Camping Adventures

With Siri home for a couple of weeks we took off Saturday night after market for a camping trip to the Canadian Gulf Islands. It turned out to be a ittle more exciting than we had planned on. We got to Patos Island, which is a US state park, fairly late in the day, watched a beautiful sunset and roasted hot dogs over a campfire in the dark. Siri and her friend, Raina laid out their sleeping bags under a nearby tree and Joel and I crawled into our old tent. In the middle of the night we all woke up to a heavy rain. We had brought along a couple of tarps so the girls laid one over their sleeping bags and Joel tossed one over the top of our tent. Nevertheless in the morning we were all WET. After a sort of damp breakfast we took off the a boat decorated with drying sleeping bags, pillows, socks, etc.

The weather for the rest of the trip was lovely. Sunny and warm. We spent the next night at Portland Island, a Provincial Park in the Gulf Islands.
But when we started home the boat engine started to overheat. We had picked up some seaweed in the intake for the cooling system. Joel spent 5 hours trying to get us up and running again and finally jerry rigged together an intake system out of a table leg, blue masking tape, a bunch of pieces of hose, a c-clamp and a tuna fish can which got us back across the border and home. More serious repairs will require taking the boat to the boat yard in Friday Harbor. The trip wasn't quite what we had planned but it will make for great story telling for ages.