at a campground, they were cleaned daily and had hand sanitizer in them. Not to mention they had real toilets over the pits as opposed to scary wood boxes with just seats attached. They were the next best thing to flushing toilets while camping.

Once the tent and tarps were up DC started making dinner which was Indian Butter Chicken and rice. It took awhile because we had stove issues we had brought along a campstove from about the 1930′s which took a little TLC to run, but when it was done it was delicious and we paired it will some wine that IndigoEve had received as a parting gift from her summer co-op job. For dessert we had smores of course. Then completely exhausted we headed to bed.

Saturday we had a quick but yummy breakfast of blueberry pancakes and sausages. Then having decided to do a day trip to the start to the Juan de Fuca Trail we packed up a lunch of ham, cheese and bacon sandwiches, granola bars and water and headed to our destination.

There are actually a number of trailheads along the Juan de Fuca Trail depending on how far up the West Coast you want to drive. We went to the China Beach Day Use one as it was the closest. It is a 2km stretch of the trail that runs from China Beach to Mystic Beach. It is a moderate hike on well maintained trails (there are a few steeper areas though, about 10 minutes into the hike DC was heard to exclaim “I am not a mountain goat!” as we descended one such steep area). The worst part was the up and down on a very muddy slope (DC’s second reference to her lack of goat ancestry), but the rough stairs there made it relatively easy to navigate. Once you’ve made it down the 2km you come out on a really lovely little beach that numerous people were taking advantage of that day. Most were sitting enjoying the waves, a few were camping on the beach and still others were just stopping for a break before continuing their hiking/backpacking along the rest of the Juan de Fuca Trail.

IndigoEve, DC and I enjoyed our lunch there as well as many photo ops (ok I took pictures the entire 2kms of the hike too). After about an hour and a half we headed back up the trail and back to our campsite. When we got back to the campsite we went and explored the short trail (1km) that led from our campsite to the beach. On the way down we passed a couple who we’d seen at Mystic Beach earlier, who told us to enjoy the stairs down to China Beach, all 264 of them (they had counted on the way back up). I can’t say we enjoyed them but they were definitely a lot of them. The beach wasn’t much to look at, there were a few surfers that were making their way back in and we did see a grey whale or rather the back of a grey whale as it did not co-operate with my attempts to photograph it and show it’s tail. In the end I gave up and we headed back up the many stairs to make dinner (smokies and beans over the fire).

Woo Hoo half way! I told you it might be a long post, thanks for still reading. :) Don’t worry less happens from here on out.

Sunday morning we woke up and made a breakfast of scrambled egg and sausage wraps, then drove to see French Beach which is the campsite before ours on the road and according to one friend the nicer site. Before we got to that though we stopped at the Sheringham Lighthouse, which like all lighthouses here to can’t really go near because they are Department of National Defense and fenced in. What you could do at this lighthouse though was walk along the fence to a rocky cliff that looked out over the ocean and the fishing boats that were trolling. This was also the first place I’d had a cell signal during the trip so I took advantage of it to text Maggie to make plans for Monday in Victoria. (Yes I am a geek, as IndigoEve pointed out at the time.)

French Beach has a very nice day use area and the campgrounds actually have some privacy since they have bushes and whatnot. We strolled along the beach too as they have a long sandy area. Took some more photos of water, birds, rocks, which I’ll link to when I get them off my camera. Just as we were starting to head back from our walk towards the parking area it started to rain in typical West Coast style – large wet drops. We quickly headed back to the car and drove the little way up the road to our campground, though not before stopping in at a little coffee place on the way for a warm up. By the time we’d finished our coffee and gotten back to the campground the rain had stopped. IndigoEve took a nap while DC and I decided to get started on our pasta dinner which we were planning to cook over the fire. So dinner cooked, IndigoEve napped and DC and I chatted, all the while it was getting darker and starting to drizzle.

I should mention that when we arrived back after the rain shower we checked the tent to see if there was any leaks, there were a couple small ones where the tarp didn’t quite cover the tent, so we spent a little while tying up garbage bags to help keep water out in case it started to pour. By the time DC and I had burned off all our firewood (as well as some the guy camping beside us gave us when he left before us) it had been raining off and on for a while. We’d put all the extra bags and shoes into the car earlier so only sleeping bags were in the tent with us, and keeping ourselves in the middle of the tent (it was a big 9×12 tent) we headed to bed for our final night of camping.

Monday came and we ate cereal from little boxes and apple sauce, tore down the site and packed everything back into the car (much neater packed than the trip down too – though that isn’t hard when you have all the stuff in one place instead of picking it up along the way), We were gone well before the 11am checkout time, hit the coffee shop again on the way back to Victoria and a short drive later we were back at the MEC store (we picked up turtles for other people since they worked so well for us while camping). Then we headed over to Tweek’s place to meet up with him and Maggie. A short visit with them, then I grabbed my bags threw them in Maggie’s car and bid IndigoEve and DC a nice trip back home, in a less crowded car.

Maggie and I took a leisurely drive back up the island, catching up on goings on in the last month since we’d seen each other. Not to mention a little side trip to Chapters, which I apparently had no qualms about entering despite my 3 day lack of showering.

Alrighty well there you have it, my Labour Day Long Weekend Camping Trip in a nutshell (ok a big nutshell).

If you are still reading this, wow you are a trooper! Gold star. I am typed out though and it has taken me a long while to write this I’m tired now (sorry if there are glaring spelling/grammatical errors).

To bed I go, Night!