Wednesday, June 22, 2011

What an incredibly beautiful morning! I think mornings are the best up here. We face east so we get the morning sun. I love to sit outside drinking my morning coffee and watch the shadows from the mountains slowly creep across the valley as the sun sheds its light on the lake. It twinkles on the water like a million tiny diamonds…amazing!

It’s so quiet and peaceful here. The only noise we hear is the occasional sound of tires on the gravel road across the lake. Once in a while a plane or helicopter will fly over…other than that there’s only the sounds of nature. If there’s been rain, we can hear the creeks flowing into the lake…this morning the birds are out in full force enjoying the sunshine and a chipmunk that Oso has cornered in a crevice in our little rock patio is busy chirping at him.

The sun feels so good after all the rain we’ve had. I can’t wait to get out today for a hike or maybe go fishing. We picked up fishing licenses in Canmore the other day and there’s some nice trout in the lake. We had a group of fishermen out for their annual camping trip last week and they caught some nice sized fish. The largest was a nice fat 23 inch trout…it took the trophy in their yearly contest to see who can catch the largest fish. Of course they had boats and we don’t but I’m hopeful we’ll have a nice trout dinner tonight if we fish by the mouth of a creek that flows into the lake. We’ll give it a try anyway.

When we arrived at the campsite there were still patches of snow here and there. The rain washed most of that away though and now the only snow around is what we see trapped in the deep crevices of the mountains. Right across the lake from our campsite, there is a big patch of snow that stretches almost from the top of the mountain to the bottom. There’s a hiking trail that leads up to it so that will make a nice hike one day. There’s another hike I’d like to do that takes about and hour and starts in the campground. It goes up to a huge waterfall in the mountains behind us.

The other day I noticed a woman raking up some stuff on a road that leads north from the campsite. I went to talk to her and it turns out she’s with a group that does dog sledding in the winter. The rest the dogs in the area she was cleaning so there was lots of dog hair and shavings that they put down for the dogs to lay on. The road leads quite a ways north and is another hike I’d like to check out. There is so much to do and see here. Everywhere you look the views are more spectacular than the last. It’s really hard to describe how magnificent it really is.

We’ve seen number of animals…plenty of Rocky Mountain Sheep…a mama and baby trotted through the grassy area between us and the lake yesterday afternoon…the baby was so little yet but had no trouble keeping up with mom. There are lots of mule deer and white tail around…we’ve seen elk and moose by the road as well as bear. One of the women who works at the campsite to the south said she saw a black wolf on her way up one day. She said it was laying by the side of the road and she thought it was hurt…turns out it was fine and was just comfy in that one spot. Tom said it was likely playing wolf…waiting for someone to stop and come see if it was ok and as soon as they reached a hand out to the wolf it would jump up and grab them…ha, ha…I’m not sure the wolves have actually considered baiting humans that way.

Well, I think it’s time to go get something accomplished today…fishing I think…a great way to spend the morning.

spray lake june 20/11

June 20, 2011

Hi again everyone! Well, we’ve had our first week at Spray Lake Campground and it’s been fun and interesting. The week was actually pretty quiet with only a few campers each night, but the weekend got a little crazy when a bunch of kids moved in. They said there were only going to have three tents… Well, upon returning later, they were putting up the fifth tent in one site and the third tent in the other. So we had to deal with that. When we got back to our campsite, the Conservation Officer was there…He’d heard them from across the lake. He went down and read them the riot act and didn’t put up with any bullshit…they calmed down after that and were fine for the rest of the weekend. Everyone wanted firewood since the weather has been so cold so that has kept us busy. Here's a picture of our campsite.

The weather has been rainy and wet as can be so I’m not surprised we haven’t had many campers. This week is forecast to warm up a bit so maybe the weekend will be busier…I expect July 1 weekend to be crazy! Hopefully it will be nice and warm and everyone will enjoy the long weekend.

Here's the truck we get to drive around the campsite...it's a bit of a rough ride on the gravel roads, but we do ok.

The water in the lake is rising steadily…each day it comes a bit closer to our campsite…pretty soon we’ll have beachfront property. There is lots of sign of animals around but we’ve only seen some mule deer in the campsites. It’s just as well as the stories of Grizzlies swimming the lake and coming into the campsite should stay just that way…as stories. We’ve seen lots of animals on the roads to and from Canmore and down towards the Boulton Creek where the main office is. We’re heading there today so we can stock up on supplies and hand in the money collected for the week and have nice long hot showers without having to worry about running out of water!....ah the joys of dry camping! Enjoy the pictures attached…you’ll see one of Oso, the great wild mountain dog of the north, and one of our campsite…it’s very comfy and incredibly beautiful.

