What a difference a day makes!

Four nights were spent camped in a popular (obviously) random camping area on Abraham lake, west of Nordegg, Ab.

My friends and I had arrived on Thursday night, and secured an excellent spot overlooking the lake, and shared it with a scattered group of others.

But by Saturday and Sunday nights, all the yahoos in Rocky Mountain House or Red Deer had arrived, so we were treated to non-stop musical entertainment (!), fireworks, and occasional demonstrations of burning u-turns in the gravel. That said, we were somewhat removed from them and among quieter company, and ear plugs to sleep were at least optional. Weather was mostly warm and sunny, with occasional showers to cool off the partiers, who were all in tents.

On Monday morning however, it all came to an end. Everyone packed up and left. And ‘left’ they did. In spite of a few charges laid by the Forestry officer who visited that morning, the amount of garbage and trash left laying around was disgusting. There were tents, tarps, shoes, clothing, cans and bottles galore, fireworks, food, sleeping bags, you name it. I hope the court sends them back to clean it up.

Shortly after peace and quiet returned, I noticed that I had some ‘local’ company. A black bear had come down the roadside feeding on berries, when he noticed that there was an awful lot of enticing odors coming from the recently vacated garbage filled campsites. Soon he was spreading out even the garbage and cans that had been bagged by the slobs, and helping himself to any morsels he could find. He was still a very shy, wild bear, but a few more rewards like that and he may become a problem or hazard to the next campers who come along.

During the few days here, we toured around a bit, checking out the area near the Bighorn dam. It is open to ATV’ers and was packed with every imaginable camping unit, and all types of atv’s were constantly roaring around creating a dust storm throughout. We were glad we were not camped with that bunch!

There is a metal teepee and plaque near the dam that was placed when the dam was constructed.

Some of our less, umm, experienced neighbours created a few problems for themselves. one guy with a big 1 ton pickup had gotten it stuck right down at water’s edge in the deep, loose gravel and rock. Let’s say there is no way to get there ‘accidentally’. He came seeking assistance, and much to my surprise, my buddy had 2-300 feet of cable and rope in his truck and was able to pull the other guy out, without getting his own truck off solid ground.

Another guy came by wanting to borrow some booster cables. Apparently he and his companions came with enough music and booze to last the weekend, but with not thought to any other necessities. City boys, I would guess? Played his stereo too long and killed his battery.

We also took a drive down to Nordegg one day and found the one gas station in town doing a roaring business, with trucks lined up in both directions for the pumps. All pickups, too; hardly a car or an SUV in sight! We also checked out the very nice provincial recreation area and campground at Crescent Falls. We found the price for camping there very steep at $27 with no services. But the campground is very nice with lots of room and trees between the sites, and most along the river’s edge.

Big surprise this time. After I had set up my satellite internet dish

and was online, I discovered that I had full 5 bars of coverage on my Roger’s iPhone!

Lets say that in my experience, Roger’s does not have the best coverage in small towns anywhere (none at all in the Yukon, even in the capitol of Whitehorse!). And this area hardly even qualifies as ‘small town’ area. It is definitely verging on wilderness – except on long weekends. I checked online and with my binoculars, I could even see the forest of towers on a distant mountain – one of which boasted Roger’s I guess.

As usual, Hailey had a great time camping, both inside the fifth wheel and outside chasing butterflies in the sunshine, and rolling pebbles down the steep bank toward the lake. I even had to let out the harness a little bit as she is certainly changing from a wee kitten into a small cat! On Monday, after the crowds had left, I had planned to head out to my place near Sundre and ride the mower for a few hours. Regular rain showers dampened that plan, so I just stayed put and enjoyed the solitude. Today I hope to head that direction, and pick up the rig on the way home.

Only a few more weeks or months of this returning to work habit, and I will be able to travel full time and perhaps even blog a bit more regularly!

Weekend RoadTrip

I had a few days off over the weekend and an invitation to meet with some friends down near Cranbrook, BC at the St. Mary’s River B&B, a brand-new facility run by friends Doug and Dale Martin.

It is located in a wonderfully scenic spot on the banks of the St. Mary’s river in Wycliffe. 

We spent a couple of days visiting and catching up on the news, while enjoying a pig roasted on a spit, and a few cool beverages. 

