We got up and the power was still off. We're camping, what could be wrong with no power in the campground? We had the battery pack for the fridge and if we needed to charge it, we'd just go for a drive. We had a camp stove, and rechargeable lights. What could be wrong? I used to wilderness camp every summer!
Well. It's a weekend, at a very popular campground. Nearly every of the 98 sites and 5 cabins were in use. How many people?
Rob went to the comfort station. The bathrooms were locked. The handicapped bathroom couldn't be locked but had one of those "Closed for cleaning" bars across the door. He went in anyway. Someone had covered the bathroom in toilet paper. The toilet was filled of poop, and the floor had been urinated on.
Okay, but what about outhouses? Surely there's outhouses? And a handpump for water? You know the old fashioned ones with the big handle? Nope.
There was ONE single outhouse for the entire campground. No water pumps.
There could have been 400 people there! The outhouse was far enough that it warranted driving. We actually had to wait.
We drove to the registration building and they had no power too. We asked if there were more outhouses and they said no. We asked why and they said it wasn't warranted. What?! Seriously? There are winter activities in some parts of the park, I don't know about there, but only 1 outhouse?! I really hope they re-think this. Keep it locked up unless there's an emergency. Power outages are pretty frequent from what we hear.
They also said there was no refunds because of the power outage. Somewhat understandable, but we had no potable (drinkable) water! (Well, we did have a 2L jug in the fridge, but we weren't using that to wash dishes).
I did notice these meat sticks in the shop--these are from where we live! They had a generator running to keep the ice cream treats frozen but that was it.
We went in to St Donat for gas and to charge the battery. The staff had said power was out "even in the town" but we found there was power there. Maybe they meant the tiny village just outside the park. I'm not sure what else we did in town.
We went for a walk to see what was at "Blue Jay Point". It wasn't on the map but there was a sign. We followed the sign but we didn't see anything except some rocks and tree saplings in an area that looked like maybe it used to be a fire pit and seating area. We then went down the path near our campsite. The path isn't on the map but there's a symbol saying "Discovery Activities". The symbols and legend are so tiny, and it doesn't show exactly how to get there. Go down the path near the bike rack at the very back of the campground.
What do you think this was?
It's a nice little area. You can probably walk along the beach all the way. When we went to the beach the first time we walked back a LONG way along the beach and then the trail went into the trees a bit, but then we went uphill and came out at a campsite that is on the main road (42-52....the area where the outhouse is).
This is the star gazing bench. It would have been amazing to come down to star gaze. I laid down for awhile, but I did find it a bit awkward to get the right position. I'm so short and I didn't get lined up right, but with a blanket and maybe pillow, it'd be really comfy.
This was my view. Yeah, no stars.
We headed back to the campsite and had lunch. Rob wasn't feeling well so I encouraged him to have a nap--something he usually does a lot when we road trip. I wanted to go for another walk and he didn't. So I went down the main trail, the Chutes-aux-Rats trail.
It was pretty easy walking, and there were quite a few other people out, especially close to the campground. There's a few benches and tables in nice spots along the trail. I even found another outhouse, but it was a 15 min walk from our campsite.
Mushrooms are always fun to take pictures of. They don't move like flowers.
The signs indicated that the path to Chute-aux-Rats was closed. I had seen signs at the buildings but didn't really know what that was about.
Shortly after I got back from my walk, around 3:30, the lights came back on! We wait about 15 minutes and went to wash our dishes. The washrooms stayed closed for awhile longer since they needed to be cleaned.
We had left them plugged in so we'd know when the power came on. We had been told 5:30, so we were excited it was earlier.
We had another delicious dinner, trying to use up food.
We were sitting at the fire in the evening, enjoying the peace and ....well...there was a large group down the hill with a lot of happy, excited kids. Almost every site was full. Anyway, we moved the table over to the fire, and were just relaxing when suddenly I got startled by a voice beside me! It was a park ranger, walking site to site, to remind us to turn off the string lights when we go to bed. We had gotten in trouble in a Quebec park before because we had a bright light in our makeshift kitchen (Rob had fixed up the box trailer to have a sort of kitchen area at the end, complete with a large patio umbrella and fluorescent light fixture). I thought the string lights were pretty tame. They were low, dim, orange. We had turned the lights off the other nights, so we figured this was just a routine walk about. She was friendly about it too.
It was a somewhat early night since we were leaving pretty early in the morning, hopefully.
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