Life in Camp

Home sweet camp. This is a spot in the Mule Deer campsite. The river is just through the trees. The tarp structure we employed at this site is one of our (MY!) best. The blue tarp is square over the table, and well above anyone's head. The green tarp (a comp sci hack) fell off, and we bumped into it a lot (let alone the neck-breaking ropes) but was necessary once it started raining hard.

As usual, David and Karen are in the green and grey tent (which can comfortably sleep 18), Mark is in his green tent (later joined by Mike), and Sean and John are cozy in their blue and grey tent.

As per BC Parks regulations, we had to pay for two campsites. Each campsite can hold up to 4 people and one car. (Of course our two cars were smaller than some motor homes, but that's beside the point). We used one site as a parking lot and food storage, the other site as the main hangout. Luckily the two campsites straddled the road, were right by a water tap, and not too far from the toilets. Since there's running water, they actually flush! Thao would almost like them.

The campsite itself lies between the Hope-Princeton highway and the river. This particular bend is great for bathing (cold!) and some people were fishing for (and catching) teeny little fish. This shot was made close to dusk on Sunday night.

The sunsets while we were there were beautiful. The colours are vibrant and the whole valley sets into colour. This night was followed by a thunderstorm, with lightning just over the ridge.

Night falls. Rain falls. (Not a happy time for cameras.) Dinner tonight was spaghetti (John bought over twice as much as we needed), and came in meaty and non-meaty varieties (leftover sausage from lunch). Mike (on the left) helps out with cooking while the food preparation commitee critiques style and performance. (Okay, he was making dish water, but you already figured that out from the clean dishes.)

I played around a bit with long exposures. The shot is made with a tripod and a 30 second exposure time (I think it was shot with an f/4 on 100 ASA film). You will notice peoples' shoes are stationary, but their upper bodies aren't. The sparks through the the grill and the fire light on the faces are pretty cool. You can also see the background is completly lit up. I figure (given the shadows) that the light is not all from the fire.

Ah, breakfast. Mike is trying to conjure breakfast from God (he didn't succeed). The breakfast (eggs, bacon, hashbrowns) was expertly prepared by David and Sean, and discovered that bacon fat makes a really high fire. It turns out that a pack of real bacon and a pack of veggie bacon is more than 6 people can take. (Mike valiantly tried to finish up the package of real bacon.)

David is showing us the proper way to eat lettuce. When you eat so much bacon you feel as greasy as Mark's hair, you have to eat lettuce to put the system back into balance.

Here you can see Sean, our disaster waiting to happen, frying up some eggs. Sean broke the axe handle, so started to foolishly experiment with chopping wood just with the axe head. Silly Sean, he then split a fingernail. Later, he burned his fingers on the stove (just in front of him). Luckily, Sean was our only casualty during this trip, but we did get to make good use of our new First Aid kit.

You can see Mark has cleverly helped Mike eat, although eating off your own head probably takes some talent. We did quite a bit of our cooking over the fire simply because it was easier and not too much bother. Both our pot and our frying pan survived the trip with minimal damage, so we were pretty happy.