Week Eighteen - Spray Lake 2015

Week Eighteen – Spray Lake, 2015

Well, we are nearing the end of our summer here at Spray Lake.  We talked with the boss the today and he’d sure like us to come back next year.  I guess we’ll wait and see what happens.  We both enjoy it here and we don’t have much else on the go so it might just work out. 

We had a few more inches of snow yesterday and I thought it might be fun to go down to Mt. Engadine and see if the moose like the snow or not.  Turns out they do!  I had a fabulous morning taking pictures of a nice big bull and then a cow and two calves.  Notice in the picture how pink the bull’s antlers are.  He’s just got rid of his velvet and the antlers look kind of raw.  Over the next few months they will toughen up and get lighter too.  He was such a beautiful big guy…healthy and strong looking.  I couldn’t help but snap a ton of pictures of him.  I love how the snow is clinging to his antlers and a bit on his nose.  So beautiful!

 

There were four other people there taking pictures of the moose…all with fancy big cameras with lenses a mile long.  I’m sure they got some wonderful pictures.  I’d love to take a course in photography to learn more about the cameras and how to use the professional models.  Until then, I’m very happy with my point and shoot.

After the bull wandered into the forest, I decided to drive back up the road a ways.  I hadn’t gone far when I saw this cow and two calves.  They were amazing.  The calves are twins though the last one in the line-up below is larger than the other.  I suspect he’s a little bull and the more dainty one is a female.  So incredibly cute!

I watched them for a long time and followed them up the road a ways.  They didn’t seem to mind people watching them and taking their pictures.  They stopped to eat here and there and at one point the calves even started to nurse.  Wow, was I excited to get a picture of that.  Not something that’s often seen in the wild.  I just can’t seem to get enough of the moose…I want to go back every morning and take more pictures.  These calves were so adorable…well for a moose anyway!

Our snow is gone now…it only lasted a couple of days.  Alberta weather is so weird.  It was 28 degrees centigrade on the weekend, then down to freezing with snow on Tuesday.  Today it’s cold and clear but we are supposed to be back up to around 22 c by the weekend again.  Don’t know whether to wear my shorts or my snow suit!

I love this picture of the moose and babies munching on leaves.  You can only see the ears of one calf and the back of the other but it’s a nice shot of mama!  On the way back from seeing the moose the other day I drove across the dam and there was a lovely big raven sitting on some of the rocks people piled up.  Lots of people are building inukshuks now or piling rocks to leave their mark…kind of fun for them. 

As I drove into our site I noticed a couple of deer in the overflow area…boy was it my morning for animals!  They were mule deer…a doe with an almost grown fawn.  We do get some white-tail deer up here as well but for the most part they are mulies.  I kind of thought the picture of the deer would make a nice Christmas card if they hadn’t been hiding behind that bush…oh well.

When we talked with the boss today I showed him some of my photos.  He asked me if I would make some of them into postcards and sell them in the store down in Bolton Creek.  That might be a good project for me for the winter…making cards and postcards.  He said he’s tried to find some with “Kananaskis” on them but most of the postcards say “Banff” or “Canmore” …might just be a good little enterprise for me!

It seems that mushrooms are popping up all over the place right now.   These shaggy manes are all over the place right now.  Supposed to be very good eating!

I’ll leave you with some of the fall colours along the campground road…amazingly beautiful when the sun shines!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Seventeen - Spray Lake, 2015

Week Seventeen – Spray Lake, 2015

 

A chilly week at Spray Lake!  I had hoped to show you some lovely autumn pictures in this blog but winter came early!  We had snow on Saturday and that chased a lot of long-weekend campers away.  On Sunday night we only had a handful left, most of them in trailers or campers.  Only one couple stayed in their tent…hearty folks!  The snow lasted into the next day but it was more sleet/snow mix by then.  By Tuesday it had pretty well gone except for what will now stay up higher on the mountains.  There are several Inukshuks along the dam road now…I liked the one someone else had built so figured I could build a few myself.  Tom got into it too so he built a couple too.  Oso was a bit sad that there were only “people” Inukshuks so we built a dog out of stone.  First thing he did was went and peed on it!  That’s pretty typical I guess!  Lots of people have stopped to take pictures of the Inukshuks…guess it’s kind of fun to see them and they do look cool with the lake and mountains behind them.

I found this little snowman on the picnic table at the day use across the lake when I took Oso for a walk.  He’s pretty cute and deserving of having his picture taken.

We also saw these two mergansers fishing along the shore.  They didn’t seem to mind the cold water at all.  There are plenty of tiny minnows in the lake so the birds are quite well fed.

