Elora Gorge '07

Every summer, I plan a camping trip for me and my Little Brother (from the Big Brothers program). For this year's trip, we went to Elora Gorge from Friday July 6th until Sunday July 8th. Our friends E*, Joel, Alma and Rhea joined me and my Little.

As you can tell from the above picture, tubing was the central activity for the weekend. Elora Gorge is a long, slow-moving river with several mini-rapids in it. I brought along my brother's gigantic tube-trampoline, plus a shopvac motor to inflate it. Early on Saturday morning, Rhea and I went to the camp site office to rent life jackets, helmets and two additional inner tubes.


Last year when I visited this camp site with the Young Adults group from Open Door (ODCF), we had to rent inner tubes and equipment. We arrived at the rental building 45 minutes before it opened and there were several hundred people already lined up. This time, Rhea and I were just as early and we were still first. It was really nice to sit there and teach each other silly games and talk about life. Our conversation was the highlight of my weekend.



The river tubing was fantastic fun. Joel and I tag-teamed to carry the giant tube on our heads for the twenty minute walk to the head of the river, and we received a lot of one-liners and comments along the way. When we reached the river, one random kid even came up to tell me that the tube was too big and it wouldn't work, though I assured him that I knew what I was doing. Once we got going, four of us piled on the big tube while another person sat in each of the small tubes.

Joel was the hippy drifter, casually floating about without a care in the world. He pulled out a cigarette from a ziplock bag part way down the river to light up and another guy floated up beside him and bummed a smoke, which was pretty funny.

As for the rest of us, my Little got caught on a backwards current at one point and ended up in a cul-de-sac. Acting as the rudder, I steered the big tube to the side of the river and went back along the shoreline to retrieve him. We both got back onto the small inner tube and plunged into the rapids again. Unfortunately, that proved difficult for two people in the biggest rapids on the river, so we flipped off of it halfway in. My Little had a life jacket and helmet so he was safe as we both clung to the tube with one hand. I worked hard to keep him above water and I cut open a nice deep gash on my right index finger and smashed my left knee against a rock. At one point, as my left leg as bending in the wrong direction against something underwater, it occurred to me that I could break my leg with this little stunt. Anyway, all's well that ends well since we made it out fine and had a great story to tell, even if I was hobbled for the rest of the weekend.


Joel and E* took care of the cooking duties for the weekend whilst I tackled dishes and cleanup after each meal. On the first evening, we had shishkabobs and while it took us a couple of hours to prepare, they were absolutely succulent. It was a really relaxing weekend. E* and I had prepared a schedule of activities and meals but we preferred not to rush anything and we just went with the flow, so we missed a few activities and didn't eat everything that we brought but we just tried to be easy-going about it.

On Friday night while we were preparing the meal, we were using both a propane stove and a charcoal BBQ grill. We had both of them on the picnic table as we worked and apparently some of the bacon grease dripped onto the table. (Mmm...bacon...so much bacon...) Next thing we know, the BBQ grill is spouting flames in every direction and the picnic table had caught fire! Joel grabbed a couple of towels and ditched the BBQ to the ground while E* and I worked to put out the flames that were everywhere. Crazy!


The above picture shows me on Saturday afternoon. The van battery died because it was holding most of the food and equipment and we had doors open constantly. Fortunately, I packed my dad's portable booster for just such an eventuality. Besides that, we hit the man-made beach at the campsite a few times and we practiced swimming across the deepest part of the water. I could touch the bottom at its deepest point but E* and my Little couldn't so it was a challenge for them to swim that distance, with me acting as their human life preserver.



On Friday night, the campers beside us arrived at 11:00 pm and set up their campsites. However, it's supposed to be quiet time for the entire camp ground at 11:00 pm so most of the people in our group were trying to sleep. These other campers were drinking, flirting and yelling until 1:00 am and it was pretty frustrating. I had the choice of getting up to talk to them but I figured they wouldn't respond too politely to a request for silence - in fact, they mocked another camper that did just that. I yelled at them twice and they eventually subsided. On Saturday night, there were no problems with that same group.

The major disappointment for the weekend was that there was a fire ban in effect. With so little rain recently, no open flames were permitted for bonfires. Since that is the central camping cliche, it stunted our fun a bit. However, on Saturday night we ended up using our charcoal BBQ and we managed to get enough flamage to toast marshmallows and s'mores so it worked out in the end.


In any case, I figured that it was better to have great weather and no fire than to have rain and fire. Ha! How silly of me... On Sunday morning, we were having a leisurely breakfast and Joel asked if we had heard thunder. No, that's crazy talk. The weather was supposed to be 30+ degrees and it was probably just a 4x4 passing by. After a few minutes, we heard it again - the definite peal of thunder in the distance.

That was the end of breakfast time. Everyone rushed to pack up our gear, tear down the tents and put away the food. We had just a few sprinkles before the downpour hit but by the then we had all of the main stuff pack in the vehicles and we just had a few extra bags of food to stash away. So we managed to get away from the rain but the storm did mess up our plans for a mini-hike and swimming at the Quarry.

In lieu of our well-laid plans, I had noticed a street sign just outside of camp directing travelers to a small town nearby. We punched it into my GPS box and took a detour before we headed back home to London. We pulled up on the side of the road and took a few pictures while standing in the rain. Indeed, we got some nice shots of Alma and her family in front of a sign for the town of Alma. "Population Growing."


Overall, it was a wonderful weekend with friends. Plenty of memories, a few interesting stories, good food and plenty of relaxation. Thanks to everyone in our group for making this happen!