Our German relatives picked up their rental motorhome on Saturday afternoon. They headed out to Pigeon Lake that evening to visit with my brother and his family at their cabin. We met up with everyone out at the lake on Sunday around lunch time, with our trailer in tow. After visiting for a little while we hit the road with my cousin and her family, heading off to the southwest. After a brief stop in Rocky Mountain House for fuel, we turned west onto Highway 11 and headed out in David Thompson Country.
We found ourselves approaching Nordegg in the late afternoon and decided to find a spot to settle down for the night. We rolled into the Harlech campsite, along Shunda Creek, just to the east of Nordegg. This is one of those old Alberta Forest Service campsites that was built many years ago, probably back in the 1960's. Pretty much all of the sites in this little camping area are too small for today's larger RV's. Although the campsite was completely vacant, there wasn't a single site that our trailer would fit into. But we knew this before we arrived, having experienced the same problem last year with our older and somewhat shorter trailer. So, we backed into the secluded corner of the gravelled overflow area and set up camp. We were somewhat annoyed at the lack of service provided by the private contractor running this government owned site. There was litter strewn around our campsite when we pulled in, and no garbage cans anywhere to be found. I even picked up the litter and wandered into the regular section of the campsite and still couldn't find a garbage can. So I left it in a nice little heap beside the wood pile. There was a reasonable amount of fire wood there, but like usual it was soaking wet. I had to dig out my tiger torch and a propane tank to attempt to get it to burn but I think it might have been easier to burn a rock. Eventually I had to add a bunch of my own dry firewood to the pile to get a bit of a fire going. Sure enough, in the morning the camp attendant was banging on our door wanting us to pay $22 per unit for parking here, using one picnic table, and burning mostly our own wood. We paid up, but weren't thrilled about it.
We did enjoy spending the evening there though. We took an evening walk along the shores of the creek and even found an elephant head orchid. Our girls really enjoyed meeting and playing with their second cousins. Despite the language barrier they managed to communicate and had fun.
The next morning, after breakfast and rather grudgingly paying our camping fees we hit the road and headed west. We made a brief stop at Nordegg and then continued on to Abraham Reservoir. The skies were a mix of sun and cloud and it was a pleasant day. We stopped briefly at the Mt. Michener viewpoint and then continued on to Windy Point. I have stopped at this place literally dozens of times over the years and it has always lived up to it's name. There has always been at least a brisk breeze blowing and more often than not gale force winds have been howling down the valley. The last time that I was here, back in the spring, with some of the guys from the Monochrome Guild, the winds were so strong that there was absolutely no way that we could set up our cameras on tripods. We managed a couple photographs that day, but only when we found extremely sheltered spots on the leeward side of some of the rock outcrops. This time around it was dead calm with barely a ripple on the water of the reservoir. We wandered around for a couple of hours collecting stones and driftwood and making photographs. Soon we realized that it was getting to be mid afternoon and our visit had to come to an end. We needed to make it further west into the National Parks and find a camping spot for the night. Even though it was a weekday evening we were well aware of the fact that in July, the campsites get filled up every night of the week. So we hit the road again...
No comments:
Post a Comment