It rained off and on throughout the night. It sounds romantic, listening to the patter of raindrops on the roof, but in real life it’s cacophonous. It’s not the muffled tapping of water on a wooden roof. The roof of the trailer is sheet metal so rain sounds like shovelfuls of gravel. With every new aggregate shower I stirred from sleep. It was a long night. I was tired when I finally rose on the 7th, at about 6:30 AM, and my crew was hours from rousing.

I had to go check in with the park office first thing anyway, as they didn’t have a self-registration. In most parks, when you arrive after hours, you can fill out a registration form yourself and drop your payment in a collection box. Not so at Rushing River. You can come in after hours but you have to sort it with the office as soon as they open.

As it turned out, the site we had shoehorned ourselves into, with an amazing display of backing up with a trailer in the dark, was reserved by someone else. In fact, they were supposed to be on it already, but had obviously run afoul of Friday night delays and not made it out. They could show up any minute, so we had to vacate in a hurry. I rushed back to the site and shanghaied Those Johnston Kids into immediately packing up. Breakfast would be sandwiches on the road.

Rushing River is a pretty campground though, and I entertained the thought of hanging about to go for a paddle. They didn’t have any onsite canoe rental though, and the rain was starting up again. I was reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes comic that the kids had showed me, where Calvin is on a camping trip with his dad. It’s pouring rain and dad is out in a canoe fishing, while Calvin and Hobbes question his sanity from the tent. I’m not sure why the kids thought they should show me that one. I think I remind them of Hobbes.

I like to say that the problem with rain in the wilderness isn’t that you’re getting wet, it’s that you’re trying to stay dry. Once you just accept being wet, no problem. I realise though, that it’s not so easy to be sanguine about exposure when you’re gypsies like us. We have no easy way to get dry again. When we get wet, the best we can do is reduce it to damp. We have to wait for it to stop raining before we can really dry out again. It makes me less inclined to play in the rain, even though I love being wet.

Even so, I feel a little guilty about just leaving without trying harder to find an activity. It feels like we’re being lazy. My guilt disappeared about as quick as the downpour started as we pulled out of the campground. Oh well, we tried. Who wants a Timbit?

We meant to stop after a few hours drive, at a campground neither you nor I have ever heard of, but the kids voted for a longer drive all the way to Thunder Bay. We have been on the trail for 6 weeks now, and they can smell the  barn. Baby Girl is jonesing for Mama and her pets in the worst way. Short Pants is also pleased at the prospect of a bit of homestay, but doesn’t mind pacing out the travel. He’s agreed to longer daily drives – geez, Canada is big – but mostly I believe he’s acquiesced for BG’s sake.

The rain eventually stopped as we drew near to Lake Superior, leaving us with an overcast sky and comfortable temperatures. We opened the sun roof, which I never do when it is actually sunny. It’s more of a cloud roof.

We ended up in the Thunder Bay KOA again and I can confirm that I wasn’t mistaken when we were here a month ago. There is a strange cultish atmosphere about the place. It’s family run, and it looks like the entire extended family is involved, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, a couple of grandparents, and maybe a dog. Everybody is both friendly and not friendly at the same time. There’s a biting sense of forced jollity. Those Johnston Kids were unaware and frequently remarked that they liked this campground. Maybe I am just old and grumpy.

We rushed through setting up camp because the KOA has a swimming pool. If they didn’t get to go swimming right now, they just wouldn’t be responsible for their own crazies. That meant that I had to go as well because in the nice/not nice campground, kids aren’t allowed in the pool without their responsible adult. They went swimming for an hour and a half while I waited on a deck chair with my laptop for WiFi that really wasn’t there. I mean, there was enough bandwidth to make me think it might work, but not quite enough to actually work. There is a metaphor for a bad date there.

I made salmon curry for dinner while the kids went to the playground. While they were there, they also went for a hayride around the campground, organised for the camp children by the staff. They sang songs and bonded in their lifestyle. Just like a cult.

Dinner was good. Normally, our protocol is to clean up right after dinner, but we left the dishes for later. It was getting late in the evening and we wanted to play mini-golf before the light failed entirely. We were practically playing in the dark anyway, not that it made much difference. The course was frustratingly hard and we all gave up on several holes. I seriously doubt hole 11 was a par 3.

As a wise man said, when you can no longer see your balls, it’s time to quit. We stumbled back to our trailer in the dark. I watched Those Johnston Kids take a very, very long time cleaning the dinner dishes, and then it was bedtime.