 

 

 

There was a family from France in the campground the other night and they wanted to see moose so I’d told them to go down to Engadine early in the morning and watch for them.  Talking with them made me want to go see the moose too so I got up early this morning and off I went.  I was in luck and saw two nice big bulls.  One was out in the meadow near the mud hole licking at the ground.  He was a huge bull but had small antlers so must have been fairly young.  The other was big as well but lay in the grass and never got up so I couldn’t see if he measured up to the first one.  He did have a nice big rack on him so was probably an older moose.  You’ll notice the picture of him shows the velvet on his antlers is coming off.  This time of year they are rubbing up against anything they can to work the velvet off. I talked with a conservation officer last night and he said there was a moose attacking a flexible plastic post at Engadine the other day.  Every time the moose pushed the post over, it would snap back up and the moose would attack it again.  That would have been fun to watch!  Oh, I do love the moose!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Fifteen and Sixteen - Spray Lake, 2015

Week Fifteen – Spray Lake, 2015

Well…you certainly don’t have to go to Tennessee to see the Great Smokey Mountains…they are right here in Kananaskis Country, Alberta!  On Monday morning we woke up to what I thought was fog at first, but turned out to be smoke in the air.  It is still thick and heavy here and down in Canmore as well.  People came from as far away as Sundry and Lethbridge and said they drove through smoke all the way.  We’ve heard that it is coming from Washington State, but I’ve also seen online that there are fires near Grand Forks and Christina Lake.  Sure could do with a good rain to drench the forests throughout the Pacific Northwest!

It’s been a pretty quiet week after all the excitement of the search and rescue last week.  I think the smoke might be keeping some people at home because it sure has been quiet in the campground.  We’ve only had a dozen or so campers each night this week and we would usually be at least half full (25 campers).  We’ve managed to keep busy around our site and are planning our trip south for the winter.  We still don’t know exactly which way we’ll go but have been thinking of taking a couple weeks to go to Mexico once we get to Tucson.  Mexico is always fun!  Here’s a few pictures from our last trip there.  That’s me in a wrestling mask (popular souvenirs) and the other picture is one that Tom took of an angel statue on the boardwalk in Puerto Vallarta…he got her holding the sun in her arms…pretty good shot!  Yup….sunset in Mexico…makes me want to go for a visit!

Short blog…more next week!

Week Sixteen – Spray Lake, 2015

I mentioned in my Week Fifteen posting about the smoke in this area…it’s pretty well cleared off now and hopefully the fires in Washington and BC are well under control.  We’ve had a few rainy days so with any luck the areas with the fires have too.  Here’s a picture of our normally crystal clear view across the lake…you can hardly see the mountains!  I think Canmore and Calgary were just as bad.

Gravel trucks have been racing up and down the road across the lake.  The road needs constant maintenance and there are two graders that work the stretch from Canmore to Kananaskis every day.  For the last week the trucks have been hauling fresh gravel for the graders.  Tom and I were just talking about how the trucks go speed way past the limit to get as many loads hauled as possible and the dust they kick up is horrible.  One day last week we saw emergency vehicles racing up toward the boat launch across the lake and heard on the radio that there had been an accident.  A pick-up truck had pulled out from behind a car and had ran straight into a dump truck.   We heard the driver was hurt badly but that the two kids in back came out with only scratches.  The driver couldn’t see because of the dust.

We saw this grouse while out on a walk… they are such dumb birds…you can almost walk up and touch them before they think to fly away!

We had a company picnic on Sunday night.   Almost everyone showed up and a real treat was seeing a couple of people who retired last year but came back for the picnic.  The food was great, the people were fun to be with and everyone had a good time.  It’s so nice to spend a bit of time with other campground managers and hear their stories and tell a few of our own.

On the way home that night we came across this cow moose munching grass on the side of the road…she could care less about us stopped to take pictures and just kept on eating.  Today when Tom went down to Boulton he saw a cow and calf.  They are sure big and healthy looking this time of year!

This white-tailed buck has been hanging around our site for a while now.  Tom caught him with this funny look on his face…almost cartoonish.  He really is a beautiful animal and again so healthy looking.

My passport expires this coming January but since we plan to head down to the states in the fall, I thought I’d best get it ordered so I’ll have it before we leave.  I drove into Calgary yesterday and did that at the passport office there…should only take a couple weeks to get it.  After that I went shopping a bit and then went to see Jamie and took him out for dinner.  He’s doing well and we really had a good visit.

