Okay, I�m already rambling and I have lots to say. I�m going to try to condense it as much as possible.

On Friday, I left work (yay) and went out shopping for some camping staples. Oh yes, I�m talking hot dogs and marshmellows. Who can camp with out �em? Not me, that�s for sure. Then I packed, and packed, and packed. You�d swear I was going away for weeks. �How long were you going camping for, Marla?� you ask? One day. Yup. Saturday to Sunday. And I packed like the little pack-rat I am.

Okay, here I say I�m going to condense this story, and that whole above paragraph was really unnecessary. Well, I�m not deleting it, so there. You can just pretend you didn�t read it

So, we drive out to our campsite. I booked this site over the Internet, and so we had no idea what it looked like. Ya, you can see where this is going� The �campsite� � and yes, I purposely put quotes around campsite. You see campsites to me are little areas to camp in, with places to put tents and chairs. This site was almost on the road, and there were soooo many children around, I was getting hive just thinking about trying to relax there. So, we went back to the gatehouse to see if we could trade in for another site. Good luck, we thought, trying to do that on a long-weekend. However, they did have one site. But, it was not in with the regular campsites (oh gosh, darn, no children running and screaming?) and we�d have to park our car and walk into the site, about 100 metres. Well, that was fine and dandy to us, so off we went to our remote campsite. Wow, people. And I mean wow. That site was so beautiful! The walk in was nice (there was a little path) and then it opened to this big site (where we could put up three tents and our chairs with no problems) and was a water-front site. There was so much bush around us that you couldn�t see your neighbours, and anyway, there were only nine sites on that side of the lake! It was sweet.

We set up our tents. That was too funny for words. We had way too many pegs left over at the end of the set up, and we were thinking that we had that many pegs for a very good reason, but none of us got blown into the lake at night, so all was good.

After the tents, we went out for a hike. We walked forever. It was beautiful. For an hour and a half, the walk was almost level, with a few hills here and there. Then we took a trail which would lead us to a lookout. We climbed a trial which was 750 metres up. Ya know, that doesn�t sound as hard as it was. That�s a lot of up. It was, however, one of the most fantastic scenes I�ve seen. But, as they say, what goes up must come down. That was the hardest part � going down you can see the cliffs you�re going to fall over. That was quite scary. The hike, in total, was (get this) 23 kilometres of walking (14 miles) and 5 hours long. Dude, were we tired. So we went back to the campsite and ate our hotdogs and roasted our marshmellows.

We went to bed before the birds did (as you can imagine, we were pooped from our walk) and I awoke at 11:30 p.m. to find that I had to visit the outdoor ladies� room. Ummm� I�m not going to go pee in the bush by myself after dark. That�s just something I�m not willing to do. I wasn�t going to wake up Holly or Sue for that, so I had to hold it until morning. My decision proved to be wise, as at about midnight I was listening to some critters inspect our campsite and tents. I think they were skunks. There was no smell, but the thudding said to me that they were little and pudgy, so either skunks or porcupines, neither of which I want to step on while looking for a place to relieve myself. But the little critters thudded so much and sniffed my tent so much that I started to giggle. I didn�t want to frighten the animals (as that�s a bad thing to do to skunks), so I tried to laugh quietly� That was rough � holding in laughter and pee. Man, the morning couldn�t come soon enough.

In the morning, Holly and I went for a swim. The water was cold and the bottom rocky, but I really needed to rise off. I felt gicky. So we swam. The lake was so quiet. Not a boat in sight. So unlike camping in southern Ontario. After, I went into my tent to change (not an easy task in a one-person tent that you can�t stand in). As I was changing, I felt a weird sensation on my toe. I looked down and saw an icky, gicky brownish thing there. Of course, I knew it was a leech. My first reaction was to run screaming out of my tent and search for the salt. But, being as I was naked, I refrained from doing that. Instead I sat quietly and pulled at the sucker until he came off. Yup, that took awhile and stung a bit. But, all work out because the little guy didn�t die in the process, so once dressed, I put him back in the water. I was a bit nervous that there were leeches on other various parts of my body that I couldn�t see (you know, like my butt or something) but, as I wasn�t about to run around the campsite in the buff in the first place, I was also not about to ask others to check that for me =) I figured the bugger would die soon anyway!

Okay, so much for me not going on and on� I�ll tell more about my weekend later.