Mis-stakes were made

In the morning, Li and I rode out to take a look around North and South Pender Islands, stopping at a bakery for breakfast. The maple sugar donut with cream topping provided some tasty quick-acting carbs!

Impressions, based on the sample of the islands that I saw: compared to Salt Spring Island, Pender has fewer yoga studios, fewer family farms, more vacation homes.

After taking the noonish ferry to Galiano Island, we split up. Li and Maddie went to get food for dinner and breakfast. I went to stake out a claim at the campground at Dionisio Point Provincial Park, where we had no reservation, with the understanding that an oceanside campsite would be preferred.

On my way to Dionisio Point, after the ferry traffic dissipated, I only got passed by three cars and no cyclists on my entire ride, so I must have been moving at a pretty good pace. When I got to Dionisio, I headed the most obvious way, straight to the beach at Coon Bay. Seeing a sign saying "Dionisio Point Marine Campground", some picnic tables, and a flat vegetation-free spot next to each picnic table, I concluded that this was an ideal spot to camp, and quickly deployed my tent to claim the best spot, furthest inland, right beside the sign. Seeing that my friends hadn't arrived yet, I unpacked my sleeping pad and sleeping bag, then took the opportunity to get changed to go for a dip in the ocean. Having deployed everything to assert our presence, I went to go pay and legitimize our claim. The camp host told me to take an envelope, fill out the form on it, seal the cash payment inside, and slip it into the box. OK… size of party: 3 people; number of nights: 1; fee: 3 × $5 = $15; campsite number: 🧐???

Huh, there is no campsite number marker next to my spot‽ Then I looked uphill, into the forest, and saw tents. Oh, the campground must be up there! I rode my bike up that trail, saw that those sites weren't nearly as appealing as the beach (the forest was less breezy, more likely to have mosquitoes, noisier with one huge family running a generator, and had no views), but there's no point in staking a claim to a spot that wasn't a valid campsite, so I picked the least worst spot in the forest, hauled my sleeping bag & pad up there, then hauled my half-collapsed tent too, and set everything up again. Now I could properly fill in the form and pay. The next useful thing I could do would be to fetch some water from the pump, so I did that.

After fetching water, I saw a text from Li and Maddie. (Cell phone reception is very spotty and marginal at Dionisio.) "We see that you set up at site 12. We're at sites 26 and 27, which we think is better. Where are you?"

What? The campsite numbers don't count up that high‽ After wandering around, I finally bumped into Li and Maddie, who showed me an unlabelled hike-a-bike trail that led to a more obscure set of campsites overlooking the ocean. I agreed that their choice was better (no noisy neighbours running a generator!), so we packed everything up AGAIN and moved to this third location.

So, my effort to race ahead to claim a spot ended up serving no purpose, and I ended up setting up camp three times this afternoon 😖. Though the park had some map boards, in my defense, there was absolutely no wayfinding signage for the trails and campsites, and the one prominent sign that said "Dionisio Point Marine Campground" was not in fact an indication that I had found a legitimate campground! 😤

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This activity is part of a series: https://komoot.com/collection/4637403