2016: Post 22 – Is there another way to Garden Cove?

Derek sent out an e-mail last week to see if there was any interest in a one night camping trip on the weekend.  Everyone on the list were busy with other things, or just weren't interested.. except for Clyde and myself.  

Clyde picked me up Saturday morning and we met Derek at the TCH Irving and off we went, stopping at Goobies to pick up a couple things, and then carrying on.  We had decided to camp at Gulch Pond.

Clyde and I were in the lead car and we were having a grand chat about this and that.  I was looking at the Poplar trees and remarked how I liked them, but Clyde preferred Birch trees...  We noticed that Derek was no longer following behind us and  we surmised he must of stopped to answer a phone call.  Clyde slowed down but we carried on down the road.  Still chatting away, we passed Swift Current, Kilmory Resort, and Piper's Hole River...

Derek had not been to Garden Cove (the put-in location) before and he had still not caught up to us, so Clyde pulled over to wait for him... wouldn't want Derek to get lost on his first trip to Gulch Pond.

Next thing we knew Derek came up along side of us and asked "is there another way to Garden Cove because you guys passed a sign back there that said Garden Cove"?  Well now, Clyde and I have both been to Garden Cove three of four times before, but we were so engrossed in our conversation and admiring the trees and such that we didn't even see the sign to turn off to Garden Cove, or clue in to the fact that we had passed Swift Current, Kilmory Resort, and even Piper's Hole River!!  Derek wondered how far we'd actually would of gone if he we had not pulled over to wait for him...  Clyde said we would have figured it out when we got to Davis Cove... we had such a good laugh at ourselves...

We finally arrived in Garden Cove and loaded up the kayaks, got on the water, headed toward Bloody Point, and turned in to the inside channel...

The tide was ebbing and there was no wind, so the paddling was easy and we maintained a good speed.  When we arrived at Rattling Brook there wasn't a lot of water flowing over the little falls but there was plenty to cool off under...

We paddled on.  

I had not been in Jenny in two weeks and somewhere along the way she said "let's go for a little paddle..."  So I let her go and didn't bother to look back, knowing Derek and Clyde would know I was in a paddling mood.  I rounded the little headland abreast of Shag Rock and thought to pull up on the beach just around the corner, but then decided to carry on to La Plante Cove.

When I arrived at La Plante Cove I stopped to wait for the guys and to change my batteries in my GPS.  I noticed the moving average speed on my GPS and was impressed at the speed despite not having to work hard to achieve it... The ebbing tide really was having a positive impact.

I floated and waited for a while, and then I paddled away from shore to see where the guys were...  They had stopped at the beach that I had passed and I guessed they were having a late lunch...  I thought about paddling back to join them but instead just pulled up on a little beach near me and waited.  When they came along we carried on down to Gulch Head and on to the entrance to Gulch Pond.

As expected, with the falling tide the current was flowing out of the salt water pond...

The current was too much to paddle against and so we walked the kayaks up along the shore.

The first order of business  was to put up our tents.  I had brought my tent and my hammock.  The ground was quite dry and I decided I didn't want to do any brush clearing and so I pitched up my tent between Clyde and Derek.

It was somewhere between 4 and 4:30 pm by now and Derek declared it was time for a beer.  He kindly gave me one of his and the three of us sat in the warm sunshine and enjoyed Happy Hour.   Then Clyde gave me one of his beer and we all had another.  I don't drink much beer, but I have to say I really enjoyed those couple of beer, sitting in the sunshine, chatting away with these guys... 

Derek

Clyde

Then it was time to have a bit of supper.

We cleared up and then gathered up some firewood and got the evening fire started...

... and then we walked over to have a look at the current that was now running into Gulch Pond.

Derek decided to be Chief Fire Marshall for the evening and he kept a good blaze going...

When the majority of the wood had been burned and there was mostly coals left, Clyde pulled out some Jiffy Pop and set to work, determined to provide an evening snack.  Well, we didn't get our snack, but we had one hell of a good time watching Clyde do his best.

Let's just say I've never seen Neville or Shane, or even Hazen, set fire to Jiffy Pop!!!  Lord I wish I had a video of the incident.... but here's a picture of the charred remains....

Clyde decided to try to burn the evidence but I got a picture of that too....

We sat around the glowing coals, feeding bits of wood that was around.  Then we all had a real good laugh about how Clyde and I not only missed the turn off to Garden Cove, but drove through Swift Current, and past Kilmory Resort and even Piper's Hole River and still hadn't clued in that we had driven to far until Derek pulled up and asked if there was another way to Garden Cove... Derek was laughing so hard he said his stomach was hurting, which made us laugh even more... Good grief, that was funny!!! 

I am still laughing at the whole thing as I sit here trying to finish this blog entry.  That's the kind of thing we will remember years from now.  We'll be on a beach somewhere around a campfire, the three of us with other people too, and one of us will tell the story about how Clyde and I missed the turn off and just kept on going.... Yep.  Good stuff that is.

We checked the time... almost midnight.  We headed for our tents.

The next morning we got up to a heavy dew.  It was overcast as we ate our breakfast, but then the sky cleared and the sun came out before we left the beach.

The tide was flooding as we made our way back up the channel, and we had a bit of wind behind us.  We noticed three kayakers a little way behind us and wondered who it was. We had paddled almost half way back and so we pulled up on a beach for a rest.  The three kayakers caught up.  One of the them (yellow kayak) had done a trip with us last year, but I did not know the other two.  They had paddled down in the area on Friday, spent a couple nights on Barhaven Island, and were on their way back to Garden Cove. 

The three campers carried on after we had a little chat and then we got back on the water after a while as well.  We watched them handrail along the shoreline, but we opted to paddle out in the channel, taking advantage of the wind in our back and the flooding tide to help us make faster work of the paddle back to the cars.

As we drove away from Garden Cove, Clyde joked that we had better watch for the turn off back to the Trans Canada... Derek was ahead of us this time and so it wasn't likely that he would be coming along to tell us we were going the wrong way... 

What a fun trip this was.