It was already September and we had only camped for those two measly nights back in late June. Part of the problem was that Isy didn't benefit from the pandemic in terms of eliminating her commute or no longer having to report to a physical office, but instead her responsibilities actually grew, leaving us little time to get away.

I wasn't sitting around like a petulant child since I can camp on my own, but I still wanted to camp together and we were going to make it happen.

It may have been simpler to go to one of the great stealth camping spots I know nearby, but I'd also just learned about an abandoned cadets camp. Sure, the camp was 3.5 hours away, but I could take care of getting all the camping gear together/packing the car/wrangling the dog; which would save time and afford us the window to do seven hours of driving for one night of camping.

As the weekend approached, I was pretty excited with spending the time and money to go see something that may not be hugely remarkable, but which I would have just missed if I was at all concerned with excess amounts of driving.

Pulling on to a side street in the town of Glenwood, we quickly reached the part where the residential street turns into a woods road, but then it quickly turned into a road somewhere between a rough woods road and a quad trail. Working to avoid the alders from scraping the side of my car, I also had to pay attention to the murky puddles and tire ruts that could be hiding gas tank-puncturing rocks. Isy was concerned but her back seat driving also wasn't helping, so she buried her head in her phone to avoid having to watch the risks I was taking to push us down this sketchy track.

Finally, mercifully, as the GPS showed us almost right on top of the coordinates, did I finally find a promising break in the trees, where I got out of the car to scout and found a rough driveway down to a fine grassy clearing. The worry of driving that same road to get out of here was tomorrow's worry.

Except that the jig seemed to be up in record time, as a beat-up truck pulled in right after us. It's hard to tell in Newfoundland sometimes as abandoned places can be totally forgotten right under people's noses, or they can be the spot that all the locals take over and put up their campers and blast loud country music into the night.

The two gentlemen stepped out of the car, while I avoided pulling out our giant tent or camp chairs, strategizing to make it look like we were just stopping for a minute. As it turns out, they were nearby taking down some trees for firewood when they saw us pull in, leading them to wonder what we were up to. Once they found out we were just here putting up a tent for the night, they had satisfied their curiousity and were gone as quickly as they had come.

The next concern for me was the ransacked food all over the broken front porch. Since there's occasional news stories from Glovertown of marauding black bear invasions, I generally use that as my barometer of where we may encounter any unwanted ursine visitors.

This was relatively close to Glovertown so my guard was up, but it also seemed like the condiments and crackers were already pretty well picked over.

Stepping inside, it seemed like this place might've seen some human ransacking as well.

There were a total of six buildings here at the cadets camp, all constructed in either the 1980s or the 1990s.

These cadets belong to the army town of Gander and would come out here to practice boating safety as well as wilderness survival.

The only news article I can find pertaining to this place comes from an online auction in 2017. That auction was held to buy a couple of marksmen’s jackets for the cadets, but also to help cover an additional $15,000 in renovation costs that this camp was facing following ongoing renovations that fall.

With the online auction no longer existing on facebook, I have no way of knowing whether they met their goal, but I wouldn't think coming up a bit short of $15,000 was the reason this place went to ruin.

(Even if the auction was a bit quaint in the way it advertised DVDs and toasters as auction items.)

No, my best guess would be vandals came along and did enough damage that there just wasn't any coming back. With a camp trying to raise a minor amount of money like $15,000, if the leaders came in one day and found this place totally decimated by hooligans, they could have simply given up.

I'm speculating though. If only the b'ys cutting firewood would come back, I could ask them, lol.

Knowing how much I enjoy abandoned buildings, Isy told me to go explore while she broke camp. The only problem was that I had to take the dog, which hindered making my way across rotting porches.

This yellow building was pretty empty though, so I saved the headache of tying the dog off to some alders in order to climb inside.

Instead, I wrestled with him as I tried to stick my camera inside for a quick capture.

Heading back down from the yellow building, it was apparent that this cadet camp would make a fine lakeside camp spot. No one else had come along since the firewood guys, and we had only seen one boat wayyyy across the water, minding their own business.

We had this peaceful and idyllic piece of land all to ourselves and this was doing a lot of work to uplift what had been a light camping year.

Isy was pretty tired from her hectic life of late, so she burned very little of the midnight oil. I on the other hand, burned all of the midnight oil and also all of the driftwood within 30 feet.

Expanding my circle to grab some driftwood 35 feet away, I could hear yelling coming from the tent and couldn't see any bears anywhere. Rushing back, Isy hollered about the tent being on fire, but it was only that she was seeing the flames leap higher than the tent itself and her confusion with waking up to such a scene.

Of course the tent wasn't on fire and it was just me getting a little loose with the woodpile I was burning, haha. We were out here by ourselves anyway and I couldn't see any reason not to have a rocking bonfire. Now some may say that "the bonfire is only 15 feet from a tent with my sleeping girlfriend" is a reason not to have a rocking bonfire, but pfft.

Waking the next morning, I discovered that I'd forgot my car window down and salami inside. And this is after we proactively moved our tent away from the building to stay away from any curious bears. Whoops!

Closing the car back up, I went for another run through the buildings, but there wasn't all that much to them that I'd missed.

This whole location was a 2-for-1 special since we were also down a woods road at some obscure cove, allowing me to walk down the beach and check out country that's off-the-beaten path.

I would have liked to explore even further down the shore, but that's the eternal conundrum - whether to go to bed for an early wander, or to stay up building an imposing bonfire.

Along the beach there was this small structure that I figured I should check out, since you never know what's to be found hidden inside.

Turns out this is the boat house!

Definitely worth walking up off the beach and through a bit of goldenrod.

All of these buildings have since been demolished and I can't help but wonder if that old boat was simply broke up with an excavator, just like this boat house must've been.

But yeah, even though the buildings are gone, I still loved this cove and occasionally ponder coming back to camp here even without any abandoned structures.

Back at the tent, there was one last order of business as September is usually the month where I swim the most, on account of suddenly realizing the summer is getting away from me.

The waters of Gander Lake were a bit chilly, but I was happy I forced myself to go for a dip.

There was only time for a quick stop this morning and it involved the Appleton Town Hall and needing to ask inside about some local history. Sure enough, without much time to spare, the woman in front of me went on a 20 minute rant about how it's ridiculous that the town makes her take her garbage cans back from the road after garbage collection (instead of just leaving the cans out there all week). The lady at the town hall couldn't do anything for her and clearly wasn't being paid enough to be this woman's personal void to yell into. I stared at the back of her head and thought about how life had brought me to this point.

Anyway, since we were already in Appleton, I figured Isy might want to see one of the twisted beams from the Twin Towers. I sort of always meant to stop and check it out as well.

Why is there a beam from the Twin Towers in Appleton Newfoundland you may ask? Well, Appleton played a role after the U.S. closed its airspace during the 9/11 attacks and forced 37 planes to land in nearby Gander. Some of those displaced travellers would have stayed here in Appleton, while Appleton residents also helped out over in Gander.

Next to a wood boat and beside a gazebo on a pleasant sunny day, this was sort of a strange spot to reflect on 9/11, so the two of us offered a few short remarks, then got back in the car for the 3.5-hour drive home.