Roughing it at Camp Cowichan

We plunged headlong into camp season this past weekend. We loaded up the van with friends, dogs, beer, food....all the real camping essentials and headed up to Cowichan Lake to one of the more "remote" forestry campsites. Yeah, real camping. The rough stuff. The REAL thing. So after our arrival at this unnamed forestry campsite(it's too delicious to share...not very many sites here and I would hate to lose my new favourite spot to someone reading this!), we established "base camp" in a quiet, little spot less than a minute's walk from lakeside.

A quick perusal of the best spots on the lake....

then, back to Base Camp, where Bez was installed as camp guard dog. We need a camp guard dog because(remember?) we are roughing it out here. He looks intimidating enough, eh? We thought he could keep the bears, or at least the chipmunks, at bay. Turns out, Bez is not the strongest camper, poor little city dweller.

Finally, down to the serious business of Roughing It. It was rough, too, let me tell you. You should have met our campground host! And her cat! Yikes. Seriously, it's amazing we made it out of there alive!

And? Our bocce court was full of holes, sticks, rocks AND pine cones! Off-road Bocce. Now that's rough!

And then? We had to hike into the woods to find sticks and stuff...stuff like fresh, wild huckleberries. It is very rough to find the perfect marshmallow roasting stick, too. It's so very rough. Plus, this walk put us in closer proximity to the CrazyCatLadyCampgroundHost....oh my.

And you know what else is rough, don't you? Forgetting your very favourite bbq sauce at home and having to grill your buffalo steaks over the campfire with a slighty less fantastic bbq sauce. That's rough. Really, really rough.

And having Bez count every beer you drink like some kind of militant camp guard dog/slightly disdainful chaperone is rough, too! Always keep in mind who you are making camp guard dog!

Yawn, and waking up in the morning is rough....you have to admit that. And making organic espresso in the bodum....er, oh dammit! I mean making sludgey old camp coffee is awfully rough, isn't it? Especially when all you have to follow it up with is scrambled eggs and sausage? I mean, it's not as if we had toast or anything.....oh, wait...there were bagels...but NO cream cheese! We had no cream cheese!

Well, swimming WAS rough. On some of us. The two newbie campers, Bez and Eem-er, sure didn't think too much of it. At all.

But everyone else liked it...it was cold in that lake....though we didn't really find that part too rough.

Because it didn't take too long to warm up once you got out.

Man, did I mention that it was rough out there? Really, really rough?

But you know what the hardest part was? The absolute roughest part of it all was? Breaking camp and coming home.

Thanks for a great time, you guys!