Rain, Rain Go Away

And don’t come back any other day and if you do please locate yourself over the tent of some other poor unsuspecting, over taxed, underpaid, mosquito bitten moose trampled Canadian! Ok now I feel better, sorry I forgot that was my outside typewriter.

So as you may have guessed I have just returned from a not so glorious camping trip. Hey they happen it’s not all moose cookies and baby deer prancing around your campsite people! I would say that over the years really the only two things that can kill a camping trip are rain and mosquitoes. Strangely enough they go hand in hand. This year in Southern Ontario has been…well…pretty screwed up weather wise. Torrential rains, then snow then temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius, I guess Mother Nature got bored and pulled out the old playbook and randomly pointed to a weather front blindfolded every day this spring. She really should get a hobby. Even the geniuses at the weather networks were throwing darts at a weather map and hoping for the best. Case in point, the massive flooding in the GTA that NO ONE saw coming. Over 4 million people, some of whom are trained to look for this sort of thing, and not one person said, “Hey maybe we should take the canoe to work today”.

All that being said the idea behind the awesomeness that is camping is the fact that you are self sufficient out in the wilderness and how you deal with that adversity is what makes you a card carrying member of the Awesome Canadian club.  So while my crocs and my tent may still be wet and my legs covered in tiny holes I am happy to say that a new Canadian pastime may have been created, The Mosquito Olympics. Just a word to the wise though, they really are very bad at the swimming and weightlifting events!

Tune in next week for a series of articles on Algonquin Park. It is time!