The end of the W & J Camping season for 007!!

The Blair Snowman Project!

To close out our season of camping with the W's we headed back out to Beaver Flat's for the last weekend in August. You can certainly tell that summer is coming to an end, it was substantially cooler, the river lower and much more green than blue, a lack of both mosquitoes :) & Dragon Flies :( and an infestation of aphids! ewwwwwwww! Poor BeaverW's marshmallows and hot chocolate looked like they were covered in chocolate shavings.......

As always the kids could not wait to get down to the river to throw rocks as soon as an adult was available to take them. Pleasantly despite having campsites much farther into the "walk in" area we were all set up quite quickly. MommyW and I assume this is because we set up the tents and such while the Daddies "schlepped" things from the cars.

It should be noted that it is rather a miracle that none of the three kids were hit in the head with an "astray" aka sideways flying rock from one of the other two!

In an intensely "interesting/head shaking/ bizarre" turn of events while sitting around on the almost .75km long stretch of rocky river front we were "joined" by a group of three families. Each family had several children, dogs and arguing spouses. Impressively despite all of the space on the river front they set up less than 30cm, yes centimetres away from us. It was one of those moments where you want to start looking for the candid camera because it was so bizarre! After several attempts to drown one of the dogs, nearly loosing small children down the river, and rocks being launched at our crew they departed for their tents!

The funniest part was as all of the adults were absolutely silent for a full minute after the group departed. Each one of use was trying to decide how to phrase the bizarreness of the whole encounter. There was a lot of arm waving at the other .7km of space around us and stuttering to find the words to explain the oddness of it all.

The Windblown Sleep Deprived from the "Vegas Adventure" MommyW

MommyW and DaddyJ offering support to DaddyW while he grilled the evenings supper of hamburgers! Given how much smoke we produced I am very thankful we did not BBQ them in the sites as I am sure every bear in Kananaskis country would have mistaken us for sausages in our sleeping bags!

Somehow there is always a lot of finger pointing whenever a "rude" noise escapes one of the boys! Given the laughter of DaddyW I do believe that he was the actual culprit!

Saturday

The morning began in a warm sunny late sleeping fashion for most of us. I do seem to recall that the the Daddies experienced a "great chill" early in the morning and managed to "warm things up" fairly quickly after that! LOL

After a breakfast of "Breakfast burritos"~ crumbled sausage & bacon, potatoes & peppers, scrambled eggs, salsa, sour cream and tortillas we were off and running to the river for some fun. Well some of us were off to the river while the forgetful MommyJ made a run into town for medication, toothbrushes & contact lens gear with the help of MommyW. We even managed to expand the JFamily's camping supplies with roasting sticks in Bragg Creek along the way.

Why did the man & three children cross the river?

To see what was on the other side of course! (I'm not sure DaddyJ's legs have recovered yet!)
The Daddies trying to warm things up as the temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and the rain clouds came with force!
The famous DaddyJ cranky look!

MommyJ knitting MommyW a hat to keep her warm! I am pleased to report that the hat was complete in time for sleeping in the pouring rain later that evening.

Saturday later afternoon's great cooling off.....

Beaver Buddies showing off their stones!

Hanging of the Tarps to protect us from the rain!

The Fine Beaver Leaders show us their "Can Do" attitude

The little Beavers make use of the tarp & fire wood to construct toy car race courses

Shortly after dinner the rain started to pour down with an impressive force. Thankfully our tummies were full of Chicken/Steak/Hot Dogs, baked potatoes, noodles, smores, hot chocolate & coffee. This would tide us all over until we were packed up in the pouring rain on Sunday and back into the city. It was not until Tuesday that the rain stopped long enough for either family to pop up the tents to air, tarps to dry or shoes to stop making that lovely squishing sound.

Despite some of the more interesting things that happened on this camping trip I think that we all had a great time. I can not wait to do it again next year!

Hugs and Best wishes for great adventures,

MommyJ

Lake Louise Day Trip August 07, 2007

Unfortunately this weeks MidWeek Mommy Camping Adventure was changed into a day trip due to impending rain from Calgary North to Jasper all the way East to Drumheller and warnings of the intensity of the smoke in Waterton National Park.

Now this MommyJ is just not into camping in the rain with two small children so call me crazy but a day trip seemed much more manageable.

