Thursday, July 19, 2012

Pretty Happy Funny Real -19 July 2012


Lots of fun to share again this week for Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real.
My Pretty girl and I went camping.  My sister and brother-in-law were camping at Bon Echo park and invited us to come too.  Bon Echo is just 1 1/2 hours from our house so I figured we'd give it a try.  I'll be honest, I'm not really a camping fan.  I was a Brownie, a Girl Guide, a Pathfinder and a Cadet -so I'm really good at camping.  That's how I made camping livable  :)
Once upon a time, Bon Echo park had a beautiful Inn..
But it succumbed to the fate of most of the beautiful wooden inns in "Northern Ontario".  It burnt to the ground.
Now it's a lovely Provincial Park with lots of camping spots and a great lake/beach.
This was half of our camp site.  Behind me was parking, and a nice sitting area and fire pit (with grill).  I couldn't believe how much greener everything was down there.  We were actually allowed to have a fire between 7pm and midnight.
Ella and Auntie B playing in the 'food tent', that way I didn't have to keep telling her to zip the tent.  I told her that was 'Guide camping rule number 2'.  Do you know what 'Guide camping rule number 1' is?
*don't touch the side of the tent or you'll make the canvas leak -yep, when I was in Guides we still had the big heavy canvas tents
Ella decided to learn how to use her French knitter this weekend.  She usually asks after we've had a terrible day or when I'm in the middle of something -she has such good timing  :)  Wow, she really took to it.  She's already made a long enough cord to cut off and call a 'snake', though it's going to be a friendly snake so it doesn't scare Grandma.
There was a great beach area.  Lots of sand and lots of swimming area.  Ella and Auntie Belinda are the dots at the back of the picture (you can see Ella's life jacket), Belinda is standing.  Ella is so brave in the water this year.  I thought a lake this size would make her more nervous.
Sunday night we had a visitor in camp.  Around 3 am (I didn't get to sleep until after 12:30 because of the heat) I heard what I thought was rain drops.  Then I realized they weren't hitting our tent.  I peaked out the tent window (with Colin's million candle strength light) and found a raccoon happily helping himself to the marshmallows and peanuts.  As you can see from the picture he wasn't that far from Ella and I.  I'm watching the raccoon thinking 'stay asleep Ella, stay asleep Ella'.  All I needed right then was for Ella to wake up and need to pee!  I didn't know what to do and only had the large flashlight for weapon.  I closed up the tent and tried to go back to sleep, when I hear fabric ripping.  Now the darn thing was breaking into the food tent.  By the time I the door open he already had the Frosted Flakes box half out the tent wall.  By this time Ella was awake and I had to pee  :)  Luckily the raccoon had had enough of the bright light in his eyes and left.
Next morning Ella participated in a class about trees.  Here they are demonstrating how leaves exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide.  Ella had so much fun and knew most of the answers.  We were having so Happy and having fun that we had decided to stay one more day.

That evening is when the Real hit.  I took us all out for supper, since Uncle Stefan only had food for the 2 days not 3.  Half way through supper Ella starts crying and saying her tummy hurt and she wants to go home ("but I'm not going to puke Momma").  By the time we finish supper Ella's just about sobbing and just beside herself.  So we head back to the campsite and Momma packs up faster than ever thought possible.  Luckily we didn't have a tent, so I was basically just stuffing 'stuff' into the truck.  By the time we were heading down the highway Ella couldn't stop crying and was saying it's the worst pain ever.  I was beginning to panic, and was planning on not turning at Dacre and heading straight for Renfrew hospital (the Fletcher family have bad appendixes, there aren't too many that still have theirs).  About 12 minutes into the drive (just when I'm about to cry because I can't do anything) silence falls from the back seat.
 "Dasha's tummy hurts too"
She fell asleep!  Ella slept until we made the turn at Dacre heading to Eganville.  When she woke up I could tell she was feeling so much better.  By the time we got home, she was chatty and telling Daddy all about the 'weekend'.

What caused all this?  I really don't know.  Likely a combination of too much heat and sun, 'strange' food, not enough food, not enough drinks, and delicate like a race horse (just like Daddy).  Needless to say, IF we ever try camping again, I'll be in charge of the food and drinks and we'll try to do it before the stinking hot weather arrives.

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