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.
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