The Camping Trip

This is K, Me and S - just chillin' with drinks ;)


One evening we went to watch the sunset - it stormed a bit and this is what happened.

It was hot on Sunday, we all sat on the beach and soaked up the sun!

The sunset was beautiful!

Just after the sun went below the horizon, the lake turned a beautiful opalescent color and the sky lit with pinks, purples and blues


Watching the Detroit Red Wings Lose the Stanley Cup!! :(

Last weekend friends and I went to The Pinery Provincial Park in Grand Bend, Ontario for a long camping weekend. The weather was all over the board, ranging from a chilly 45 degrees F at night to a toasty 83 degrees on Sunday (beach here we come)!

The campground is in a big park that has magnificent beaches along Lake Huron (sunset side), the beautiful Ausable river for canoeing and kayaking, tons of mountain biking/hiking trails and lots and lots of very bold wildlife we got to experience 1st hand ;).

The first night there, the boys wanted to head downtown Grand Bend to watch the Red Wings play. They lost, but it was nice to see that the team who won, really deserved it - they were so happy, I couldn't help but smile for them.

As I mentioned above, we saw many different critters - below is what we saw - can you guess what they are?

Some of the pics are small and hard to see - my apologies. Sadly, I only saw one horse. On our way back a girl was riding a sweet looking Clydesdale horse alongside the highway. It was a unique site to see - the horse was just lumbering along underneath a western saddle. I did see plenty of neat looking horse farms though - I wonder if any were Canadian Horse farms (the breed that is)?

The critters above are:

1. Whitetail deer

2. Tent worm Caterpillar (ick)

3. Raccoons (they were unbelievably bold)

4. Turkey Vultures

5. Chipmunk

The tent worms were unfortunately too abundant - they were all over our campsite so I had to be very vigilant about where I stepped, touched and slept - yuck, yuck, yuck! The Raccoons were quite annoying but cute too. I think we were very naive campers - we had our coolers out and food sitting out on the picnic table as we unpacked and got ready for a campfire and s'mores. As the night drew in and darkness settled upon our campsite, we began hearing mysterious sounds coming from all directions. Soon, two beady eyes appeared just behind the tent closest to the campfire (approximately 3 feet from where I was sitting). We stared in amazement as a large Raccoon appeared). He didn't budge when we made noises, but finally ran off when a stone was tossed in his direction. Of course, we were all astonished that he would be so bold - it was quite cool to see one so close, but also a bit unnerving as well. Soon though, our minds were really blown - Raccoons began emerging from every direction - about 7 of them were counted. They would amble to our coolers, and one got away with a bag of Marshmallows and another grabbed the graham crackers. Ha, they took our S'mores! We QUICKLY learned that EVERYTHING needed to be kept in the cars at all times - these 'Coons knew no boundaries - it was a turf war as far as the boys were concerned.

Each night in our tents we heard the Raccoons rifling through everything in our campsite, growling to each other and shuffling about. The picture above is of a Raccoon sneaking into our beer cooler, this was about 3 feet from me. All in all the Raccoons got: Marshmallows, 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies (homemade), 4 Reese's peanut butter cups, 2 Hersheys chocolate bars, a bag of walnuts, 1 package of hot dog buns, 1 package of hamburger buns and graham crackers!!!! We were like the gold mine campsite to them and apparently weren't bright enough to outsmart them!

The final night I was awakened by our friend C - he was upset because a Raccoon had lifted the back to the cap of his truck and was getting into our stored food - OY VEY! Poor C, he was beside himself and had tried everything to get the little bandit out. I stealthily (ha) lowered the gate to the back of his pickup and within a minute the Raccoon emerged and made his escape. We spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out how to secure the cab of his truck. The Raccoon was VERY interested in getting back into the food filled cab, and we had to be very vigilant while at the same time tying an electric cord from the bike rack up top to the hitch at the bottom to secure the cab - the rest of the night we heard the angry growls of several Raccoons trying desperately to get into that truck - what a night! I learned that the poor Raccoons have become so accustomed to the wealth of food they steal from campers all summer, that in the winter months, they die of starvation - sad! We had a great time though despite the worms and Raccoons.