What a fabulous weekend! The weather was perfect, the colours are almost at their best and the turnout was good.
Previous years have been cold or windy or both (you can read my 2011 entry for a little look into that!) but this year made up for all the past weekends. There was no real organization as an "event"; it's more of a come-as-you-are thing. In fact it almost didn't happen this year until Nancy picked a date and said "let's go". I would guess there were about 30 buses in total but I didn't actually count them... I do know that all the best campsites were full.
Vanalong - a stretch Westy
I loaded up the camper during the day & we got on the road around 3pm hoping to be ahead of rush hour traffic. It wasn't too bad; one significant slowdown that added close to an hour to the trip though. So we arrived in the dark which is often the case. Fortunately the site we had was really flat so getting set up wasn't as difficult as it often is. We spent the evening with Robin and Jouko (and their pup Bruno of course), sitting around a campfire as the gang all rolled in. Unfortunately we didn't take the opportunity to eat as soon as we arrived so it was close to 10 before we went back to the camper to make dinner. More visiting and then it was past midnight and everyone decided it was time to call it a night. A beautiful starry night.
The night was mild so no heater was needed. And the morning was another bright, sunny and warm one. We had a leisurely start to the day; walking around with a morning coffee saying hi to all or VW friends can take an hour or more. Then it was time to get ready for a ride. We had thought about going to some trails that John and Catrina have told us about and I think if they were going we would have enjoyed going there too. But John wasn't feeling well (turns out his appendix was acting up so he went in for surgery before the weekend was over!) so it was just the two of us. As it would have been around 12-15km just to get to the trails, we opted to explore some local things. The High Pines trail was a blast and just technical enough. Not long enough though so we went off in search of more. In all the years I've been there I've never gone into the western part of the park. It's actually much bigger than the eastern side and has some long trails as well as hike-in and canoe-in camping. The gravel road is about 6km to the end at Joeperry Lake.
The trail we tried to ride was too technical so we gave up and just enjoyed the gravel riding and the scenery. Beautiful blue sky, autumn colours, reflections in smooth lakes. Yup.
Andrea at Joeperry Lake
Joeperry Lake
Joeperry Lake
Just another little lake
Ian
Then it was time for a little more socializing, with beer in hand rather than coffee. In previous years the Saturday highlight was a crockpot potluck but we hadn't heard about anything being organized so the gang of cyclists elected to make up our own potluck. There was an afternoon of beer ahead first though! Afternoon snacks were laid out over at Doug and Linda's site so I wandered over and spent some time chatting. And taking photos... btw, all the photos here are from my iPhone (a new 6). Not too bad! I had fun taking this gallery I call Hats which was inspired by Jim's straw hat hanging on his bike.
Jim
Gord
Frank
The one exception to my iPhone photos was the time-lapse I did on the GoPro. I am disappointed with the battery life on it, this is the second time it's run out of juice too early. In the first cases it was a sunset that didn't make it all the way. This time I was hoping to capture the transition from sunset to starry night. What I did get are some awesome photobombs though!
Here's the setup of the camera...
And here's the video...
A camouflaged Babe
All too soon it was Sunday and time to get ready to head home. It was another beautiful day (the sunrise in the video is from Sunday morning) and no-one really wanted to go. There were a handful of people who were going to stay another night or two, something we learned as we wandered around in the morning saying our good-byes. This is generally the last VW campout for most of the group so it's slightly emotional. And definitely important to take the time for hugs and farewells. I'm already looking forward to the next camping season!
A camouflaged Babe with sunlight and campfire smoke
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