2023 Highlights: Keats Island

Last week we took our annual family camping trip to Keats Island. As I’ve shared before, Peter and I have been camping at Plumpers Cove since before we were married. We’ve camped with the girls every year they’ve been alive and this year we camped with Winnie the Dog for the first time.

In the last couple of years we’ve really finessed our kayak camping in order to camp at Keats. The island is about a 20 minute paddle straight across from Gibsons. We have a spot we can park at and launch from. We’ve done this in a lot of different ways. Last year was with two tandem kayaks and the second kayak turned out to not be a great purchase. We were able to sell that and purchased two single kayaks so that we are now a three kayak family. We made the crossing this summer with Peter and the two girls and the dog in the tandem kayak and me in a single.

Mornings and evenings tend to be a calmer time for paddling so we headed out Wednesday evening. Timing worked out okay in setting up camp but it was already dark when we were getting the girls ready for bed so next time we’d probably try to leave a little earlier. We did make it in time to all be in the tent before the rain started. We had a decently heavy rain overnight but stayed dry in our tent and it was all sunshine from there.

One of the things we love about Keats is that there isn’t much going on there. It’s just far enough removed that you get fewer people camping there and you really feel away from it all. We swim, we hike, we filter our water, we fish from the dock, we read. The point of it is simply being there and being together.

One big highlight (and purpose of hiking) is that we always go to nearby Camp Barnabas and visit their general store to get ice cream. This year we learned that Keats Camp (a hike in the other direction) also serves ice cream. A friend of mine has a family cabin near Keats Landing so we met her and her husband at Keats Camp for a visit and some ice cream. Then the next day we hiked over for ice cream again at Barnabas.

We’ve joked in the past that camping with small children is “an investment in future fun”. We’ve camped with the girls since they were babies and it’s amazing how much easier it is now. They sleep well in the tent. They can explore and play on their own. They use the outhouse alone (my favourite development!) They are able to help us in several small ways from loading the kayaks to setting up the tent to using the water pump.

As mentioned, this was our first camping trip with our dog. It was almost like we felt things were getting too easy with our kids so we decided to amp up the difficulty. All together, Winnie did pretty well though it definitely added a new dimension to the trip.

Knowing that being able to kayak with our dog was important, we did a few trial runs before making this kayak trip. What we found worked was for Pearl (armed with dog treats) to sit in one of the tandem seats with Winnie. Peter and the girls also did a backyard campout with Winnie to see how she did in a more controlled environment. We knew we didn’t want Winnie in our tent so we bought her her own.

Are there dog specific camping tents? Yes, absolutely. Do they cost more than this kid play tent from Canadian Tire that works about the same way? Yes, they do. So this is Winnie in her ladybug tent.

Winnie is crate-trained at home and sleeps in her crate at night. So having a space that was hers where she was contained was important. We set up her tent in the vestibule of ours so that she could hear and see us but not get to us. She did wake up a few times in the night and barked a bit at sounds she wasn’t used to but all I had to do was unzip the tents and reach in to pat her to settle her back down.

We bought a cable at the dollar store to keep her tethered (one she can’t chew through) in the campsite and we even managed to bring her regular dog mat across. (She lay on it in the kayak.) It was her spot during the day and then we’d move it into her ladybug tent at night.

Winnie is a dog who likes all of her people nearby so whenever one of us left the campsite, she tended to get upset. This meant some of the independence we might have had with older kids was negated as we often had to move at a group to keep her from whining and barking. (We never left her alone at the campsite but she would get stressed out, for example, if Peter left to use the outhouse.)

I’m not sure that I want to bring Winnie along on every camping trip in the future but it was encouraging to see that it was possible and I’m glad we are doing these things while she’s still a puppy. She was happy to hike with us and did great being walked by both Pearl and Rose. She’s also turning into quite a water dog and loved fetching sticks in the ocean. (She gets embarrassed in her life jacket through.) And when we came home she basically slept for the next day she was so exhausted by camping!