To Camp or Not to Camp: That is the Question (Thursday, August 9)

Up at 6:30 and out of the campground with our bedroom, living room and kitchen all packed into the van by 9:00. Since we really did nothing the night before to prepare for this, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Especially since we did most of it with minimal yelling and irritation. It was another morning of cereal, until the new neighbors to one side, who we had not met yet, brought over their leftover pancakes and sausage. At which point our children simultaneously thanked them wholeheartedly and wolfed down the leftovers. We hugged our friends goodbye, then we went our separate ways.

Off to Montreal. We drove through Maine and New Hampshire, taking a highway that was marked as a scenic drive. It was kind of hard to tell how scenic it was given the downpour we were driving through as we approached the marked off area. We took a look at the radar and weather report for Montreal and the nearby national park that held our reservations, and we both decided to pretend we never saw the storms reaching for that area.

A very brief passage through Vermont brought us to the US-Canadian border. There, next to a couple of dilapidated buildings straight from a TV set of an old ghost town, we waited for close to half an hour for 10 cars to get permission to pass into Canada until it was our turn. The border patrol agent asked us some basic questions, ran our passports through her little machine, and waved us through. There is a rather large border crossing complex under construction nearby—we can only assume that this is intended to be a crossing for commercial trucks in the future. I hope they get to move through more quickly than we did!

Eventually we began to home in on the national park. There was lightning in the distance, and it began to pour. We had promised the kids a treat, so we stopped in at a roadside plaza for their first-ever Tim Horton’s donuts. Meanwhile, we got serious about camping in the rain. The prediction for the next two days/nights was rain—the exact amount of time we were supposed to be camping. We’d be setting up in a storm, from what we could tell. We negotiated just how much either of us was committed to the whole thing. The fact is, we have a leaky tent. If we had a tent that stayed somewhat dry, it would be doable. But we don’t.

Thanks to Tim Horton’s wifi, we spent some time checking out hotels near Montreal. We found a Hampton Inn that had availability, near the airport, and we took it.

The drive to Montreal did not seem too intimidating. We were doing fine until the last 10 kilometers, at which point we hit serious traffic congestion. It took us a half hour longer than expected to get to our hotel, and all we could do was fall on our knees in gratitude that we did not have to set up a tent in the rain at that point.

When you camp, for the most part you avoid places that you are under-dressed and under-groomed for. You forget that the rest of the world does not smell like campfires and a night in a sleeping bag and, well, someone who lacks electricity. As long as you don’t come in contact with too many who are enjoying more conveniences, you can forget that you are kinda gross.

Walking into the bland but comforting hotel décor of an airport Hampton Inn, I realized exactly how far I can fall in a week and a half. A good part of my ponytail had escaped the elastic holding it; my clothes had spots on them. My toes, sticking out of my eternally worn sport sandals, were dirty at the tips. I smelled. The hotel clerk was kind enough to ignore all that, but there it is. And she also managed to look the other way as we came in pushing a luggage cart packed to the gills with backpacks, coolers, a food box, and a pile of wet towels. Let’s just say we used our share of water in showers tonight.

After waxing poetic about sleeping in the tent at night with my family, I will say here without any shame that the particular feeling of wellbeing I described does not hold up to water. And as bland as the décor may be, unable to compete with the trees, birds, etc., the beds themselves are so in another league that all can be forgiven. Clean and sleepy, bedtime was a welcome event.