I made it to Level 4!! I will be competing at Level 4 in Competitions!
We said
We look forward to this camping weekend for at least six months in advance of it for many reasons. First, and foremost it falls in, on or around our anniversary every year and neither of us can think of a better way to celebrate our life together than the one thing we love nothing more to do: camping. Add in a music one-day festival that caters to the music fan in us as well as ensures that kids like Emelia will be entertained too. But, on top of all of that is that the festival is hosted in our second favourite provincial park in Ontario – Sandbanks Provincial Park – with the best beaches in Ontario as far as I am convinced,
With it all planned out and ready to go we had a bit of a wrench thrown into our plans the first day of school for Emelia. She came bounding home from school elated to tell Danielle about her school’s first Field Trip! They were going to Niagara Falls to see The Toronto Maple Leafs training camp. The wrinkle? It was planned for the Friday we were taking her out school to head down to Sandbanks early to get the most out of camping weekend. Not willing to let the weekend fail, we made arrangements with Emelia’s school that we could head a little (or maybe a lottle) out of our way and pick her up from Niagara Falls and carry on to Sandbanks.
It wasn’t ideal but it certainly was making the best of situation so Emelia could get to do something she was very excited about and then Danielle & I could do the same. So, while I was at my first Friday Morning Hockey skate of the year at the crack of dawn, Danielle was dropping an over the moon Emelia off at the bus for her Field Trip. By the time I was back from hockey, Danielle & I were in get the trailer loaded and hitched mode. By 10:30am, we were on our (out of way) way to meet up with Emelia. But the good news is we made great time and I – well Danielle and I – got to see some of the Maple Leafs skate too! By 1:30pm we’d met up with Emelia out in the parking lot as the school boarded the bus and we were on our way to Sandbanks!
We made reasonable time given that we were hitting Toronto from both the “in” and “out” side later in the afternoon than we wanted to. We got onto the 407 with a minimal amount of curse words and managed to bypass a lot of the hullabaloo save for leaving the gas refuel until almost too late in Whitby in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully we got tanked up before we were tanked out and in an hour we were unloading the truck and setting up Wolfie Too at almost the same time our friends The Jornitz’s were doing the same. In no time flat we were enjoying dinner and then a campfire together. Of course after I got a shower.
The weather forecast – sun and hot all weekend – couldn’t have been any better. Saturday we hatched plans to get to the beach early and to spend as much time swimming at the beach before the festival started as we could. And we did just that and have the sunburns to prove. Emelia was beyond excited at the idea of showing the Jornitz girls her favourite part of the festival: the kids area where they can make their own costumes from fabric. The girls occupied themselves for most of the day while the parents got to check out the rest of the festival. It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon and now especially with Emelia being the age she is, there was a lot less having to help her and lot more of us getting to watch her being this amazing friend leading her camping friends through the experience. It was perfect.
When they announced the bands playing the festival this year we were beyond excited at the headliner, Wintersleep. We’ve both long since loved their music but have just never had the opportunity to see them live. To be able to see them, and in the setting of the amphitheatre in Sandbanks under a possible sky blanketed with stars was just about the best way to see a band we’ve really loved for some time. Plus the added bonus was the surprise performer announced closer to the festival was Julie Doiron & The Wooden Stars. It was the perfect day of music under the most perfect weather. And like I said earlier – we have the sunburns to prove!
Today we decided against trying to pack up early and make gymnastics practice in lieu of squeezing out as much time as we could with the Jornitz’s, the beach, and the amazing weather. With the Terry Fox fun run going on in the park we had the option of either going to the beach before 10:00am or after 11:30am. We opted for the former and not the latter and were in Lake Ontario by 10:00am on the nose. We spent the next two hours in and out of the water enjoying the amazing and unseasonably warm weather. We got a good two hours of swimming in before it was – GASP – time to think about packing up and going home.
And with that our weekend came to an end. It was bittersweet, because we had fully intended on trying to slip in two more weekends of camping before calling the camping season over, but we’ve since decided to skip camping Thanksgiving so that we can be close for family and then just taking one weekend in October before calling an end to the camping season. But the truth is, we had an amazing camping season filled with so many great memories. This being the first full year we started documenting those travels with out Bonne Fires channel, we are excited to see where and what we get up to next year!