July Long Weekend

We headed out for the July Long Weekend with our friends, the Pink family.  We left on Friday morning, as I had taken an extra day off from work.  It was warm and pleasant and we made our way down to Drumheller and stopped to check out the projects underway in the Palcoprep shop.  Later we continued on down the Red Deer River Valley, and set up camp at Dorothy.  The mosquitoes were overbearing and it was not pleasant to be outside, but we made the best of it.  The kids had fun climbing the hills and playing in the playground.  The next day was very hot and sunny and we went for a little drive.  We checked out the Provincial Park at Little Fish Lake, and eventually found ourselves down at the Spray Park in Drumheller.  By Saturday evening we returned to our camping spot. On Sunday morning we packed up and made our way north to the TL Bar Ranch.  The weather conditions were still really nice, and to our surprise there were not nearly as many mosquitoes.  We set up camp and enjoyed the afternoon.  The kids walked over to the corrals to check out the horses.  I had been watching some clouds build up in the northwest and it soon became evident that we were going to be hit by a prairie thunderstorm.  We almost waited to long and just managed to get the awnings on the trailers rolled up as the front hit us with full force.  High winds and heavy rain soon turned to hail, and the kids were caught out in the pasture in the middle of it.  Margarit and Eric managed to round up all the kids and bring them back to the trailers but not before everyone got totally soaked.  The little ones were pretty scared and upset by the hail and the lightning and thunder.  We got everyone dried off and ended up turning in early.  The next day we had a trail ride booked, and by then it was beginning to dry off nicely.  We enjoyed a beautiful two hour ride up to the top of the valley.  By the time that was done, and we got everything packed up, it was late afternoon and we had to head for home.  The Pink family had a week of vacation time remaining and they headed off to southern Alberta.  We made a stop at Pigeon Lake and dropped off our trailer at my brother Wes's cabin.  Then we carried on home.  The girls would be returning to the lake for the remainder of the week, while I had to return to work.  I took quite a few photographs over the weekend, of all the activities, but they were all with one of my film cameras.  So there are no images to be included at this time.