It was still raining in the morning on July 16, but it stopped as it we were packing up camp at Elk Island. We tried to do more geocaching before we left but finally gave up for all the reasons I ranted about at length in my last post.

While we were out searching uselessly for caches, we found a couple of dragonflies that had been caught out in the rain the night before and were weighed down on the trail with drops on their wings. I took them and very carefully blotted the water off their wings, then carried them around for a while while they dried out in the breeze. As their wings got lighter, they started to vibrate them quickly. Finally, they took flight again. Fun fact: the CIA once made a life size mechanical dragonfly, hoping to use it to spy discreetly, but abandoned the project when they found the tiny craft uncontrollable in wind.

We had no further adventures that day, as it rained off and on all day during our long drive north-west. We did stop to pick up a tarp and  a telescoping pole. When we camped in Carson-Pegasus Provincial Park, in the pouring rain, that evening I whipped up a large weather cover from the tarp, using the telescoping pole as the tent pole. I thought it was pretty good, but there was a guy at Elk Island that had strung 4 giant tarps together in a line, making an avenue of azure light.

The humble tarp allowed us to have a fire, our last on this trip, as I recall, under the shelter. It’s not camping if the marshmallows don’t burn. Don’t let anybody tell you different.