We’re coming back from a town day, several miles into the last portion of the logging road and quite in the middle of nowhere, whipping past a clump of trees as we pass one of the lakes on the neighbouring Island.  I am concentrating on driving as, like most logging roads, this one is a single-but-wide lane and encountering traffic always feel at first like a collision in the making.  Sal shrieks.  Something falls off the roof.  I stop.  “Hey! There’s a sign in the bushes.  It says, Sally and David.  Think that means us?”

“What fell off the roof?”

“I think it was a roof rack mount.  Was that sign meant for us?”

We found and picked up the roof rack mount and went back to the little clump of bushes.  There was a place to pull off and camp at the lake and so I took the pull-off. Sitting there reading was our old friend, Doug.

“I knew you went to town ’cause I was gettin’ on the ferry you were getting off.  I saw you.  Knew you’d come back so I put up a sign.  Good eyes!”

Doug is 70+, gone camping for a few weeks with just his van – not an RV.  He has the required tent,  Coleman stove, sleeping bag. Bit of food.   He gets water from and bathes in the lakes and streams.  Everything is minimalist but in order and clean.  He’ll forage about for berries and stuff.  He is headed up island before returning for a visit.  Definitely a character…’who puts a very small sign on a bush in the forest and expects it to be seen?’

B and L were on their way up to us for a pre-arranged weekend stay.  He was the reader who offered to bring me welding stuff.  He knows how to weld.  After a lesson or two and a couple of days at it, I do too.  Kinda.  Just little, hobby-boy welding but that’s fine.  I intend no further advancement than hobby-boy and maybe a bit of Honey-do level welding.  Small jobs for sure.

So, the summer is here.  Officially or not.  Using dates or not, summer is here.  For us, the season starts with the first guests and, even tho we have had visitors already, it is the first overnight guest that marks the beginning of the silly season.  B & L were good harbingers of that.  They are goofy as Hell. Doug had a shot at it but he’ll be #2.  Otherwise he had all the qualifications.  Silliness up the ying yang.  But fun.

And so the madness begins…..