Pit stopping at one of those photographic lookouts, Beaver & Baby J are posed with the Sawtooth Mountain (of the famous 1993 prescribed burn) in the background above and Castle Mountain below.

We headed out to Lake Louise to visit the beautiful lake, have a picnic lunch and enjoy someplace new. Well it turned out that everyone had the idea to stop in Lake Louise on the same day as it was packed with tourists.

Wisely I decided that if we ate at the hotel we could take advantage of their valet parking or parkade! I tell you after spending 15 harrowing minutes behind rental motor homes, people who have rental cars and are used to driving on the other side of the road (I certainly know how hard that can be after the Bahamas), and irritated people who just wanted to get out the car it was the best $15 I have spent in a long time!

We headed into the hotel only to find the line for high tea to be snaking around the lobby! Well no matter from previous trips we know that there is another lovely restaurant looking out onto the lake on the lower floor. We were off and running to the Victoria Room Restaurant for a lovely lunch. The children shared a fruit plate and pizza while I had a prosciutto and cheddar panini with a glass of wine which turned into a swimming pool for a fly reminiscent of the Alanis Morrissette song “Ironic”. Imagine how entertained the children were by the drunken fly swimming in my wine glass!

Our service while at the hotel was outstanding, the valet made the children feel like royalty opening their doors, the waitresses all came over to chat with the children and my wine glass was wisked off like it had ebola and replaced in the blink of an eye! What a lovely way to spend a few hours, I recommend it very highly.

BabyJ laughing and BeaverJ enjoying the scenery outside of the doors we are sitting next to!
The children in front of the famous Chateau Lake Louise Hotel
The often photographed Lake Louise not looking as spectacular on a cloudy day as usual but still fantastic in it's own right...

After a lovely little walk we decided to head off to Banff for some Ice Cream from the Cows shop and a pit stop at MommyShop as it is lovingly know. Blessedly the children fell asleep shortly outside of Lake Louise and I was able to take a more scenic less congested by road construction road along the BowValley Parkway. This proved invaluable several times, I was able to tour through some new campsites for possible get always including Castle Mountain and Johnson Canyon.

Of course because both children were asleep I came across wildlife along the road side including the below captured on film forever Big Horn Sheep. As you can see he was close enough to the road to get an excellent picture as this is a one way road and there was no other traffic behind me.

After a quick stop in Banff we headed back to our much loved Centennial Playground in Canmore for our picnic dinner and some quality playing. What a wonderful way to breakup the drive back to Calgary. While we would have loved to have been camping while doing all of these fun things when I awoke this morning to rain falling to hard it sounded like hail I was intensely thankful to be snug as bug in the house not a tent!

Best Wishes for your own adventures,
The J Crew

MidWeek Mommy Camping Part2 aka The Mosquitos carried away BabyJ

July 24, 25 & 26 were spent camping at the

Three Sisters Campground just outside of Canmore Alberta!

Okay so it is my goal to actually register our site in 28 minutes flat one of these times. It always seems that with two little "HELPERS" it can take a very long time to get the tent and chairs laid out on our site. It also might help if I were able to pick the camp site in the first go not the third! http://www.bowvalleycampgrounds.com/b-valley/cgrounds.html

I love these signs, they are great for reinforcing the message to children about being tidy, putting away all the food and walking to the garbage often. Pleasantly despite the hot hot weather there have not yet been any bear sightings around this campsite so we were not to worried.

Tuesday we arrived in the mid-afternoon and after only two drives around the site found our ideal campsite. First I set up the requisite "Helper Distracters" like the MiniTent for placing assorted stuffies camping tents, hot wheels, books etc, the horseshoes and then the soccer net. After a week of soccer camp BeaverJ was keen to show off some of his new skills.

This always keeps them happy until I take out the rubber mallet to drive the tent stakes into the ground. What could be more fun to do than to try and make off with the rubber mallet to bonk your sibling, after all they run in terror, Mommy turns a funny colour and runs really quickly!

It turned out that they would be a great help when I realized I could turn the tent on the ground sheet to achieve a larger area for our shoes and the excessive amount of personal space a 2 & 5 year old need to get their shoes on while sleepy in the middle of the night! It turns out that they are fantastic at caring things by quarter turns from all of the "Parachute time at Gymboree". As a reward for their truly helpful help I broke out Red Crystal Light!

