YAY!! First Camping Trip This Year!! June 11 - 14, 2010

Ahhhhhh …. The first camping trip of the year. Bob and I now only camp twice a year, avoiding long weekends and summer in general. We just like our peace and quiet and have been willing to endure rain, snow, and cold in order to have it. Such are the sacrifices of the “shoulder-season camper”. This particular weekend was beautiful, though. It’s always a little iffy when you book on March 1 for camping in June and September, but somehow we managed to have the one nice weekend after a six week stretch of misery in Kananaskis. Well … mostly. But more on that later. For two days, though, we enjoyed clear blue skies and blissfully warm temperatures.

We arrived at Sundance Lodges in the afternoon, happy to be able to set up camp in the sunshine. And set-up we did (we being Bob mostly). One of the challenges was my much cherished new camp kitchen, but Bob did a spectacular job of setting it all up. Once my kitchen is all put together (and it is quite a spectacular kitchen) then I am, as they say, “a happy camper”. For someone who rarely cooks at home anymore, I really seem to love cooking when we camp.

To explain the set-up at Sundance Lodges, the site that we book has a Trapper’s Tent. The Trapper’s Tent is a permanent structure, approx. 300 sq. ft., with a wood floor, three zip-up screen windows, a wooden door, four single beds (two put together to make a double), and a kerosene heater. There is a wooden deck that is covered with an awning and so even in miserable weather, you can sit – warm and dry – and enjoy a meal, a drink, or the fire. The site itself is huge. We are able to drive our car right into it, and there is lots of room for our screen tent and chairs. We are surrounded by woods, and neighbours are only slightly visible.




Key elements of successful "roughing it" ...



There had been numerous bear sightings in the Kananaskis area the week prior to our arrival. The Sales Manager from the Delta Lodge in Kananaskis (with whom I have been doing business) had emailed me a couple of times about bear sightings at their resort. At Sundance Lodges, they did have a visit by a couple of black bears the week before we arrived, but with the campground nearly full, the bears weren’t likely to visit. Still, we observed all the basic safety and sanitation rules for bear-proofing. Wisely so. On a photo-taking walk down by the river, almost directly behind our site, I found this fairly fresh scat. Now, by “fresh”, I don’t mean “steaming fresh”, but fairly fresh. I ended my walk at that point. I did manage to get some pictures by the river, though.

























Saturday was a day of relaxing … doing nothing more strenuous than reading or having a beer. Bob had been working pretty hard and we agreed that a day of blissful nothing was over-due and welcome. I was quite content just to cook – a big breakfast of bacon, sausage, hash browns, eggs, and a hot pot of Tim Horton’s drip coffee. Dinner Saturday evening consisted of lasagne, garlic bread, and for dessert, thinly sliced Pink Lady apples, thinly sliced old white cheddar cheese, and some dulce de leche to dip … and wine. (I am not a weeny-roastin' kinda camper.) We then spent a quiet evening, playing crib and enjoying a wonderful warm fire.

Sunday was a spectacularly beautiful day as well and after a great breakfast of hash browns and an omelette filled with ham, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese … and our coffee, of course … we set off for a day of sight-seeing in Kananaskis Country. We passed so many people on bicycles along the way. Good for them. Making the turn into Peter Lougheed Park, we decided to go in a direction we hadn’t gone before and turned left onto the Kananaskis Lakes Trail and followed it all the way down to, and slightly beyond, the Boulton Creek Campground. We went for a walk along a lovely paved path through the woods, and oh my God, those trees smelled wonderful. We came to an Amphitheatre which is part of the Boulton Creek Campground – we just didn’t know it at the time.

Leaving that area, we decided to drive along the Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail into Canmore. It doesn’t matter how many times we drive that road, we never tire of it. It would be wonderful to drive it someday when there’s not cars climbing up your back bumper and that you could go slowly and make frequent stops for pictures. However, it was a sunny Sunday, so that was not going to be the day. Still, it was lovely, and I did get some pictures. Animal sightings? Two moose, a coyote, numerous gophers, and a big, huge, furry something (Bob suggests maybe a marten). It moved too quickly for me to get a picture, but damn … that thing was big (for a rodent).


The decent into Canmore always is a thrill. You are so high above it and then you slowly twist and turn your way down until you reach the relatively level (and blissfully paved) stretch of road by the Nordic Training Centre. Downtown Canmore was crazy busy as it always is on a sunny Sunday afternoon, so we just picked up dessert and a bottle of wine, and then headed back to the campground to relax for a while before beginning dinner (ribs, beans, coleslaw, buns, and cheesecake for dessert). We had heard the weather report calling for rain the next day – our pack-up day – and so after dinner, we took our kitchen apart and packed that away. DRY. Most of the other campers had left that morning, and so on Sunday evening, it was just Bob and I on our road. There were probably only half a dozen other campers in various places throughout the campground. But for us, it was beautifully quiet … just us, in the woods, with a fire and some wine. Lovely. Here . .. pour yourself a glass of wine, pull up a chair and join us by the fire ...

We awoke in the morning to the sound of wind and rain outside. But we were toasty warm under our comforters, with that wonderful heater warming the tent. We really wanted to stay where we were, warm and content, listening to the rain, but jobs and other responsibilities beckoned, and so, without even making breakfast, we finished packing up, and reluctantly hit the road.

Until September …