It’s been slow in the campground lately.  The weather has turned cool…highs around 7c and lows -2c.  We could very well have snow on the ground one morning when we wake up.  Bicyclers are still going through on a daily basis trying to beat the weather as they head south to Mexico.  They say a person should begin their trip mid-August at the latest if they want to avoid snow here and through Colorado which I think are the highest points along the divide trail.  There were four Dutch bicyclers through the other day.  They started their journey two years ago in Brazil and are heading to Jasper and then down to Vancouver where they’ll catch a plane back to Holland.  I can’t imagine being on a bike for two years…I also wonder how easy it would be to get back to everyday life after an adventure like that.   

Most of the wildflowers have now died off but the grasses are still so beautiful.    Here’s a nice shot of some of them.  The grass is tall…almost up to my hips in some spots.  Oso and I go for walks through it and he gets totally lost in it sometimes but that doesn’t stop him from sniffing out ground squirrels.  I think he still dreams about catching one, but chances of that are pretty slim!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Fourteen – Spray Lake, 2015

It’s hard to believe we only have four more weeks up here.  We’ll be heading back to Castlegar after the 15^th of September, then on down to Abbotsford, then Spokane, Boise, and on to the south.  It’s a tough life to lead but someone has to do it…ha, ha.

Someone built an Inuksuk out on the dam.  It seems to be the thing to do around here.  The hiking trails all have stacked rocks somewhere along the way and I can even see a cairn or rocks on top of the big sister.  I guess it’s a way for people to say “I was here” and leave their mark.  Anyway, it’s kind of fun to see them…and sometimes build them.

This week a car pulled into the overflow parking area in the middle of the day…unusual unless they were going to try to picnic which isn’t allowed in the campground.  I walked over to see what they wanted and talked with the fellow for a few minutes.  He said they were looking for the “spiritual vortex” which is supposed to be somewhere in the campground.  (I should have known when he got out of the car with his red shirt, purple skirt and hiking boots…hmmmm!)  I asked him to describe the location and he described the trailhead perfectly so I sent him up that way.  There is a place where the trail opens up into a large rocky area that is quite pretty.  People have built Inuksuks and stacked rocks and built cairns all over the place there so I assume that’s what he was looking for.  I’ve been up there and have never felt the “vibrations” or any kind of spiritual sensations that are supposed to accompany a vortex.   To tell you the truth this whole place could be called a vortex because its tremendous beauty really does put you in awe of mother earth.

Another bird caught in the camera lens…this one is some kind of hawk flying low over the meadows near the lake where the ground squirrels live. 

Some fellows stopped at the trailhead across the lake the other morning.  I was out walking Oso and watched them doing something but couldn’t figure out what it was.  Then I heard the buzzing sound!  They had some of those remote control helicopters and were flying them around the mountainside.  These ones seemed to be quite fancy…I’ve seen the inexpensive ones sold at malls and even they are kind of impressive.  They have a tiny camera in them and will shoot photos of whatever they hover over.  Seems like a good hobby for some folks who are interested in that.

The real helicopters fly over here quite often too.  They are sight-seeing flights that take people either from Canmore or the Casino on Hwy 1 over the mountains or to Mt. Assiniboine.  There is a lodge at Mt. Assiniboine and many people fly in and hike out…some even fly up there and have their wedding or some other kind of celebration.  I’d love to take a sight-seeing flight over the mountains on a sunny day like today…maybe one day we’ll treat ourselves to it.  You can almost see someone looking out the back window in this picture.  When the floods happened in 2012, they had to fly all of the campers out of here in helicopters because the roads were blocked with slides.  All of the tour companies helped out and even the armed forces brought helicopters.  They took people, pets and one bag each…until that is one of the dogs pooped in the army helicopter…they the army wouldn’t take dogs any longer so the tour companies had to take them.  What wimps!

We went for a walk the other morning down toward Goat Pond where one of the trail crews is building bridges over swampy areas as part of the Trans Canada Trail that is going through here.  The fellow said he is having helicopters come in tomorrow morning to fly the bases he is building and some of the really heavy logs into their locations.  We have another trail crew camping here.  They are working on a section of the trail south of us on the other side of the lake.  They work 12 hour days moving rocks, cutting through brush and trees and building bridges too.  They come home, have something to eat and crash then head out again the next morning.

A young couple stopped by a few minutes ago to leave emergency contact information with us.  They are going to climb Old Goat Mountain and traverse the ridge down the lake to Mt. Nestor.  They said if their car is still there in the mornings to send out the troops.  So many hikers enjoy the mountain trails around here but sometimes we hear Search and Rescue on the radio coordinating searches for people who don’t make it back.  I’m sure these kids will be fine…they had the proper gear and emergency supplies with them and were smart enough to leave contact info just in case.

