"Camping"

In Alberta the May long weekend signals the start of summer. While people on the west coast have been cutting their lawns since mid February, those of us here in the "real Canada" generally can't even put our snow tires away until the beginning of June. In fact while the May long weekend here in Calgary eschews in the start of the warm month(s), it is also synonymous with snow. Typically on May long Calgarians take to the mountains and campsites in droves, eager to get the Coleman gear out of hibernation and put it to use. This year we avoided snow while camping but as I sit writing this the snow is accumulating steadily outside.

Last year we bought a travel trailer to take camping. I'm not actually sure you can call it camping when you have an air conditioner, a furnace and hot and cold running water right at your fingertips. To avoid confusion and for the purpose of this post I will call it camping but don't be picturing a small tent and freeze dried meals. Anyway, our foray into camping last year was largely successful and a great hit with the kids, so we are hoping to have a repeat performance this season.

We got our trailer out of storage a few weeks ago and got it all stocked up and ready to head out. For the May long weekend we had booked a site at Mount Kidd in Kananaskis Country with our neighbors and their friends. We all have travel trailers so we decided to rent one of those large double sites in the hope that we could fit 3 trailers on it. Penny and Nancy planned well and the sites were plenty big enough. We were all a little rusty with the setup but by 11:30 pm on the first night we were all set up on our site for the weekend.

We awoke to sun and wind on our first day with the temperature hovering in the high single digits. The wind was cold and made activity outside difficult but the kids braved the low temperatures for a few hours during the day to play outside with sticks and rocks. Having a total of 7 kids there was great. They entertained themselves and each other and always seemed to be doing something that involved dirt. Saturday, Sunday and Monday were much warmer and the kids spent the better part of each day outside. They would habitually retire to one of the trailers in the mid afternoon to watch a movie on someones laptop but even that didn't keep them inside for long. The kids spent lots of time on their bikes, launched some model rockets and took turns with some remote control cars. They basically only came back to the site when they needed food.
All things considered, the weekend was a great success and a reasonable start to the season despite some minor setbacks (we ran out of propane on the last night, our friends had a dead truck battery when they went to leave and the other friends had their departure delayed when their slide out wouldn't close). We are looking forward to a great camping season and perhaps some warmer weather in the months to come.

In other news, playground construction has begun on a $250k playground in the park behind us. The weather is terrible but construction seems to be proceeding well. I still haven't got a date for surgery yet and with every day that passes the likelihood of getting it done on the 8th of June as I'd hoped seems less and less likely. I'll keep you all posted when I get a date.