Spray Lakes June 2011

June 16/11

Canmore, Alberta

Hi everyone:

I thought it best to simply write one letter to everyone rather than send a dozen different e-mails. First I’d like to say Happy Birthday to Lindsey…love you honey! Hope you had a great day yesterday.

We left Castlegar last Thursday and went as far as Wasa Lake where we camped for three days. It was lucky that we arrived there on Thursday as there was a big triathalon happening that weekend and the park was jammed full by Friday mid morning. Lots of kids and young families… far too many skinny people!!! Some asked us if we were there for the triathalon…we said “no, we’re built for comfort, not for speed”. One morning we were able to drive back past Fort Steele to a place where there were fossil beds. We searched around and found a bunch of fossils…trilobites for the most part. Some really nice ones….I gave a couple of them to the kids in the next campsite and they were thrilled to have them. We stayed there till Sunday and then headed up to Kananaskis.

We arrived at Boulton Creek Campground and they gave us a site to stay in till we were able to talk with the area boss the next day. He told us things had changed a little and gave us a couple options…we could stay with our original plan to work two days in Boulton and three days in Lower Lake, or we could go to Spray Lake and have the campground all to ourselves. We chose Spray Lake!

Spray Lake is farther north than the other campgrounds…in fact it’s only about 15 minutes south of Canmore so it’s nice to be able to run into town when we need to. The road is incredibly rough though and there is a HUGE hill that you need to climb to get up out of Canmore to head toward Spray Lake. We ended up with a flat tire because of the sharp rocks on the road…luckily Tom had one of those plug in things to air it up until we were able to get into town to get it fixed.

The scenery at Spray is unbelievable. The mountains are incredible and the lake, though not full yet, is going to be a wonderful place to cool off this summer…if we ever get summer. The lake is actually a reservoir that gets low in winter and then fills up with run off in the spring. The shore will be about 100 feet from our camping spot when the lake is full…will be nice.

There are animals everywhere…guess they don’t mind the rain. We’ve seen just about everything out there already… bear, elk, deer, moose, osprey and eagles…lots of gophers for Oso to chase!…I saw a lovely big fat black bear on the way down to town this morning. He stopped and looked at me and then shook himself and sent water flying off his coat. A little further down the road was a mother moose and two calves…they didn’t stick around to watch me much but took off into the bush pretty quickly.

There are 50 campsites at Spray, which is just about right for us to deal with. Most of the campsites are pretty “rustic” looking…gravel roads and dirt sites…not as nicely set up as at Boulton Creek or Lower Lake where everything is paved and sites are graveled, but Spray has its own natural beauty. All of the sites are lakeside and have lovely views of the water and mountains.

Our duties at the campsite are pretty minimal…there are three brand new toilet facilities and we need to sweep them and keep the paper full. Other than that, we collect fees and sell firewood. So far, it’s been exceptionally easy as there are no more than 10 campers in the park. I’m sure we’ll have days when it will be full and there will be problems with noise and stuff…we can deal with that too…or the conservation officers will. They are the ones who enforce the rules…our role is to simply give the first warning.

Our site is really pretty with a little rock patio and stairs that lead down to the lake. We’re really comfortable set up where we are even though we are dry camping. They brought us a huge container for water and we have the generator for power so we’re fine. They are bringing us something called a blue tote for sewer so that will be handy too. There’s an extra site right above us for our guests…that means YOU! so if you would like to visit, we’ll definitely have room. Nothing better than free camping! There are tons of hiking trails around the campsites…we see people come in and park in the overflow area and just head up the trails for the day. I expect biking too would be fun, though I’d rather bike on pavement than gravel… there are plenty of mountains to climb, lots of fish in the lake, hundreds of photos to take, and if you get bored, you could always run into Canmore for the day. It’s a trendy little tourist town with all kinds of festivals and stuff happening. There’s some sort of open air market happening today that I’m going to check out later…hopefully the rain will have stopped by then.

I think that’s all I have to tell you at this point…we are having a great time and loving this country. It is truly amazing.