Camping trip

After a few days at my parents' in Clearwater, we headed off to meet Paul's family for 3 nights of camping in Golden. Golden was chosen because it was fairly central between the folks living in northern Alberta and the rest of us here in the Lower Mainland. It was a nice drive out there. The boys were very well behaved and it didn't seem to take forever to get there. I was a little dismayed when we pulled into Golden to see the crazy amounts of cottonwood seeds flying around. I've never seem so much cotton, and so late in the allergy season. Thankfully, our campsite was sheltered from the cotton and I survived. Cotton doesn't seem to fly around when it's pouring rain either. Win some, lose some.

The first late afternoon and evening was spent setting up my parents tent trailer and getting familiar with the campground. It was right in town which was good and bad. It was super handy to run into town for whatever item we needed, but didn't really feel like we were out enjoying the great outdoors so much. Max and Marty had great fun tagging along with their big cousins, wanting to do everything (and go everywhere) with them. This made things a bit tricky, as far as keeping track of them. We were set up across the lane from the main eating and gathering site, so the boys were back and forth quite a bit. I was too, back and forth to fetch things from the van or tent trailer.

The rain started that first night (Wednesday). All night, and all day on Thursday. Bummer. 3 out of 4 tents got drenched, so Frieda rented a motel room in town. After we all warmed up at the Ramada hotel swimming pool, we hung out in the motel. Paul and I made a quick run to the laundromat and back to the campsite to make dinner. We delivered that back to everyone at the motel. That afternoon Marty seemed to not feel well. He ended up clinging to me all evening. I slept with him on one bed and Paul and Max shared the other bed. That worked out well as Marty wanted to be close to me, make that ... on top of me! ... all night. He obviously had a fever, but I didn't have a thermometer to see how hot he was. Hot enough! All night I kept putting him on the bed beside me, with the blanket off to keep his temp down. Of course he always came back to lay on me and pulled the blanket on. He perked up on Friday, as did the weather. We drove around, exploring the pedestrian bridge and Kicking Horse Resort. (Oh, and the closing out sale at the local Saan store. Woo hoo!) We also took a side dirt road to find a lake. Paul wanted to catch a fish, but there were no signs of fishies there so we kept going up the mountain. The rest of the family took trips up the gondola and explored the mountain. We drove around looking at all the beautiful custom built homes. The sun finally came out in the early evening, so we spent our last evening playing on the grass field at the school next door to the campground.

Did I mention the train tracks across the river from our campsite? Charming, if there was only one passing through. Not there. This seemed to be the spot for loading and off-loading train cars. Many times over, back and forth, back and forth. Kinda noisy echoing off the canyon and across the river. Sometimes during the day, usually around midnight.

We headed home a day earlier than the others as we had to take the tent trailer back to Clearwater and then drive the rest of the way home on Sunday. Overall, the camping experience was ... tiring. It was good to get the whole family together again, but the weather and a sick toddler were major downers. It was also a lot of work keeping track of the boys in such a busy place. Next time we go camping, we want to go somewhere that has something close-by to spend our time doing. Something like a beach. Probably the kind you would find at an ocean. :) We're not really set up for a great camping experience, so we'll have to work on that over the next few years. And the boys will just get older and easier to occupy, making things much easier.