Boys, Bears and Bucks!

Boys, Bears and Bucks!

It’s hard to believe that the boys (Nick and Jake, sons of our friends, Darrin and Liz) have been with us almost two weeks now.  They are a big help to us and a great source of entertainment.  Since they’ve been here, I’ve heard more about quads, motorcycles, trucks and anything else with a motor than ever before.  I’ll soon be able to converse with motor-heads and actually know what I’m talking about!  We are having such fun with them…can’t wait till more family comes to visit and we can share Spray Lakes with them as well and enjoy getting to know them again.  Our family get-together is scheduled for the weekend of August 8/9/10 and I can’t wait to see some long lost cousins and nieces and nephews! 

As promised in my last blog, here is a picture of the fun island/party barge that we found in the dumpster a couple weeks ago.  It’s amazing what rich people will toss out.  All we had to do was patch a small hole in the bottom and it’s good as new.  They boys have been out on it a few times in the lake and seem to be enjoying themselves.  The barge has a cooler, speakers and a ramp to climb up out of the water on….pretty cool!

 Another trip to the bottle depot netted us $182 this week…seems dumpster diving and recycling is well worth it!

We went to a staff picnic down at Peter Lougheed Park on Tuesday…it was great to meet some of the other campground managers and share some time with them.  We are kind of isolated from everyone else as we’re about 35 km away from them but do get to see the guys who deliver wood when they come to Spray and a few other people when we go down there for showers.  The food/picnic was organized by a woman whose husband grew up with my cousin, Terry Daniels…small world!  As with most prairie people, she organized an abundance of very tasty food for us…it was a great picnic.

We’ve had a couple of bears through the campground lately…one was a good sized black bear who seemed to want to walk through some of the campsites.  He didn’t bother anyone but still he was too close for comfort.  We phoned conservation to report him and within half an hour an officer was on site to scare the bear away.  He arrived in our campsite after finding the bear in the campground.  He said “The bear is travelling this way and was last seen in campsite #3…oh, there he is behind you”.  I turned and true enough, there was the bear about 15 feet behind me in the bush.  He made a bit of noise and the bear turned and walked within two feet of Nick’s tent…the boys were both in their tents reading and didn’t realize how close the bear was.  Anyway, the conservation officer got his gun and some rubber bullets and shouted at the bear and then shot him with the rubber bullets.  They don’t injure the bear but give him a good sting when they hit.  He ran off into the bush but we got reports of a bear the next morning so I think he stuck around and enjoyed the berries that are now ripening on the buffalo bushes (shown in the picture).  They are tiny little berries so the bears have to eat constantly to get a full belly.  We also saw a couple of grizzly bears when we came back from the picnic the other night.  There were several cars stopped (a “bear jam” they call it) and so we got to have a look at them.  I wasn’t able to get any pictures of them though…wish we could have stuck around and done that but with so many people out of their vehicles watching the bears, which were only about 20 feet beyond the side of the road, it was too dangerous.

We’ve had a couple of nice bucks in the campground lately…they seem to have found a little mineral lick on the trail to Goat Pond.  We’ve really enjoyed watching them.

Now for the flower of the week…this is a new one that has just begun to bloom and I’ve only seen one bunch of them…they are a really pretty coral colour and stand about a foot tall.  Gonna have to get that flower book one day so I can identify them.  Sorry the picture is a bit fuzzy but it was almost dark when I took this and the camera wouldn’t quite focus properly.

When we go to Boulton Creek for supplies we also need to fill a large water container so we can then connect with a hose to our fifth wheel and have water that is mostly used for washing up.  We buy bottled water to drink (and recycle of course).  Here is a picture of Tom and the boys filling the water container.  And a picture of the boys playing baseball with a stick and stone…like I said, they are good entertainment!

 So you might remember the story of Tom watching the girls skinny dip across the lake…well, the other day there was a guy over there who insisted that he sunbathe in the nude….well, except that other people kept stopping at the day use area and walking down to the beach…he’d jump up and put his swim trunks on and wait till they left then take them off again…more people would come a few minutes later and he’d have to put them on again.  The poor guy did this half a dozen times before he decided he didn’t need to tan his buttocks…sorry everyone…no pictures!