Heavy rains first thing in the morning, but it cleared by the time we pulled out. I dropped Dale off at Nancy’s workplace, as they were going up together, then we were off. The winds were crazy though, which made for a challenging drive. Almost at the park, the skies opened and the rain pounded down. I waited out the worst of it in the Ranger station, having a nice chat with the couple of Rangers on duty. This did though give me the opportunity to see the effect of the new second set of tail lights. The Alto was parked about 50 yards away, and through the dark pouring rain, the lights were a lot more noticeable.
By the time I got to the site, it was well flooded. There was a little island off to the side, and this is where I placed the camper. It was certainly one of those wet messy setups. Dale and the girls arrived shortly after, so I dropped off her gear, then Barley and I settled in for the evening.
A tornado had touched down in the west end off Ottawa, a couple of hours after this storm had blown through. It then crossed the river and hit Gatineau. There was a lot of damage, and widespread power outages. I texted our neighbours to see how things were downtown, and other than no power, all was OK. It’s a weird feeling being away when something like this happens to your hometown, one feels very out of touch, and that is a little unsettling. The havoc these storms cause can be devastating, and this one actually paled compared to something on the scale of Hurricane Flo. Still devastating enough though, when your roof is over in the neighbours yard.
The high winds here caused the power to go out in the park later in the evening, but given that we run mostly off the 12 volt, at least we still had some lights.
Cool overnight, and I was awoken in the morning by a tapping on the window. Dale had come over to get the camp stove, as the cottage had no power, and the girls were needing their morning coffee. It was one of a few little visits I had over the weekend, various odds and sods making their way over to them to keep things on track.
I had a couple new toys to test out, and this was a perfect weekend. The first was the Weboost cellular amplifier. I set up the antenna, ran the cable inside, connected it all up, then did some speed tests. I use the iPhone as a hotspot, and ran an Okkla test. Without the booster, I was getting a download speed of 4.57 Mbs/sec. A second similar test yielded a speed of 5.07.
On went the booster, and the iPhone went from one to three bars of signal, but this is not the real test. The first boosted test yielded a download speed of 15.1 Mbs/sec. the next test showed 17.8. This was a huge improvement! Although the results will always vary from location to location, actually seeing the booster improve the speeds goes a long way to validating a rather hefty purchase. The other little tidbit I checked was how much power does it draw. According to the Trimetric, the load of the booster is 0.64 amp/hr. This is quite reasonable in my mind, given that it will probably not be on that much during a given day to amount to a noticeable drain on the battery.
The other cool gadget was a GoPro. A Hero 4 to be exact, which belonged to my nephew Sean. As his blog is heavy on video content, he found he needed to improve the camera he used, and settled on a very sweet Sony RX-100V. The GoPro became redundant, so he asked me if I was interested. A deal was made, and the GoPro soon had a new home.
Being relatively unfamiliar with videography, I spent some time understanding the various settings and how it worked. I then started to play with it, and soon became hooked. The thing that really catches me about the GoPro is the field of view it has. I have always preferred wide angle views in my still photography, so this ultra wide angle view was right up my alley. A little fiddling with the exposure compensation for the various modes, and it was soon giving me the deep saturated colours that I enjoy seeing.
This thing is a lot of fun! Not only from a video perspective, but also the fact that it can shoot stills, and I have yet to even scratch the surface of the time lapse modes. Really looking forward to more adventures with this little guy.
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| love the ultra wide...and the sharpness is not too shabby at all |
Cooked myself up a nice rib steak, with a side of potatoes and onions for dinner. All of this was cooked on the Travel Q, using a grill mat. The mat does a fine job of grilling and browning up the potatoes and onions. You do need to be a little careful moving the loose pieces around, but the results are worth it.
The power remained off, so I really warmed up the Alto before turning in, pulling the duvet up tight around me and Barley. Although he is covered with fur, he still likes to be super warm. Sure enough, the inside temp overnight hit 43F overnight. The furnace took the chill off quickly, as did the nice hot coffee that was the first order of morning business.
More rain was supposed to head in, and I was glad to see Dale wandered over a short time later. The other girls had just pulled out, so we loaded up the kayaks and her gear, and hit the road as well.
Another great weekend, both for the girls, and Barley and I!
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