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This past weekend I took my three kids with me to camp at my friend's lake front property. Photos and a description of the place we went are at this post, so I did not bother to reproduce all of the photos and description of the place, you can read that post first if you are interested.

As I am and have been car-less since December, I decided to rent a vehicle as there really wasn't any other way to get to his place.

Here is the photo of what I rented, at the camp site:

It was an F150 Platinum Premium Cab; it had all the bells and whistles. On the drive there I tarped it up so that if it happened to rain during the drive, the camping gear would mostly keep dry:

Take off the tarp; and there's the gear:

Take out the gear, and there's the truck bed:

We got there at around 13h30 Friday afternoon; and from the moment until departure I didn't have a good grasp of what time things happened as I didn't have a watch and I left my mobile device in the truck. I figured that while I was on this weekend vacation, I didn't need to track the time. Friday the weather was pretty good, we swam in the lake, had hotdogs for supper, and all of the kids except for G-bot that were at the camp that night slept in this tent:

My buddy had a hammock with him and so that is where G-bot slept the two nights we were there:

It had been forecast that Saturday would be a very rainy day and Sunday there would be a chance of thunderstorms. So we had a few protected areas from the rain. The first was the awning on his camper (within which I slept the two nights we were there):

Directly opposite the camper we suspended a tarp that variously had a number of camping chairs beneath it.

And then finally we had this kitchen tent that had room within it for a picnic table where some of the kids ate some of the meals and where we played board games, and just outside the front of the tent there was an awning allowing for another place to keep dry in the rain.

Saturday morning, probably around 7am, it started to rain and it continued to rain fairly consistently until lunch time when it started to clear. The rest of the afternoon it got sunny and ended up being rather pleasant. The kids went swimming during the rain in the morning; and then again in the sun in the afternoon. I only swam in the early afternoon. I managed to get a nap in on Saturday in the late afternoon.

Due to that nap, Sunday morning I arose early, perhaps at 5AM, and went down to the water and swam for a good 15-20 minutes. The sun had only just risen, but it couldn't be seen because the lake was covered in fog. It was rather of a surreal experience to be swimming out there. I never got so far that I couldn't see where I needed to return, but it really was very nice. The water was perfectly and reflectively smooth and flat, so I was the only 'thing' to disturb the water at this windless time. A short while later the fog began to lift and I decided to go out for a kayak ride; that was also very nice, being in the middle of our part of the lake to watch the fog lift up among the trees surrounding the lake.

Eventually I came in and found that my buddy had come down and was reading, so I sat with him for a few hours until the kids finally awoke.

There isn't much else to say about the rest of Sunday except for three things.

C-Ling and V-8 were staying, so when I packed up the truck, I put a bunch of the stuff in the back seat leaving only a few things in the truck bed that I tied down with a rope. As what I left there could safely get rained upon I didn't tarp any of it. G-bot had to be back on Monday as he is starting a new job, and in any case, the rental had to be returned by 21h.

At around 14h we were all down at the water when we noticed a cumulonimbus cloud forming just behind our camp coming towards it based on the wind direction; we heard some distant thunder so knew that this could develop into a severe storm. We rushed up the steps into the campsite and attempted with speed to create a campfire, and just as we were starting the rain began, in earnest. Eventually my buddy who owns the property got a tarp that he had a few volunteers hold while he got the fire going. As the fire started it billowed out a tonne of smoke and so those of us who were inside the tarp holding it up were quickly sent outside. The rain stopped perhaps seven or nine minutes after it had started, and the sky was blue another ten minutes later. In the end we needn't have panicked about getting a fire going, we would have simply waited for things to dry out a little and then do it. As we had no idea how long the storm would be we rushed to it.

G-bot and I were going to leave at about 17h30 so after that campfire ordeal I ended up going back into the lake for just a quick cool-off dip as I had spent the previous 30-45 minutes getting all of the last minute packing done into the truck. There was another family arriving that day, and they arrived about 20 minutes before G-Bot and I left, it was nice to see them and it is really too bad that I had to return the rental car; I would have liked to have stayed another day or two.

Well, I had taken Friday off of work but not Monday, so I really did need to get back.

The drive home was uneventful, we stopped at about the halfway mark of the two hour trip to grab supper at an A&W Resto.

It is looking very much like this camping trip is all that is happening this summer for me. I have no other trips of any kind planned. Indeed, not only this summer, but I have no other trips planned at all in the near or distant future. I suppose I am not alone in this, what, with the C19 lockdown still more or less in effect.