The weather was perfect for the get-together and it was good to catch up with old friends. 

They had a lot of friends and relatives visiting, so I was happy to stay out in the camper with Hailey, the travelling kitten.

Afterwards, I checked out my backroads mapbooks, and decided on a route leading west from Kimberley, to Grays Creek, on the southern end of Kootenay Lake.

After dropping other friends off at the airport in Cranbrook  so they could fly their light plane back to Calgary, I headed out under some threatening skies.

 

There was some short-lived heavy rain and some hail to dampen the dust, but it cleared nicely for most of the trip.

Near the far end of the road, I had no sooner passed a fellow stopped on the roadside with a very flat tire – when I had one of my own!

My truck alerted me to a low tire on the right rear, so I jumped out for a look and it was going down so fast that I hardly had a chance to pick a safer flatter spot to answer the big question!  The big question was whether or not I could get access to the spare tire with the camper on and the tailgate down?  After waiting out yet another rain shower, (and reading the directions), I found out that I could indeed get the spare off, though I had to use a small wrench to spin the tire-lowering rod instead of the tire iron.

After that minor excitement I rolled in to Crawford Bay, where the free ferry across the lake is billed as the ‘longest free ferry crossing in the world’.  The small town was absolutely packed with people as they were hosting the Starbelly Jam Music Festival! It was about to end, so the lineups at the ferry terminal were hours long instead of minutes.  But I was in no particular rush, so in due time we were aboard for the 40 minute crossing on the ‘MV Osprey 2000’

I was impressed that my Tomtom GPS unit kept on course, even while on the ferry!

A nice lake view camp spot was located on the far shore in time to watch an impressive show of lightning across the lake. 

In the morning, a tire repair shop in Nelson patched the flat tire and put the spare back in place.

 

From there the route was northbound through Slocan into Nakusp, where another music festival was just over, threatening more huge ferry lineups across Arrow Lake into Revelstoke.  Fortunately, I found a backwoods hotspring to soak for a while until the lineups had somewhat died down.

It was good to get back into the truck camper again after spending my last few months on the road last spring in the 5th wheel.

Plans are to head out to another lake to join other friends next weekend, this time back in the fifth wheel!

It’s looking like sometime before this year is out, I will be free to finally start travelling full-time, without interruptions to go back to work.  Really looking forward to that, I must say!

Till then, keep on reading!

Hard at Work!

Who would know a month would pass before I got around to another post.  I think it was perhaps seeing Wandering Willy posting again that spurred me into action!  Of course he has been off the air a lot longer than I, but it is good to see him on the road again.

Meanwhile, I have been working full time again, and been trying to move more of my stuff to my post-work location.

Overtime this summer has been good so far, so I don’t mind working for a while, but I’m getting itchy feet to get back on the road again and see some new sights.  I managed to get out on a couple weekend expeditions, but they will have to wait for the next post.

Most of my work involves grizzly bears at this time of year.  Early one morning I had a call about a sow grizzly and two cubs near a local resort on the lakeshore.  I got there a bit too late to see the bears, but I was not far behind them as I tracked them down a shoreline trail.  They had stopped for a drink, then continued on leaving wet footprints on the trail!

Later on, one of the helicopters we use had a slight ‘incident’, and it was decided to haul it to helicopter hospital for a precautionary check-up.  I have flown on this machine many times, but have never seen it in the air without a pilot before.  Or, without any blades, which were taken off to facilitate the move.  

The next incident involved both bears and helicopters.  One of our unruly bears discovered that he (or she) could break into facilities in the backcountry and get a feed of oats and other horse feed.  So we had to fly in to check and repair several of these locations – and install electric fencing to reduce the likelihood of recurrence.  (we used a different helicopter)

 

The bear was quite intent on getting in, and spent a lot of time and energy doing so, in spite of some doors and windows being lined with sharp nail points as a deterrent. It left some nice muddy paw prints all over the walls.

I guess this is the sign of a bad day if you are a long-haul trucker?  I came across this scene last week along the Trans Canada Highway.  I’m not sure what the cause of the blaze was, but it may have been as a result of overheating from a long hill climb.

   

These deer bucks thought they were hiding from me, but I guess they had forgotten that they had grown some new antlers this summer!  They’ll have to go to deer-stealth summer school I guess ;-).