Never Take The Campsite Next To The Playground
On my second week of holidays, we decided to go somewhere a little warmer than the Cariboo region of BC, which, while nice, was a little unpredictable in the weather department. Usually the Okanagan turns out to be a better choice, and that turned out to be the case here, as you’ll see.
It was raining when we left Vancouver, and it seemed like the storm was going to follow us all the way to the Interior, we had a decision to make. Where was the driest place in BC? Seeing as how it’s located in the only arid desert in Canada, Osoyoos seemed to be logical choice, so that’s where we decided to go.
By the time we got there, and checked into the motel for the first night, the storm had been left behind, never to reach Osoyoos. I decided to take a walk down to the beach, and was more than a little surprised by the wind coming off of the lake. I expected to see a reporter from CNN standing on the shore talking about the coming hurricane, but, was out of luck. I’m willing to bet that the windsurfer above had a pretty good time, though.
After the first night it was off to find a camping spot, and at the Brookvale Campground, we were able to find one right on the beach. Literally. Sleeping on the sand is a whole lot softer than sleeping on the root of a tree, believe me.
We even had guests for breakfast and dinner each day. Small, brown, feathered guests.
A few days later, though, the campsite was going to be full of reserved spots, so we had to move on, and Penticton was the destination. After we arrived, we checked out a few spots, but decided that $40 a night just for tenting was too much to pay, so we found the South Beach Gardens RV Park, which also had tenting sites, for a little less and settled in.
That’s where the title of this post comes from. They put us right next to the playground, and to be honest, the site itself was the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Our site itself was bigger than our backyard. However, the location was a real drawback. The playground was open till 10pm (!) and you could forget even trying to get to sleep until it was closed and locked. Funny, but I don’t remember nine year old girls screaming that *loud* when I was a kid. We went to the office and requested another site the on the second morning, and literally threw everything into the car and drove to the other end of the campground.
After we got set up in the new location, we were shocked at just how quiet the place was. Guess we’ll know for next time. Incidentally, the morning that we were packing up to go home, another family carried their fully raised tent through the campground and dropped it in the site next to ours. I kind of wondered, so I asked if they had moved from campsite L3, which was the one we had been in. Turns out that they got stuck with it after we did, and they demanded to move to.
Other than that, though, there was nothing wrong with the campground itself. I think there were more Alberta license plates there than BC ones, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
But if we learned nothing else from this trip, the number one lesson was, never take the campsite right next to the playground.
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