I’ll leave you with a beautiful picture of the day today.  A bank of clouds hung over the lake until just a little while ago and now it is clear, warm and sunny… a perfect day at Spray Lake! 

…oh, but there’s more…

Well, a lot can happen in a day…that young couple that stopped by to give me info about their hike didn’t come back on time.  They expected to be down the mountain by 8:00 p.m., 10:00 at the latest but the next morning their cars were still there.   He had written on the emergency contact info he gave me to call for help if they were not back by morning so I did.  Better safe than sorry!  Within an hour RCMP and Conservation Officers arrived.  Helicopters had been dispatched and the search was on.  They set up an emergency command center in the overflow parking lot near us.  It was really interesting to watch them work.  Later they called in search dogs and had ATV’s brought in so they could search down paths and roadways not accessible by truck.  By noon the hikers were still not back and I can tell you we were all pretty worried about them.  My powers of observation were tested when they asked me what they had been wearing (to see them better from the helicopter but also to judge their experience as hikers).  I told them the guy was wearing a rusty brown shirt and blue jeans and the girl was in light colours.  The search continued until about 4:30 in the afternoon when the hikers walked out of the bush on their own.  A cheer went up from all of the searchers and RCMP when they heard the news!  The hikers had gotten stuck (cliffed out) somewhere on the top of the mountain, stayed the night, had to backtrack quite a ways and then came down through the bush.  They were exhausted, hungry and thankful to be back safely…we were very happy to see them!  Oh, and my powers of observation…completely backwards…she was wearing a brown shirt with jeans and he was wearing light grey.  Oh well, I sort of got it right.

It’s a really good thing those kids made it down that day because the next was pretty ugly.  We had a huge rainstorm that lasted most of the day turning into snow by noon.  The snow didn’t stay very long but was kind of pretty while it lasted.  The rain stayed all day and into the evening.  Even with the weather being ridiculously cold and wet, we were almost full last night.

This poor little Indian paintbrush braved the snow…the last blossoms of summer!

Yesterday was snow and rain with temperatures below 0 centigrade…today is nice and sunny and supposed to get up to 19 degrees centigrade.  This is definitely Alberta weather!

I took Oso for a walk this morning and guess what I found…a nice little crop of raspberries.  They were a good size for wild berries and were sweet and juicy.  Now I know why the bears like them so much!

This is a bit longer blog than normal but it seems there was a lot happening in the last few days.  Hope you found it interesting!

Here’s a peek at Windtower with fresh snow…beautiful mountain!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Thirteen - Spray Lake 2015

Week Thirteen – Spray Lake, 2015

 

It’s been another typical week at Spray Lake Campground.  We had an interesting weekend with a couple of odd campsites.  Last Thursday night someone came up and put tags on two sites, put a tent in one of them and a tent trailer in the other and then didn’t pay or register for them.  On the ticket that a person is supposed to put on the post in the campsite the fellow had left his name, the date they planned to leave and where he was to fill in the amount paid, he put N/A (not applicable).  Hmmmm…he must be very special if he doesn’t have to pay!  Anyway, I called the Conservation office to see if they could track down the owner through the license plate on the tent trailer.  That didn’t seem to work because the phone numbers attached to the license plate were out of order.  So…I let it go the first night because we were not full and I thought maybe the campers would come back but they didn’t.  The next night we were full…I called conservation and an officer came and confiscated the tent and told us to call as soon as the person arrived for the tent trailer.  I sold the sites to two families who were waiting in overflow.  At about 11:00 on Friday night three car-loads of kids arrive at the campground.  Tom stopped them at the gate since it was after hours and asked them where they were going…yes, it was the unregistered campers.  He called me on the walkie-talkie and told me they were arriving and I called the conservation officer again.  Tom said the kids looked like a rough bunch so I relayed that information to conservation.  He happened to be just across the lake dealing with some campers on the beach (a $300 fine for fire on beach and $150 for random camping!) and so he came over immediately.  I had just spoken with the kids who had arrived and could tell they had been drinking on their way up here.  I told them there was nothing I could do to hold their sites since we were full.  They were very angry about the whole situation but not so much with me as with their leader who had tagged the sites but didn’t pay for them.  I told conservation I’d seen beer cans in the car and he went and looked and actually caught one of them drinking in the car while he was talking with them…dumb kids!  Anyway, he evicted them so they wouldn’t go park in the overflow area and off they went with fines for failing to register and having open containers in the car.  After that little fiasco, the weekend went very nicely!

It’s been a bird week up here as far as animals go.  There are always loons on the lake but I did get some nice pictures of one of them.  As well a heron came and posed for me on the big rock right in front of our site.  He stood there for a while surveying the area for minnows…he probably ate his fill as the shores are thick with them!

