So you want to go camping?

Two years ago my wife approached me with the idea of having our family take up camping. Like so many other ideas before, this sounded terrible to me, but as often happens she convinced me to give the idea a try. I’m so glad she did because we’ve had some of the best summer moments together on these trips.

This past weekend, we camped at the Elora Gorge Conservation Area. This was our third and final camping weekend of 2011 and easily the most memorable.

After checking in, we decided we wanted to go for a swim. There’s no swimming at the campsite itself, but campers are allowed to use the Quarry which is a short car ride away. If you’re not familiar with swimming quarries, they are basically giant holes (former open pit mines) that are filled with water. There are rocks everywhere that scream, “Climb up on me until you are dangerously high and jump into the super deep water!” The rocks are like teenagers who pressure their peers to take up smoking and are not to be listened to. The water at this quarry was cold and slimy. After a short swim, my son and I played with his sand toys on the “beach” until I felt the gravel-like “sand” ripping into my knees.

Back at the campsite we watched as a man and two boys of about 13 checked in to the site beside us. As is often the case, our neighbour happened to be the world’s greatest camper and delighted in sharing his infinite wisdom with his son and his nephew. Over the next few hours we would hear him tell the boys the proper way to start a fire, set up a tent, how to sit in a chair, the nine steps to have a pee in the dark, and claims that he is the original patent holder for the S’mores recipe.

Despite the noise coming from “Uncle Don” and the browbeaten newbies, we enjoyed a nice fire, had our dinner, roasted marshmallows and went to bed to prepare for a big day on Sunday.

The highlight of the weekend was to be tubing down the gorge on Sunday. We were told upon check-in that to have the best chance of getting equipment for the day, we should line up for tubes at 8 am or 8:30 am. The park has about 350 sets of tubes, goofy looking yellow helmets and life jackets, so we and the seven other people who arrived at 8 am were quite confident that we would not miss out when the counter opened for business...an hour later!

We signed the necessary waivers, paid our $25 per person, and took possession of the (somehow still wet) equipment for the day. Barely able to squeeze the four giant tubes into our minivan, we went back to the site for some breakfast, another fire and some second hand advice from Uncle Don about the proper way to button a shirt.

Nearing lunch time we decided we were ready for the adventure of a lifetime and returned to the place we would hop a yellow school bus to be taken to the raging water.

The gorge is beautiful and our excitement grew as we walked down a long path to the water’s edge. Getting in the tubes and pushing off, my wife held onto my daughter’s tube as the water whisked them away, and immediately ejected them from their tubes, submerging them both. My son and I went next and were able to stay together and stay afloat, but when we reached my wife and daughter I saw that my daughter was terribly upset, thinking she had almost drowned. It was going to take her some time to recover.

Unsure of what we’d signed up for, we carried on. Little did we know that tubing was about to become a lot less exciting. The rest of the “ride” (as the kids called it) took about an hour. Fifty-seven minutes of that time was spent barely moving in what I hesitate to call a current. We got stuck on rocks, sometimes had to paddle with our hands to have any chance of moving at all and it wasn’t long before we were quite bored. My son said he didn’t enjoy the trip because “it was too peaceful.” Indeed it was, son, indeed it was.

When we were done, my wife reminded me that we had the tubes until 7 pm and could come back another time or two that day. I informed her that I had very likely had my one and only trip down the gorge on a tube and longed to get back to the campsite to see if Uncle Don was teaching the boys the proper way to breathe.

We were barely finished our lunch when it started to rain and we had to take cover inside the tent trailer. The kids busied themselves playing games and watching videos on my laptop, but the rain showed no signs of stopping. It rained for about four straight hours, coming down so hard it pounded on the roof of the tent trailer, making it hard to hear anything else. I wondered if Uncle Don was at that moment telling the boys that he had invented rain, or that perhaps he was waterproof, but had no way of knowing if this was the case. At one point I actually laughed at the intensity of the rain and what it had done to our day. Looking back, I realize this may have been the onset of madness, but if so, I have made a full recovery.

The rain stopped in the early evening and we were able to poke our heads outside the tent trailer. Our neighbours were gone, likely to a hotel to wait out the storm, and we wouldn’t see them again until the following day.

After packing up and checking out on our final day, we walked the main drag of Elora and did some window shopping. We stopped for an ice cream and talked about what we each liked best about the trip. I can’t remember what everyone else answered to this question, but the best part of camping for me is always the same - spending time with my family and creating memories. Even the rain hadn’t spoiled that.