Last night was CRAZY! Late in the evening, the wind started. Waterton National Park is known for its wind, and I guess we had gotten lucky the rest of our vacation. The wind was blowing so intensely that our tent collapsed at least 10 times (I stopped counting eventually). Our tent door, which was already broken and was being held by nothing but a few pieces of Velcro, kept blowing wide open.
After I don't know how many tent collapses, I finally went outside and took off the rain fly, which seemed to be catching the wind and exacerbating the problem. After the rain fly was off, the tent *only* would collapse on one corner, instead of the whole half of the tent.
The wind was so loud that I was sure the trees above us would fall over. Between the noise of the wind itself, the noise of the branches rustling, the noise of the tent flapping and vibrating, and of course the tent collapsing every 20-30 minutes throughout the night, I didn't get much sleep.
And then...once I took the rain fly off...it started to rain! At least it was just a gentle sprinkle. But we could definitely feel it sprinkling right onto us.
In the middle of the night, after putting the tent back into place yet again, I was DONE. The reunion was ending in the morning, but we had planned on going on a long hike the next day with one of Eric's siblings, and I decided: NO. I was DONE and we were going back to a real bed and a real house and resting. Not hiking. (Now, if you know me, hiking is my favorite thing so it has to be very serious to deter me from hiking).
As we were all packing up in the morning, we learned that several other families had similar issues with their tents collapsing. What a crazy way to end the reunion!
We had some debate about hiking or not, but of the two families, only a few people actually wanted to go. So we ended up deciding just to head home and have an easy day. I was feeling pulled in two directions because I do love hiking. But I just couldn't see how I'd find the energy to do a big day-long hike.
So we drove back home to Eric's parents. About 30 minutes out, we passed one of Eric's sisters on the side of the road, with her trailer looking skewed to one side. We braked and backed up to see what was going on.
Her trailer wheel had compeltely disintegrated. The smell of burned rubber permeated the area, despite the brisk wind.
Eric's parents passed us a little while later and joined in the fun. Wait, not fun! It's never fun to break down. We hunted around in the various cars for a jack and other needed tools. All we could find was one really small jack, but the trailer was so low that we coudlnl't get the jack in. Plus we were missing the tools to open up the spare tire case.
This trailer is very old and the design made it nearly impossible to see the tire--the side of the trailer covered most of the wheel. (Why would you design a trailer like that??? Maybe back then, people thought it looked streamlined?)
About that time, a man in a truck saw us and pulled over. He was an older farmer who lived nearby. Let's call him "Bernie." He came to take a look and decided we needed better tools. I'll be back in a few minutes, he told us, I live just a mile away.
He came back with a GIANT car jack and managed to get the trailer up after lots of different angles and various pieces of wood propped in several places. But then we discovered one issue after another and he had to go back to his farm two more times to get more tools.
He was talking with Eric's parents, and it turns out that Bernie and Eric's mom have a lot of mutual friends. Southern Alberta is a small world.
Anyway, after a good hour or more of working to jack up the trailer, get the tire off, get the new one one, pressureize the spare tire, they finally got it all working...only to discover that the trailer's axle was bent and the trailer was unuseable.
Fortuantely, Bernie had a friend in the nearest town who was a mechanic, and he was called to come tow the trailer all the way to Eric's sister's house (almost an hour away).
After this whole adventure, our kids declared, "Canadians are so nice!" I have to agree.
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