. . .Continued.
Part II : Charlottetown
I woke up with a pounding headache, trying to gather supplies for camping at Cavendish Beach Country Music Festival. On the way to downtown, I grabbed a loaf of fresh bread and an ice coffee from Receivers Coffee Co. I picked up some handcrafted souvenirs–a wooden carving of a lighthouse, painted turquoise with P.E.I. written on the side and a kitchen towel with a mermaid for my Mom. I treated myself to a bar of goat’s milk soap with anise.
Hoping to recover some electrolytes, I stopped at the health food store and stocked up on coconut water for my current and future hangovers. To continue my buzz, I loaded up on Charlottetown’s Gahan House blueberry beer (the best) and a bottle of vodka.
Weighted down with my new treasures, I waddled back to the hostel. I don’t exactly pack light but Jonni was worse. She arrived only half an hour late and her car was already overflowing. I had accumulated a few more bags since arriving the previous day but we managed to cram all of my stuff in the trunk too.
Road Trip
On to our girls road trip!
While driving, Jonni received a call over her car speaker from her “boyfriend” Brad. When Jonni had come to visit me in Toronto she claimed they broke up so, I thought when I booked the trip to see her, it would just be like, a girls weekend. When she told me Brad was coming, I told her I was kind of disappointed it wouldn’t be just us. She said she talked to him about bringing some friends to make me feel less like a third wheel.
Well, now Brad was on the phone and he was meeting us at the campsite with no extra friends in tow, so it seemed like it would be just the three of us!
Cavendish Campground
The real benefit to having Brad there was he did a lot of the hard work at the campsite. Setting up the tents was no cakewalk so in the end, he was pretty handy! We had our tent city spread over two campsites with two tents and a screened in gazebo over our picnic table in the middle. As a home away from home, it was pretty cozy.
I have never really embraced camping as an adult, so for me it was great being in nature. I hadn’t been camping since I was a kid and back then I hated it.
Photos by Ruby Wray
This time was different, this time it was magical.
That night we didn’t go to the concert. We were all pretty exhausted from setting up camp. Instead, Jonni taught us the line dance to Billy Ray Cyrus’s song Achy Breaky Heart. The three of us rehearsed until we had it down.
Cavendish Beach Country Music Festival
The next day Jonni was raring to go. We went to Cavendish Beach to start. It was a bit of a drive from the campground, but definitely worth the experience.When you get there you take this long boardwalk bridge to this beautiful view on the water.
We had to go to the concert around 4 pm in order not to miss Billy Ray Cyrus, while the sun was still blazing overhead. Foolishly, I wore my overalls and boots, thinking it would be cooler at night. Before leaving, Brad and I inhaled a few handfuls of mushrooms. Jonni had a few, but I don’t think she had enough to get her high.
It was boiling inside the concert hall, so we ran outside as Cyrus was busting into the first few bars of Achy Breaky Heart. In a row of three we line danced to the rest of the song and it was pretty great. Glad I had come prepared with my moves.
Tripping
Shortly after, the mushrooms hit but I had not really prepared myself for this. I was sweating like crazy! From the outfit, to the drugs and the lack of shade in this open field, I thought I was going to melt like a witch. We finally managed to find a patch of shade and I just laid there in the grass with no will to move. Brad was pretty much with me on that and we were like sitting–high as a kite–ducks.
Jonni ran into some friends and had no qualms about taking off for a while and leaving me with her boyfriend. We were both too high to move so it was pretty clear we weren’t in the mood to socialize. You know when you’re high on mushrooms and can only talk to other people who are high on mushrooms?
Then I got a text from my handsome man from Charlottetown. I totally forgot he was coming to the concert today! I texted back saying I was tripping balls on mushrooms right now, so I couldn’t really talk, but I would be ready to meet up in four hours and to message me when he got there.
Just the thought of seeing him again made me so nervous, I don’t know why. He texted me when he got there but we couldn’t find each other in the large crowd for a few hours. Jonni and Brad kept pressuring me to find him but I told them I wasn’t ready yet. I told them I would find him when the the time is right.
When I found him, my heart started pounding wildly. He has this strange effect on me–I get so nervous before I see him and then the moment I do, he grounds me and I feel instantly calm. We watched the concert together and though I don’t really listen to country, I felt like every love song was about us.
I invited him to stay with us at the campsite for the rest of the weekend, so he joined us on the shuttle bus back to the campground. They don’t want anyone drinking and driving so we all shuffled onto the bus like kids on a field trip. It was a pretty rowdy and raucous bus.
We get to the campground and I have to sign-in my man at the front office and get him an official wristband for the campground. Surprisingly they accept my partner in crime and I feel like a giddy teenager not having to sneak him in.
Mission
The bus lets you off at the entrance and then you have to walk a mile in the dark to your campsite. Ours was one of the furtherest. It’s all the way at the end by the water. Luckily, tonight was a full moon and it’s halo was lighting the path.
I was walking pretty slow because at that point I was pretty much wasted. I had to stop to pee and Jonni and Brad kept walking. My man was holding onto my hands for balance while I went pee, a sweet gesture on his behalf. Then as I was walking away he asked.
“Do you have your phone babe?”
“Yeah, I do,” I replied. He calls it and my phone lights up like a strobe light in the forest because–thankfully I have the hearing impaired setting on–I don’t like noise alerts.
“Omg babe! Thank goodness I have you!” I chuckled. That would have seriously sucked.
So we stumbled towards the campsite, which was another twenty minutes away. Jonni and Brad were long gone so I literally followed the road to the water and magically found the tinkling lights Jonni had hung up in the tree above our campsite.
We had made it.