Finding Nemo

Bicycle-camping may not seem like a bold idea, but we have shied away from it because our canoe-camping gear is too bulky to fit into our panniers. A new lightweight tent by Nemo frees up room for a tiny stove, kettle, and an essential – coffee. We test the new items on a three-day trip to one of our favourite parks, Ruckle Provincial Park on Salt Spring Island.

“I can’t camp without hot coffee,” says Doug. He really wants to try bike-camping. We squeeze our ten-pound tent into our panniers, but there’s no room for the DragonFly stove, fuel bottle, and cooking pots.

Cathy thinks we can manage with cold food. Her suggestions of chocolate-covered espresso beans, caffeine-infused energy bars, and coffee-flavoured Instant Breakfast are rejected, but Doug consents to try a Foldable Pocket Stove with six fuel tabs, weighing 180g and costing $17.50. The package promises that each fuel tablet will boil water for two cups of coffee or one bag of dehydrated food.

Ruckle Provincial Park has 78 walk-in campsites on the coast overlooking Swanson Channel. In summer this is a busy campground, but only two sites are occupied when we arrive on a Tuesday in October. Most of the sites are in an open grassy meadow, where you can watch ferries, sailboats, and seals glide by. The sky looks high-spirited and mischievous, so we choose one of the tent-padded sites at the edge of the forest.

Ruckle has more than fifteen kilometres of hiking trails. Loops of various lengths are possible. Our favourite is the four-hour loop that covers seven kilometres of shoreline, rocky headlands, and coves before heading into the woods, passing through a grove of spooky big trees and through the working heritage farm.

Ruckle is a gentle park. No bears, raccoons, or biting insects to worry about. Carpet burweed is the only hazard, and this invasive plant is contained in a fenced quarantine area. We hear the rumble of ferries and the tap of a woodpecker, but the five deer are silent as they bed down in the grass next to our tent.

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How did the new gear perform? The tent didn’t leak or blow away. Being a three-season tent, it was mighty chilly in there when the temperature dropped to minus-two Celsius; thank goodness we had warm sleeping bags. The pocket stove performed as advertised, and it was quiet, unlike our DragonFly, which sounds like a jet engine taking off. The fuel pellets have an unpleasant odour, rather like pigeon poo, a smell with which we’ve recently become acquainted due to a pigeon infestation in our building.

Bottom line: with this lighter weight gear, we can bike-camp. We’ll do it again, and maybe try back-packing, too. Seventy-nine isn’t too old for a first backpacking trip, is it?

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