The success of our California road trip has inspired us to try to make the Trillium an even better camping machine, and to use it as often as possible. With that goal in mind, I installed a new propane heater in the Trillium on Saturday, and eager to try it out, we headed out to Little Bear Bay, a BC Recreation Site, so camping was free.
The site was spectacular, right on the water, and the weather definitely cooperated, it hit about 13 in the afternoon. Not too bad for February. The heater started out doing well, but kicked out after about 3 hours. the low voltage error came up, and I checked the battery, finding it at 8.5 volts. I guess it is time for a new battery. Fortunately Jill had insisted we bring our catalytic heater as back up, so we stayed toasty warm all night.
During breakfast, Ru-chan sneezed into the communal scrambled egg plate. It seemed like a dry sneeze, but how would one even spot snot in a plate of scrambled eggs? Then Miwa purposely extruded a huge snot and sucked it back in, at which point A. had a bit of a panic attack about being stuck in a small place with two such gross little creatures. Also lost her appetite for breakfast for some reason.
Miwa spent the next 45 minutes wailing and crying refusing to apologize for her behavior. She finally did, but what a performance. What do you do? Make her apologise? Minimalise it? We went with the “Do you know why you shouldn’t do that” stance.
Once we got that little episode squared away, we went for a walk to explore the area. Our jaunt towards the hatchery was short due to the chain-link gate, but we had good success in the other direction. We walked along the beach towards a rocky outcrop right on Johnstone Strait. We couldn’t get there along the beach, so we all started poking around looking for a trail. It turned out there was an old logging road 10m from the beach that went right to the point we were aiming for.
After admiring the amazing view for a solid 5 minutes, we decided to follow the old road and see where we ended up. We got lucky and the road intersected the newer road to Little Bear Bay maybe 500m from our campsites. It was actually a fairly enjoyable walk in the woods. Though for Ru-chan it was more of a shoulder ride through the woods. She even had her bike helmet on to protect her from low hanging branches.
I hit a pot hole so hard on the way out that the door popped open. Nothing seemed damaged at the time, so we carried on. However, when we got back and I started looking for a new location for the battery, I noticed that one of the bolts holding the body to the frame had popped off! It turned out that it was rusted about 95% through, so now I have to replace all the body-to-frame bolts. Turns out there are only 6, so hopefully it won’t take too long.
I think we will be sampling a few more of the Recreation Sites this spring and summer, weather permitting.
Note to self, not so much fun with 2 kids and 2 parents sick. The Dark Hours are very long when a kid is sick.
