The rain fell on and off throughout the night. In the morning, we got a little more. And the raccoon that we’d seen the night before had returned while we slept. The bagels that were in the cooler were out and the bag was opened. Scary what an animal with an opposable thumb can do. So there we were, with wet tents, a camp site that was getting a little muddy, and our food picked over by a hungry little critter. My daughter had been promised one of those cinnamon-raisin bagels for breakfast. Life away from home was starting to take it’s toll on us.

The mosquitos were coming out in force with the dampness all around us. The citronella candles from the night before had been rained in, so they weren’t much use. Everyone put on some bug repellant and took care of the bites we had already received with some Burt’s Bees Res-Q ointment. It worked pretty well on the kids; I was too busy to try it. We decided that the best thing we could do was to cut it short one day. The clouds overhead didn’t look too friendly and I didn’t want to know what it was like to sleep through anything more than a drizzle. We started getting packed up to leave. Since we’d slept in we had to rush to make the noon checkout time. I can’t believe how long it took me just to pack up a couple of sleeping bags. I didn’t pack a sleeping bag in the first place - we picked them up for a couple of us at the shopping centre in Wasaga Beach. To tell the truth, the real reason was just this moment. I’ve hated wrestling a bed roll into those undersized bags ever since Cub Scouts. Honestly, it’s not like we have to carry these packs up Mount Kilimanjaro. If they made the bags three millimeters larger, would anyone suffer?

I rolled up my daughters twice before it went in, but mine was more stubborn. I leaned on it, layed on it, pushed, pryed and prodded it. That thing did not want to go in the bag. I rolled it up over and over, first one way then the other and when I finally got it small enough to stuff in the open end of the bag I had to poke it an inch at a time to get it in. If you have trouble with sleeping bags like I do, the only advice I can give for this is to make sure you’re alone when you do it. And sit on it. Sitting on the thing is easier than squeezing it with your arms.

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