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Published: June 25th 2011
camping in Thunder Bay
It's a small tent, tiny bit over 6 ft long, barely enough room to sit up in the front (only)Don’t Try This At Home Kids / A Change In Plans
Imagine 2:00 am in the morning in a strange city. (Insert scary music now.) The streets are deserted. But are they? Are you being watched? You are trying to hide in the shadows to escape detection. But can you know for sure that no one is watching? You slip into a small clump of forest in an industrial area along some train tracks. Did anyone see you slip in? Do homeless people live here? Do dangerous people come here to drink and party? Who is in the shadows? And what was that noise?
These are all the many thoughts that raced through my mind as I tried to set up my tent. Talk about a head trip! I am racing to try to get this tent set up before I get stabbed by someone or something. I get the tent all laid out only to discover that the (very) small clearing that picked “seemed” to have a cement pad only inches under the dirt and I can’t get my tent pegs in the ground. Maybe it is a long ago cover parking lot. I collect up my tent
Don't try this at home
camping amoungst the garbage in my arms along with my back pack and knapsack and search for another small clearing through the tangled mess of trees. I find another small clearing but it is surrounded by garbage, but my pickings are slim. So I make a second attempt at set up. Thankfully the garbage is not organic in nature, so no smell. The mosquitos are everywhere around my head. At any moment I expect someone to come charging through the trees. I am rushing like crazy to get my tent up so I can shut my head lamp off. Finally the tent is up. I throw all my gear inside along with my butt. Once nicely zipped inside I discover that there is a 3” stump sticking up in the bottom of the tent. Luckily it did not pierce the bottom of the tent, but this will not work. I get back outside I drag all my gear out and scrunch my tent against the trees making my small area very small. Everything is set back up, the gear and my butt are back in the tent and it is 3:30 am. Let’s just say I kept my hunting knife in reach.
A
Yellow Lady Slipper Orchid
found a whole bunch of them next to the highway where I was trying to get a ride. Change In Plans
For the fourth morning in a row I wake up to rain. I break camp and walk to the truck stop. No one wants to give me a ride. Everyone says they are going east. One truck driver even felt sorry for me, asking me where I was going, because he said if I was going east there was a better truck stop to go to. I told him how all the truckers who are really going west tell me they are going east so they can’t help me. I try for a few hours. I walk to the highway and try there for a few hours. This is not working. I am going to either get stranded or stuck in Ontario for the summer.
Time to move on. I walk back to Greyhound for rates straight to Calgary. After researching bus and plane rates I have decided that it is time to put the whole hitch hiking phase of this trip to an end and bus it straight to Calgary. Which sucks. I actually really enjoyed the hitch hiking part and if I could get rides would do it all year round. I am just
tired of all the waiting. I thought I would hate being stuck in a strangers vehicle, I thought I would hate living out of a tiny tent and backpack, I thought I would hate being cold, wet and hungry. I was and am always hungry because at most I would eat one meal because of the rain or not wanting to miss a ride. But all of that was/is cool. What is not cool is waiting for hours and hours for what? If summer lasted forever then I would stick it out. But summer is a wasting and more remote northern areas are calling me.
Bus leaves tonight and I don’t get into Calgary until very early Sunday morning. If there is a hell on earth it’s on a bus and I am sure I will live it. Not looking forward to this at all. Going to stay at a hostel for 2 days and do my best to get a bike and move on.
If I gave up on the hitch hiking too quickly then it is my own short comings. I did really enjoy it and that being said I am not trading the hitch hiking for an easier route. It's been many years since I have biked and never any distance biking.
Saw something kind of funny for the first time today. Saw I guy drive away from the gas pumps with the nozzle still in his tank.
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tom
non-member comment
the "here i am" tent
hi arie. glad to see your adventure is [safely] under way. but for a guy who's trying to keep a low profile could you have picked a louder tent? bright yellow and orange kinda screams "here i am". anyway, thanks for keeping us up to date on the journey, and sorry you bottomed out on the hitch hiking. ironically, the friendliest people on your trip seem to have been the first nations folk. though historically [and sometimes presently] treated poorly by the white man. sadly, our supposed "own kind" don't seem too willing to extend the hand of friendship and hospitality. speaks volumes of the Native spirit. anyway, soldier on, brutha. you're in our prayers.