Last weekend Hailey and I returned to Nordegg. Margarit and the two younger girls chose to stay home. As it was yet another busy week at work, with yet more long days, I slept in a bit on Saturday morning. By the time we packed up, fuelled the truck and hit the road I think it was about 11:00AM. This put our arrival in Nordegg at around 2:00PM. We quickly set up the trailer and then headed over to the Industrial Park to pick up our ATV from the storage compound. By mid afternoon we were out on the trails. This time around we explored a bunch of trails, new to us, in the east end of the valley.
These trails are all groomed and maintained trails, devoted to off highway vehicles. There is a steel bridge over the creek, and all the trails are gravelled. We knew that my cousin Vic and his wife Susanne were camped in the area with some friends and we were making our way over in the general direction of where we knew they had set up camp. We never made it that far and ran in to them out on the trails. By late afternoon we headed off in different directions to return to our trailers for the evening. Hailey and I headed over to the creek for a bit and I tried my luck at fly fishing again. At first there was not much action but when I eventually returned to my favorite spot I quickly landed three little brook trout in a span of about 5 minutes. Unfortunately none of them were quite big enough for the frying pan so they were all returned to the creek for another day.
Hailey and I built a new fire pit and sat around the fire for a while in the evening. It was really nice to spend some time with her one on one. We turned in moderately early... probably around 11:00PM... anxious to get back out again the next day.
After breakfast we hit the trails again in the ATV. This time around I brought my big camera with me and we returned to a couple of spots that we had explored the day before. I set up and shot a number of images before we eventually reconnected with Vic and Susanne. We decided to take a drive up to Eagle Peak. I had been up this way several times this year. Vic hadn't been there for a number of years and Hailey hasn't seen it for a month or two. This time around we pushed on a narrow and rough trail up to a spot that the locals call Tabletop. It is a spot right at the crest, with a bit of a clearing, that allows a view in all directions. Unfortunately on this day it was very smokey from a number of large forest fires burning in British Columbia and visibility was very limited.
In addition to the smoke it was cooler, overcast, and threatening rain. Sure enough the clouds opened up right about the time we were leaving Tabletop. Vic and Susanne decided to book it back to their campsite that was quite some distance away. Hailey and I were trapped in an open ATV, without a windshield or a roof, and without much in the way of heavy clothing. By the time we made it down off the mountain and got back to the trailer we were soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone. We cranked up the furnace in the trailer, made a warm lunch and changed into dry clothes. A short time later the rain let up a bit and we ran the ATV back over to the storage yard. Then we packed up and cleaned up our campsite and prepared for the long drive back home. We left Nordegg around 5:30 and with a brief stop in Leduc to dump our holding tanks, arrived back home around 9:00.
It was a fantastic weekend and I really enjoyed it. I remember being out with Hailey and taking photos with my big camera and thinking to myself that "this is the life". I had completely blanked out work and all my commitments and was really enjoying the day. That prompted me to come to a decision about my working career. I have set myself a retirement date three years from now and this week I advised my business partners of the deadline. They aren't really pleased about it but as I told them... I am now measuring my decisions in quality of life, not dollars, and it is time for me to plan my eventual step away.
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