Jersey Girl in the Ovens with Travel Chests - Part II

So I had left off at the glimmering.

Anyways, the trunks turned out to be dead handy, in several ways:

- we sat on them around the campfire;

- we used them to block the not inconsiderable wind blowing up the east coast of America towards us that night as we camped;

- we piled all the camping stuff in them and strapped them to the roof of the car, and that is the only way we got all of the gear back up to Halifax;

- we packed everything in them to move to the new apartment;

- they provide useful end table, chest of drawers and table functions which means Queenie and Himself don't have to spend any more money on furniture than they absolutely have to (both of them having more than one set of furniture already, more seems like a stupid idea - it's one thing to have ninety pairs of shoes scattered across the western world, it's completely different to have ninety end tables.

Anyways, our night camping was great fun, if a little windy. We went down to the Chapin's family campsite family restaurant and bar, where we happened upon the Chapin Family Annual Get Together, which was why the campground was packed, this being an annual highlight of the Nova Scotia folk music calendar.

Queenie is very glad she didn't grow up loving the Nova Scotia folk music scene as she would have been a very sad (anorak sad) girl.

There was a grown man who had driven all the way from New Jersey to volunteer as a photographer at the event. He never missed one, he told me.

After just one or two songs we skedaddled out of the restaurant and left the table for REAL fans, bought some firewood (Himself was not too impressed with the need to pay for wood seeing as we were surrounded by the stuff) and lit a fire to see our beers by.

And talked about politics and the environment.

You know you have the right boyfriend when he and your friend's boyfriend can sit around agreeing that come the Apocalypse the world would be a better place due to the absence of nasty machinary and combustion engines (BH) and modernity in general (Himself).

Except for no more Anthropologie, I thought to myself but didn't verbalise it because it wasn't in the spirit of the evening and also because I was fairly sure Jersey Girl would be thinking the same thought, so I didn't need to.

After a few beers of that kind of talk it of course morphed into 'how can we speed up the apocalypse'. I think Himself was all for heading to the Albertan oil pipeline with a chainsaw and a vice grip, but I can't really remember for sure.

We managed to stop him from heading off right that night, so he went and got some more wood instead. Thankfully, he didn't burn any of the signs saying 'do not gather wood, not even dead wood - you will be fined and thrown out of Chapin's Happy Camping Place'. That would have been too cheeky. Instead he just cleared up a bit of brush and other bits and pieces, in an environmentally responsible way that was unfortunately highly unprofitable for the Chapins.

But there are some Canadians who think that the trees are for everyone.

Later that night after the moon came out and the stars were glowing really brightly, as if they were down in our atmosphere checking on the progress of the apocalypse, we went to bed. A couple of hours later I woke to find my face buried in the side of the tent, through which a storm force wind was blowing the canvass against my mouth.

bzrbzrbzrbzzrbzrbzrbzr.........bwbwwbwbwbwww.....

I can't really describe the sound properly.

I tried to move, but I was pinned. Himself was cold, so he had burrowed up against my back and wasn't for moving. Eventually I managed to wake him up, shivering in his sleep as he was.

He had brought the wrong sleeping bag.

He had to get up and put all his clothes on and then go back to sleep.

But it was dawn at that stage, so not a great night's sleep really. Some nights camping are like that.