It seems that no matter where I am on the road, I automatically wake up around 6. After that, I seem to be averaging three hours to go through the morning's chores before setting off, sometimes longer, sometimes less: walk the dogs, breakfast, clean up, clean car, groom dogs, check car, pack, take down tent,shower (or the wilderness equivalent) plan the day, etc.
Where we slept last night was like pitching a tent mid-way between New Yotk and Washington, with nothing in between except wilderness,
The hurricane came roaring in this morning about 4 and lasted for two hours. Fortunately, th tent held up, although it was difficult sleeping in it.
The 180 mile drive down the TLH to the road to Charolettetown was pretty rough. Potholes all the way. And these are not just run-of-the-mill potholes. They come in, not in pairs, but hundreds at a time, an sometimes go on or miles. To let yourself get distracted or drive with one hand is to defy death, from what I see an hear and experienced..
On the road I did find that lakeside campsite. Thank God I camped where I id. The lake was quite beautiful, but what you had to go through to get there was not. The owner of one of the trailers parked there had set out in front of each of his five windows a large piece plywood with a least 225 long nails hammered into it in neat rows, with the sharp ends sticking up, obviously to keep the bears and wolves from his dump of a trailer. Evil exists all over. I can just see the guy when he was making this evil device, foaming at the mouth, cursing that he'll get those bastards once and for all. I was tempted to hammer the boards over his windows and leave him a note telling him I found that all his boards had fallen down and I put them back for him, but my better judgment told me that evil people like that carry guns, si I left, glad I did not have to camp next to such evil.
I encountered no one in either direction the way to the Charolettetown turnoff.it was like world had ended and I and my dogs were the only ones left. I felt like that character in Coleman McCarthy's book, The Road. But that ended just before the turnoff I flagged down a car and asked if he saw any good campsites down the road to Red Bay.(you really don't have to flag anyone down on this road. All you need to do is stop you car and everyone will stop and ask ou if things are ok.) He told me there were none,mbut he recommended that I go o Pinsent Arm, and gave me directions. Twonhours later, I saw why he recommended that place. My God, what a view. We pitched the tent at the bottom of a broad gentle slope of caribou moss near a rocky beach bordering a vast cove off the Labrador Sea. We had lucked out again, but it really wasn't luck so much as it was rules and determination.
There were two new problems that surfaced today. The dogs, in their excitement to share the front seat together, smacked into my rear view mirror and took it down. The last time they did that was in Labrador in 2002. (The repair for this would have to wait several days until I could find that special glue for just this purpose. Driving without a rear view mirror was really not a problem here because there's rarely anyone behind you, and you can see out the muddied back window anyway.)
That evening, decided to put up my smaller, Everest-tested, two-person NorthFace tent, Instead of lugging my larger tent down the slope. Problem was that I had not set up that tent in years and trying to figure out which on of the 19 sleeves the various poles went into was not exactly easy with diminishing daylight. When I got to the last sleeve, my haste to beat thev nightfall took a toll on the tent and the pole stretched the seam of the sleeve to th point where it split the seam. Repair then was out of the question. At first I though the tent would be useless, and then I realized all I had to do was erect the tent with using that sleeve, giving up perhaps an inch or two of space in h tent. It worked, and the three of us slept comfortably, albeit somewhat cramped that nigh. After the stars came out, stepped outside for a few minutes to take in breathtaking sky. I even saw for the first time in decades the Big Dipper. I had forgotten what fun it was to find those icons in the sky.
Ed
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