have you ever seen Caia looking kinda shy-a, down by the bay? It was a busy weekend for camping in the Shuswap region. Our chosen campground, the Sandy Point Beach Campground was completely filled when we arrived, but Keri had secured us a spot three doors down from his site, so we were a quick skip down the road. Luckily, the next day the space next to his opened up and we arranged a transfer. With the way they build tents these days, you don't even need to take them down to transport them. We just unpegged the flies and carried all three down the street to our new home.

It was fun to have the two sites side-by-side for a night - we had a joint barbecue dinner of steak, chicken, corn on the cob, baked beans, roasted red peppers, and buttery barbecued potatoes. This video shows the set-up, with Keri and Gina's trailer on one side and our little "tent city" on the other. I recorded this clip just before we sat down to eat - you see Persuade checking the chicken, some people chilling by the campfire, and Gina and Ella wrestling in the camper.

One thing we weren't quite prepared for was the drastic change in temperature at night. I should have brought a couple extra blankets and a little toque for sleeping, because we were positively freezing that first night (colder than the successive ones). After that first night, we mostly slept with double-socks, double-pants, and many shirt layers. That picture above is one of me trying to warm up in the morning, wearing just about everything I'd brought with me, and guzzling some hot coffee. BRR! Every day commenced and ended with a campfire - not just for roasting marshmallows (or creating marshmallow torches, right Kyle?) - but for actual warming purposes.

But during the days it was scorching hot, so that balanced things out. The lake was a nice temperature for swimming, and the beach was crowded but not annoyingly so. We spent some quality time lounging on the sand, cooling off with some laps to the end of the roped-off "swimming section" - the lake is also crowded with boats, so you must remain in the ropes for safety. It's a pretty deep lake, so we got a good workout doing those laps - no cheating by putting your feet down!

We all had a nice time. Highlights include playing in the water with the kids, swimming, rafting (minus getting hit with the "perfect storm" when some dude in his massive motorboat decided to circle us pretty closely, sending big waves at us from both directions - yeesh!), preparing and eating some nice family meals together, sitting around the campfire and singing silly songs, the spectacular scenery and weather, and mostly just getting away from "real life" for a while. I added a few more pics to the slideshow last night - they're here (at the end of the set).

One more video clip:
  | ¶ 1:59 p.m.