Wednesday 5 August 2015

Sandcastle Weekend on Texada


This past weekend our family with my sister and my nephew headed to Texada Island (a short ferry ride across the water from PR) to meet friends who had traveled from Cloverdale to camp. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of camping, particularly when it comes to sleeping in a tent. However, the kids were keen and it was Sandcastle Weekend so I decided to take one for the team and go for it.

We settled into a beautiful spot in the lower bowl of Shelter Point Campground. Over the next two days, we ate beyond well for campers - spaghetti (thanks to my ever loving parents and their donation of a large crock pot of bubbling hot sauce), warm brie and freshly bbq'd warmed breads, rice and noodles, eggs, fresh fruits and vegs, chicken and prawns, cereal (Lily☺), chips, and a wonderful tinfoil boat worth of s'mores dip as no fires are allowed right now on the super dry BC Coast. We may have enjoyed a few bevies with all that food too! We talked and laughed a lot. We explored and snorkeled. We loved the short and sweet parade Saturday morning.We swam in the ocean and the Quarry.  We enjoyed the highly entertaining lip sync competition and can't say enough great things about the releasing of moon bags into the ocean towards a perfectly lit orange/pink/yellow sunset Saturday night. We had the kids pose for more pictures than they cared for. We skimmed and entered a giant turtle in the Sandcastle competition (we didn't win but had great fun trying). More cousins visited and more fun was had.

Sleeping in a tent sucks and after night one, I vowed this weekend would be my last camping experience in a tent. Let's just say my bladder and the damp cold don't mix well. Anyhow, around 3:44am on night two, our tent literally burst at the seams and began to slowly tear apart. I was certain we were being attacked by a raccoon and immediately started freaking out. Sleepy Neil found his phone and flashed a light to where the noise was coming from only to discover a huge hole at our feet. He had earlier put more air in our mattress and the kids who were directly beside us in our small tent. I guess as the tent is almost as old as our relationship (26 years), it couldn't take the pressure of the two mattresses and exploded. After we sorted out what was happening, we had a really good laugh about it then scurried off to the bathroom as damp cold and giggles also don't mix well. By morning, both sides of the tent had ripped quite considerably. The tent was unfixable (insert me grinning from ear to ear here). Lily asked if she could go at it with a steak knife the next morning. As you can see from the photo below, the tent took a beating. 
Sandcastle Weekend is wonderful, great family fun! We'll be back next year for sure only hopefully we'll be in a tent trailer, or a huge luxury trailer or a rented cabin. Fingers crossed. 

More Texada adventures can be found here, here and here




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