Hiding Out In The Woods, Is It A Good Way To Start The Summer?

To start the Summer here in Vancouver, Canada, we decided to go hide out in the woods and take a long weekend camping trip to get the juices flowing for the camping season.  As you may or may not know, Vancouver weather can be pretty blah and boring because it rains so much here and makes for a difficult time to get out at times.  We decided, screw it, lets go!

This comes with a price, this particular weekend looks like it is going to be another rainy one but we don’t care, we’ve got the camping bug and we need to go.  There is a little bit of a back-story here that I guess now would be as good a time as any to tell so here it goes.  A few years back I had a nice big truck and camper that I used to go camping with and really enjoyed it as I had grown up camping and traveling with my parents.  I came to a point though with this truck that it seemed to cost me a pile of money all the time to keep running.  I’m not sure if this Ford F-350 was a lemon or I just used it too much, but this guy literally would cost me about $5,000.00 per year to keep running.  4 Years ago a fairly large issue took place in the engine and basically the options were buy a new engine, rebuild this engine or buy a new vehicle.  I chose none of the above!  What I ended up doing is getting rid of the truck and borrowed a little jeep from my dad for what was going to be just the summer and ended up being almost a year with his vehicle.  But since I got rid of my truck, I thought I probably will lay low and not get another truck any time soon and go for a car only.  With this thinking, I also sold my camper which was passed from my parents to me as they had bought a nice trailer for camping.  So now, no truck, no camper and no vehicle of my own.

A bit of a strange predicament but I went with it.

Flash forward 4 years and I end up buying a new truck and get the itch to get out camping again which leads me to buying another camper.  The costs of campers have gone up drastically and made me realize just how much I need to spend to get a decent camper again.  Now of course I am kicking myself in the butt for selling the old camper as the one I ended up getting is “ok”, but is nothing compared to the old guy.  We ended up using the “new” camper for one season and just didn’t have the options that we liked with it so near the end of camping season we decide to start looking for another.  The options available were not too good in out price range, so we opted too forget about it until spring and then start looking again.  Well, February came along and Murvely decides to look again.  Guess what…SHE FOUND ONE!!  Woooohooo we are back in business….or are we?
Well, she sends me an ad for this camper that was in our price range and said she really liked it and thought it would work very well for us.  I go to check out this camper and you won’t believe it, the camper I sold to the guy 4 years ago is the one I am now looking at!  Yes that’s right, the exact one I sold, I am now looking at to buy back.  I did end up buying it back from him and this is the story of when it all began, again, in my old camper.

Getting back to the main part of this story, we thought for Easter long weekend here in Vancouver we are going to get out and make the best of it come rain or shine.  With the new truck, I didn’t end up putting all of the niceties on it yet because the old camper wasn’t that great.  Now is the time to do it and make it awesome.  Step one to this excursion is to put air-bags into the truck.  The weight of a camper on the back of a truck can make a huge performance loss, as well as be like dragging around an anchor if it is not correctly set-up.  The air-bags in the suspension help this issue out by lifting the back of the truck up level again as if there is little to no load in it.  Of course, the added weight while driving still makes a definite difference.  Step two, add proper camper tie-downs onto the truck.  What these do is hold the camper properly in the bed of the truck and don’t allow movement of the camper in the back.  This gives it all a more solid feel while driving as the unit becomes one.  Third step is to add power to the camper.  One would think that’s a no-brainer, but I tell you that it’s a pain to get the wiring from your truck to your camper is a fashion that is sleek and functional.  Nowadays though, there are nice wiring harnesses that make this exact thing happen so you can have a 7-pin trailer connector in the box of your truck for easy connection.
After putting everything together, loading up the camper on the truck and then loading the camper with all of our food, clothes and gear, it’s now time to take off for our maiden trip of this year.  Garden Bay here we come!
Arriving at Garden Bay latter than I wanted, I got everything half-assed set up in the dark enough to make us comfortable for the night.  Of course in traditional Vancouver type weather….it’s raining.  Out comes the laptop, up goes the heat and off I go to write this post.

After a great sleep as usual in the camper, we woke up to a nice sunrise looking over the ocean bay.  It was still a little grey out and drizzling, but not too bad.  My plans for the day was to get out and look for some oysters, clams and crabs and maybe a little voyage around the neighboring coves.  All I know is that the end result I am really craving sea foods.
My lucky day!  I got all of the above!  We ended up finding a great place to get oysters, which is the hard part, and close to it was a sandy beach with clams as well.  The crab traps I set out in the bay and picked up later to result in maxing out our limit for the day.  Woohoo!  Next step….go back to the camper and make a buffet of seafood dinner.

That night was such a great feast munching on all the day’s catch.  We had many options and added salad and rice to it, which made it a very balanced meal.  Since being a nomadic digital entrepreneur, I ended up getting a few hours work after this also and then went to sleep.

The great part about camping is that you really get to live close to nature and be involved directly with what is around you.  It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful the west coast of British Columbia is and how much we take for granted it’s natural beauty.  This beauty is what we live, eat and sleep in and love every minute of getting out and playing in the forests here.

This next morning, I again woke up to an even more beautiful scenery, as it wasn’t raining, it’s actually sunny and warmer out today!  Awesome! Time for a little road trip.  We decided to do a day trip over to Powell River to see what’s going on over there and see if we can find some more oysters and clams.

Over on the ferry we go to this new destination that I haven’t been to for years, but excited to see if I can remember any of it.  We got there and drove through the town and absolutely nothing looked familiar.  Oh well, just like learning it all over again.
Well driving through, I got to talking to a few people when we stopped for a few groceries and talked about some great places to check out, so we took their advice and checked out the cove that sounded so intriguing.  Wow did we get a treat!  The place was loaded with oysters and clams EVERYWHERE!!  We got our limit super quick on both oysters and clams, had a nice little picnic and then headed back to Garden Bay to our camper.  What a great day spent on the ocean again.

Well, as they say, all good things must come to and end, and this one was no different.  We packed our stuff up the next morning and headed back to Vancouver….not  so quickly I might add as it was a long weekend and the Ferry traffic was crazy.  2 Ferries later, we got on and made our way back home.  What a great weekend!