Labor Day Long Weekend

On the Labor Day Long Weekend we once again packed up our trailer and headed out camping.  This is the last kick at the can for most people.  For me, this is the last busy weekend of the summer, after which we get into the really quiet times.  This time around we headed west into the foothills again.  Originally we were hoping to head over into Saskatchewan to photograph some ghost towns.  But, we got a late start and decided to stay a little closer to home.  We headed out to Nordegg and then turned off onto the Forestry Trunk Road.  Usually we head south into the Ram Falls area, but this time we turned north.  I hadn't been out this way since the late 1990's and Margarit had never been out this way at all.  We turned off the Trunk Road onto the Chungo Creek Road.  Eventually we came to a crossing over the Blackstone River and a Provincial Recreation Area.  We pulled off the road and set up camp.  It was a very nice area, but we soon discovered that it was much too popular with ATV riders.  There were quads and ATV's ripping around all over the place.  I'm at least a little tolerant, and could probably live with this if these guys had hit the trails.  But most of them just ripped around the campsite and we found it very busy, very dusty, and very noisy.  The first evening we went for a walk down to the river and it was really nice.  By morning we decided it was just too busy and we packed up and moved on.  We headed back to the Trunk Road and turned north.  Eventually we came to another crossing over the Blackstone River.  This site was much quieter.  There was one small group of ATV riders camped here, but they hit the trails in the morning, and we didin't see or hear them again until the end of the day.  Other than that there was no one around but a few fly fisherman.  I can understand the appeal of fly fishing, and would love to give it a try some day, but this entire area is all "catch-and-release".  It seems to me that there is not much point fishing if you can't keep what you catch.  We spent Sunday afternoon and evening and most of holiday Monday at this campsite.  It was really a beautiful spot and the girls enjoyed exploring and collecting rocks.  Eventually we had to pack up and make our way back home.  It was quite a long drive as the road took us quite a distance to the northwest, before eventually angling off to the northeast and meeting up with the Yellowhead highway at Edson.  From there it was still a two hour drive back home.