“What are your plans this weekend?” A coworker asked. “We’re going camping” “In the winter?” “Yup!” “In the storm?” “Yup!” That’s right, Ryan and I are slightly crazy, but slightly not. Last winter we had the great idea of going camping in Kouchibouguac, and we wanted to do the same thing this winter. Unfortunately, Kouchibouguac is doing a year long renovation to their shelters. While I was upset that we couldn’t go back, we thought this could be a good opportunity to go enjoy some front country camping in Fundy National Park. The reason we didn’t originally pick Fundy was because the weather can be a bit more unpredictable there, with freezing rain sometimes ruining the snow. Since our options were limited we thought we’d give the park a chance. Ryan and I dutifully planned out front country camping with way too many things on our list, including: board games, sleeping bags, full sized pillows, a bag of clothes each, an IKEA bag’s worth of food, books, shoes, snowshoes, among other things. We ended up packing up the entire car full of things. Who knew that we would need so much to spend two days out in the woods? Once we packed up the car, and got on the road, we turned to each other, around an hour out of Saint John, and asked each other, “Wait, did you take the bathroom kit?” “No, did you?” “I thought you were going to?” “Huh…” We weren’t used to packing so much stuff, and we forgot the bathroom kit. We figured that it would be easier to stop off in Sussex, NB to pick up some toothbrushes, toothpaste, and bottles of water. With an easy laugh at our forgetfulness, we hopped back onto the road. As soon as we got to the park we signed in and let the park people know that we were in the park. We had rented out an OTenTik for $90/night down in Headquarters. There are a few options for winter camping. The OTenTiks are popular because they are wood and canvas structures, double walled, with heaters. There are also Yurts for $100/night, which have always been on my bucket list! Lastly, you can rent out an open tent camping space. I’m not crazy enough to think that I would enjoy sleeping in a tent, in the snow, in the middle of a storm. We stuck to the OTenTiks. “You know that there is a storm coming?” The woman at the Visitor’s Centre warned us. “Yup, we’re all set up and ready for the storm,” we replied. We originally planned the trip before we had a good idea of what the weather would be like. It turns out that a giant storm was working its way up the coast straight towards us. There was a mixed report that reported anything between 2 feet of snow and a warm 5C and rain. I was hoping that we were going to get more snow than rain and that the news report was wrong. “We were thinking about renting out fat bikes. Where do we do that?” We asked the woman from the Visitor’s Centre, just as the rep from Outdoor Elements walked in. “We’re just up at Chignecto. We were just about to leave, but if you guys want to try the bikes out we can wait.” Ryan looked at me with those big puppy eyes. How could I say no? “Sure, let’s try this fat biking thing,” I replied. “The snow is great for it today. Tomorrow, the snow won’t be as good because of the storm.” Damn this storm. We headed straight for Chignecto Recreation Area, where the fat bikes were being rented out. We tried looking around for the guys who were renting out the bikes. We couldn’t see any sign or anything that says where they would be. Soon, I saw someone biking around the corner. “Excuse me, where did you rent those?” I called out. Ryan laughed and said, “Sweetie, those are the guys we were just talking to.” “Oh….right...haha.” We rented both of the bikes with a quick phone call to the main store in Sussex to run our credit card. Ta-da! The bikes were both ours for a half day for $30/bike. We got on the bikes and headed off to the trails. “Oh man, this is easy!” I said, just before my front tire caught in a deep part of the snow. I promptly fell over, while screaming. “AHHHH!” Ryan turned, “Are you ok?” “Hahaha,” I laughed while being submerged in deep soft snow, “Yup, I’m fine.” I proceeded to fall over more than a dozen times during our time out on the bikes. I’m a bit out of shape and the trails are a bit steep. We ended up walking the bikes up the hill and turning around to ride them back down. “Weee!” I shouted while flying (hah, not really; I’m a granny when it comes to going down anything quickly). If I were to go back I’d walk the bike up the boring trail at the end of the parking lot where many trails start off, and then go down the Maple Grove trail. Going down that trail was a lot more fun! After we came down the trail our friends joined us at Fundy. We went on a short walk around the “open to the public” trails. These trails are all groomed for walking around, and we didn’t even need snowshoes for them, although you aren’t technically supposed to go on them without snowshoes, skis, or fat bikes. We really wanted to go on the other trails from Fundy, break trail and have some fun. Before planning on where we were going to go, we decided to unpack our cars and get warm before heading out again. When I chose our OTenTik I noticed that there was a bathroom very close to our site. It turns out that all of those bathrooms were closed for the season. We only learned this as soon as we picked up our keys. We would have to drive to the bathroom every time we wanted to go there. It was probably around 1 km away, and the roads were getting worse by the hour. As soon as we got all of our things in the OTenTik, it was time to start dinner. We pulled out the snacks, and boy did we have a lot of them! We spent the night eating, playing board games, and trying out different beers. It was a good night that ended in the early morning with a few board games won, a few lost, and stomachs full. The next morning,we went to the dining shelter to make breakfast. The storms starting in earnest now, and the wet snow was coming down rather quickly. The dining shelter had lots of wood, and we started to get all of our food out. “Can you grab the bacon?” Ryan asked. I looked in the bag. “Errr, which bag is it in?” “The perishables bag.” “Hmmm….so…” “We forgot the meat didn’t we?” “Heheheh, yes.” Did I mention that we are terrible at front country camping? All of our meat was in that bag. We had nothing to cook for dinner tonight as our friends were leaving after breakfast that morning. We would figure something out, we had enough food to feed a small army. After breakfast was eaten, a car was packed, and our friends were on their way home, Ryan and I turned to each other. “Wanna see what is open in Alma?” I asked. We didn’t pack enough water to drink, thinking that Fundy would provide drinkable water. They do not. They claim that you can drink the water coming from the bathroom taps, but that water is yellow and tastes like you’re licking a penny. Gross. We carefully clambered into the car, there was freezing rain now, and headed into the town. Thankfully, the pizza place in town was open. We got a pizza, and headed back to hunker down in our OTenTik for the day. We ended up spending the day napping, reading, and playing board games. It was as Hygge as one could get. We were cozy, our propane fire was keeping the tent warm, we had comfort food, good books, fluffy sleeping bags, and a neat hack which turned our jug of water and a headlamp into a soft diffused light. The next day we went to drop our keys back at the Visitor’s Centre. It turns out that we were the only ones in the park all night long. We were the only ones crazy enough to spend the night in the park during the storm. The roads were very slippery the next day, apparently one guy in Saint John was skating around on the streets! We took our time driving home, and thought about when we could get out camping again. Hopefully next time, we will have more snow so that we can have some more outdoor fun.
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