Veiw through the trees from our site

The beginnings of the worlds longest to light fire. I was sorely disappointed to have spent all of the effort fanning the flames when our neighbouring campers brought out the lighter fuel and had their campfire roaring in seconds.... Good thing DaddyJ(aka PyroBozo1) was not present!

Some evening shots of the Bow River

I have found the people are very nice when you are camping, especially if you are camping alone with two small children. On this evening's adventure I realized I had some very smelly garbage that I did not want to store in the car overnight for fear of oozing, so naturally I popped over to the neighbours to ask if they would mind cloths-lining the kids should they wake up and exit the tent while I literally ran the garbage to the big bin.Interestingly the neighbours had a huge bottle of GlenSomeone on their table and a cooler full of ice which they were sharing with the neighbour on the river next to the above pictures. So they are all chatting away in such a friendly manner that you feel like all is well in the world. Perhaps it is because camping is like being on your front porch, you watch the world, smile at strangers and are relaxed enough to think the best of people.When I mention that I need to leave my site and children unattended for a minute and would they mind keeping an eye out for pop-out children everyone starts talking at once. The Lovely grandmotherly lady of the GlenSomeone bottle tells me that the kids are so wonderful, "they are like little dumplings" a particularly cute comment since both are small but slim. The mans who's site they are sitting at offers to take the garbage out for me and they all want to know if there is anything else they can do to help. Ahhh I love the comradery of it all....

Wednesday

Wednesday morning we woke up to an alarming number of mosquitoes on the tent. It was as if they were all hovering waiting to see who could suck our blood first! There is nothing like one hundred mosquitoes swarming you to make you hustle through breakfast. After breakfast we headed out for a walk on the campground trail along the Bow River where the kids enjoyed floating some dry wood and throwing rocks into the rapidly moving water. After that we were off to Canmore....

Eating breakfast

Contemplating the tree sap, its affect on the soccer ball,
what happens to sap if you poke it with a stick etc....

While this campground lacks the dry slow riverbed areas of Beaver Flat, it does make up with some spectacular mountain views.

Off on an Adventure walk

The requisite nature photos after years of visiting the night time Ampitheater Edutainment

The Bow River

By this point I was seriously considering buying the 27% DEET not for children under 12 as the possibility of blood poisoning, neurological issues etc just to save our little bits of exposed skin! In the end coming into town was fantastic as there were almost no mosquitoes to be seen and more importantly it reset the mosquito irritation meter.

As always while visiting Canmore the three of us did our two most favourite activities; having lunch at the Grizzly Paw our all time favourite family restaurant The Grizzly Paw http://www.thegrizzlypaw.com/ and going to the Centennial Playground for a few hours of fun. This made for several hours of fun at the park...which led to a trip to Knit and Caboodle for some Baby Alpaca for mitten knitting http://www.knitandcaboodle.ca/

Peek-a-boo BabyJ

The Great Slide Caper began with BeaverJ teaching BabyJ to build up momentum before flinging yourself down the slide! Thankfully both are so grungy from sunscreen and bug spray that they can not get going too fast.






Wednesday evening we had the pleasure of having our wood carried into the site and stacked by the very nice Bow Valley Campground caretaker, a visit from our new neighbour to chat with the kids and generally be sociable. Ironically a single young male elicits less friendliness from me than elderly couples, despite how sweet he was with the kids. The next morning I felt badly that I had not been more friendly ... That evening I sat around the fire watching all of the evening stars arrive like little fireworks.

Thursday

Thursday morning we all slept in very late. It was time to have a little bit of breakfast, head out for another walk and pack up the site. Hilariously there were already people hovering for our campsite!
Okay now for those of you how do not know, I am the WORLD'S Coldest Camper, I must sleep with a winter hat on pulled down to my nose and the blankets pulled up to my mouth. Needless to say this has prompted the children to sleep with their hand knit winter hats on despite being tiny little infernos who wiggle out of their sleeping bags they are so hot. As you can imagine in the mornings when people walk past our camp site and se the three of us walking around in out winter hats it sparks a little curiosity. Never Fear soon I will be sleeping with some lovely new baby alpaca violet mittens too LOL

Best Wishes for your own Camping Adventures from

The Toque & Polar Fleece Crew