Dad and Kids Weekend

The Dad and Kids weekend was kind of a bust this year.  All the Dads and all the kids bailed out, leaving only me and the three girls.  We headed out anyway, and had a great time together.  This was on the weekend of June 7 and 8.  As the TL Bar Ranch is now closed, we were not able to head back to our favorite camping spot this year.  Instead we tried the campsite at Starland Recreation Area, at the Morrin Bridge.  It is a nice campsite and we enjoyed the weekend.  River access is rather limited here, because the bush is rather heavy along the shore, particularly with willows.  I wanted to go hiking back into the badlands, but in order to get there from the campsite, we had to cross a rather rough and deep wash, which the girls were not really keen on doing.  So, mostly we just hung around at the campsite, and the girls spent a lot of time at the playground.  We did take a bit of a walk back into the hills behind the campsite, on Saturday afternoon.  On Sunday morning my friend Frank dropped by for a while and had a visit.

This was our first trip of the year out with the trailer and it was kind of mad scramble to get everything packed up before we left.  It was a rather late start to the camping season, but we had been rained out on the long weekend, a couple of weeks prior and then were away in Jasper.  I ended up forgetting a lot of stuff, including dish washing detergent, about half of our dishes, ketchup, mustard, and most of the ingredients for a salad.  But, we made the best of it and enjoyed the weekend all the same.  On the way home we must have taken a rock on one of the trailer side windows because the next morning I noticed that the window was shattered and a big chunk of glass was missing, but there was no broken glass on the ground where I had parked the trailer.  It was intact when I stopped and emptied the holding tanks at Peace Hills, so it must have happened on the highway, somewhere between there and home.

While the girls and I were away, Margarit drove down to Calgary.  She picked up Julia, who is coming to stay with us for 8 weeks this summer, visiting from Austria.  Julia is the daughter of Margarit's cousin Martina.  So when the girls and I got back home, we got to reacquaint with her.  Last time we saw her was when we visited Austria for Christmas in 2007.  Hailey was only five, Annelise was two and doesn't really remember Julia, and Margarit was pregnant with Helena at the time.... so it has been quite some time.