I gave Oso a haircut this morning as the weather is nice and warm…high 70’s…perfect weather as far as I am concerned.  He sits really well for his haircut…such a good boy!  Afterwards he went and sat on his big pillow outside and was just about asleep when his nemesis, the chipmunk appeared.  That little rascal ran right up and over the pillow Oso was on.  Oso jumped up and chased him but the chipmunk ran into one of his hiding spots…Oso is definitely on high alert now!!

The other day we had four young guys come into the campground.  I stopped to sell them some firewood and started chatting with them.  They said they were going to hike the Big Sister Mountain right across from us the next morning.  I told them that I would take pictures of them at the top if they wanted.  They were quite excited about that and so I did.  Two of them were more experienced so though they all started together, those two got to the top first.  The other two made it about a half hour later.  It’s so cool to watch them up there and to see them finally make it to the top.   They stopped at our site when they got down and I showed them the pictures and promised to e-mail them.  They were pretty happy with the results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are hikers going up the mountain every day and though it’s a tough climb there are not often any problems.   That night however, I’d been watching some people coming down quite late.  They were still up above the tree-line at dark and then of course all we could see were their headlamps in the dark.  It’s unlikely anyone but very experience climbers could come down in the dark and experienced climbers wouldn’t be caught in that situation.  Anyway, we called conservation to report it but there is nothing they can do about it.  If the hikers were wise they would just find a place to hunker down for the night and stay there.  I think that’s what these folks did because other campers reported lights on the mountain till four a.m.  When we got up the next morning their car was gone so they’d obviously gotten down safely.

Tom and I celebrated our 10^th Wedding anniversary last Thursday…here’s a picture of my honey!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Twelve - Spray Lakes, 2015

Week Twelve – Spray Lake, 2015

We had a really busy long weekend…not a vacant site anywhere in the Spray Valley or in Peter Lougheed Park.  Overflow was overflowing and we had to turn a number of people away.  It seems more and more people are wanting to get away and this is where they come.  We need another couple of parks up here with about a dozen more campgrounds!

Our helpers for this summer are leaving today.  Bruce has to have shoulder surgery so they can’t stay the whole summer and Tracey starts back to work in a couple weeks.  It was sure good to have them here this year so we could have a few days off…we sure enjoyed the time we had.  Their little dog, Jax, sure did love to play with Oso.  He’s an energetic little guy and just doesn’t want to stop, so when Oso had enough, he’d just go sit out of Jax’s reach and take a break!

On Monday we decided to go for a drive.  We loaded the dog up and went over the Highwood Pass to one of the campgrounds over that way and then on to Longview on Hwy 22.  It was a gorgeous drive through the mountains and then coming out onto the rolling hills of the prairies was pretty too.  There are a lot of oil wells in the Longview area…a lot of really beautiful ranches as well.  On the way we saw some sheep (of course) and a couple of covered wagons that someone must have put together for some purpose.  Even though they were not original, with wooden wheels, etc., they were kind of cool.

We haven’t seen many moose this year so far but now with it being August and fall on the way, they will be out and about.  This big guy decided to walk through overflow one morning and Tom managed to snap a few pictures.  The moose hasn’t got too big a rack but he’s got a nice beard!

Another full moon has come and gone and of course I got another picture of it.  I’m still amazed by my camera sometimes.  If ever we need to see something really far in the distance, I just take a picture of it and then zoom in…it works better than binoculars! 

We had a bear in the campground the other day…a medium sized black bear.  He wasn’t really too interested in any of our campers…he walked along the campground road and then went up into the overflow area and then down onto what we call “the scary road” because Oso doesn’t like to go down there.  The scary road is a service road for Trans Alta so is gated off to traffic.  Oso gets a little nervous down that road because it is narrow with lots of bush on either side…guess he thinks there’s a bear there…and he’s right, there is!

It’s August already and our lake is still not full.  It’s still slowly coming up but we’ve never seen it this low at this time of year.  Guess the low snow pack, poor run off and dryer weather this year caused the lake to be this low.  Next year will be different.  Seems weather goes in cycles…we’ll get an El Nino one year with tons of snow and rain (like in 2012 when it flooded so badly) one year and then a dry year the next.  Our peace sign that some people built out beside the dam gate is almost under water now so the lake is still coming up.

One night we had three bicyclers from Tennessee who stayed with us.  They were so impressed with the mountains and the scenery…guess we get a little used to it and don’t appreciate it as much as we should.  Here’s a good picture to show  appreciation for the beauty of this area…Sparrowhawk Mountain with evening sun shining on it…love it!