Mom and Dad dropped us kids and Mum off, then headed out the next morning for mah cousin's wedding in Alberta. (Note: Mom = Melaney, Mum = Joanne; this gets more confusing when I'm speaking, because I don't enunciate well at all... Also, for those of you unaware of my family situation, I am not actually the child of a lesbian couple--as interesting as that might have been. No, no, I am but the child of parents who divorced, and a father who remarried. So Mum= loverly biological mother, and Mom= loverly step mother.)
We spent about a week and a half being the only family at the lake other than Grandpa Mattie (everybody else went to the wedding). After much over-hyping by Mom and Justin that we were going to have to work so hard that asian children trapped in sweatshops would make fun of us for being slaves, it turned out to be a really easy gig: The weather wasn't great, so veeeery few people showed up. We sat around watching the original Star Trek series on the portable DVD player while waiting for campers to show up, and when we got bored of Star Trek, we'd go swimming or canoeing. Oh, and we did garbage duty twice. Truly, it was the stuff of horror stories, haha.
AND NOW, THE GREAT EXPEDITION OF FAIL.
During that time, Paul and I had seen what we thought was a cave at the end of the lake, so we thought we'd go investigate it. Baaaad idea. On out first attempt, we misjudged its location, meaning we climbed all the way up a freaking steep hill, and then hiked through dense forest (dodging so much animal poo, you wouldn't believe me if I described it to you, no less), only to realize we had no idea where the cave was. We ended up half-hiking, half-skidding back down to the lakeshore and following the shoreline backwards until we found our canoe.
Paul had been wearing shorts, so his legs looked like they'd been attacked by a version Catwoman who had both dwarfism and PMS (yeah... I'll never look at plant life the same way either), and huge bag of nacho chips we had brought along with us was mostly crushed because I think I slipped somewhere amongst the mêlée and the chips had broken my fall.
Also, to satiate our curiosity as to how close we had come to the cave of legend, we paddled our canoe further down the lake. Not. Even. Close. (apart from the fact that we had the right lake) Oh well.
Status of Cave-claiming Attempt #1: ALL ABOARD THE FAILBOAT.
We made our second attempt at ascent two days later. Paul wore the same shorts. I admire his determination not to learn from his mistakes. This time, we parked the canoe right below the cave (well, not RIGHT below, as there was still the hill of death separating us from our quarry... HAHA. QUARRY! CAVE! GET IT!?!?! My unintentional puns amaze even me sometimes.).
After a long, sweaty climb, we reached the cave. I was in awe, unable to take in the magnitude of the scene. It was so different than what I had expected, even in all my wildest dreams. Dumbstruck, I glanced over at Paul, only to see that he wore the same expression of fantastic disbelief.
It wasn't a cave at all. It was a lame dent in a rock. And this stupid rock was COVERED in animal crap.
Not effing pleased.
We took some pictures and videos, attempting to tone down the anti-climactic-ness of the anti-climax to end all anti-climaxes, but in the end, we were left with no alternative but to begin our descent of shame and defeat. Paul took a video of himself climbing down the hill while giving a really epic play-by-play:
"Alright, now, I've got to jump from this treestump to the next. I might fall--this is pretty dangerous, BUT THAT'S A CHANCE I'LL HAVE TO TAKE."
"Okay, I made it, but now I have to get from here down the that rock. It's pretty far. It's pretty dangerous, BUT THAT'S A CHANCE I'LL HAVE TO TAKE."
And so on, until he dropped the camera down the hill and out of sight, because of all the shrubs and fallen trees. When I finally found it, we didn't even have the video to show for it, because the camera had turned off automatically when Paul dropped it, erasing the video.
Status of Attempt #2: Free thy llamas, for thou doth fail. In other words: I don't think I'm going to take up orienteering as a hobby.
