Furball No Longer

The wonder dog got a haircut today.

A Weekend in the Wild(erness Park)

After a very long week, Jon made it home from the field in time for us to hit the road for a weekend of camping at Bluerock, just west of Turner Valley. There was still snow left from Thursdays blizzard and we spent a chilly night in our new tent. Its fantastic, and will be even better when we aren't sharing it with the dog.

Saturday morning we woke early, mostly due to the chilly temperatures and some of it due to a dog who only sleeps until 6 am. Things warmed up by noon and we headed out to view the sites of the park, including Sheep Falls.

We also did a short hike to some bridge along some trail. There were lots of large bear tracks, but all we saw was four deer.
We spent the evening around the fire, eating pies and pizzas from the pie iron. Night two in the tent was much warmer and the dog even slept until 7 am.
Our very cool fire.
We drove home this morning, ready to head to work tomorrow as Jon is in the field and I still have that thesis hanging over my head. We spotted our first bear of the season just outside of our campground (a smaller black bear) but encountered no other wildlife.

The Mighty Milk

This weekend was the second annual canoe trip, down the Milk River. Day 1 started off well, the sun came out and spirits were high. We did our 30 km without much effort. The wind picked up in the evening, but we still enjoyed a beautiful evening on the banks of the river.

Day 2 started alright, but the river was a little tougher than the first part, plenty of gravel bars and ripples to keep us on our toes. Ali and Andrew got dumped in the river early on but luckily they were unhurt. We all had our little incidents with gravel bars through out the day, but no one else had to take a swim.

It was a pretty long day, including a portage around a set of rapids. We all felt a little tired by the time we'd hit our day's destination. Luckily we made camp just as the rain and wind started and a quick meal improved everyone's spirits. Our canoe wind block worked surprisingly well, but soon after dinner had finished, the rain started up harder and we barely had time to shove a brownie (or three) in before sprinting for our tents.

It started out rainy on Day 3, and carried on for the next 5 hours while we paddled the last stretch of the river. Jon let me steer, which resulted in a lot of extra work for both of us, as he is a much stronger paddler and I spent the whole time compensating for it, while he had to do all the paddling. We arrived in Milk River just before we all lost feeling in our hands and feet, and thankfully our cars were waiting and we piled in and turned on the heat. Our journey was over! Jon and I celebrated with a double double (or it seemed to be a triple triple from the amount of cream in it) once we hit Lethbridge.

Overall we had a fantastic time, next year we'll just have to plan on having better weather! More photos available HERE.