Thunder Lake and the Re-Discovery of Couples Camping

With the exception of Audrey's recent trips down to High River to assist her parents with moving into town from their acreage, we really haven't had cause to leave home since...gosh, since we visited Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park last August. And with me working from home since last March, it became prudent for us to get away for a week.

Thus we camped by ourselves for the first time since 1997 or thereabouts.

Audrey wanted to go someplace we hadn't been and I found what looked to be a nice site at Thunder Lake Provincial Park, about an hour and a half northwest of Edmonton. We drove up there shortly after watching England's hopes get dashed in the Euros final (sigh), and found that the site was,` indeed, pretty nice.

Not to say that there weren't issues though - aren't there always?

First of all, even though we were right next to the path leading from our campsite loop to the lakeside, neither of us wanted to go swimming due to the number of leeches in the water. How many? Enough to warrant placing zipper baggies full of salt in a bowl at the camp office and store.

I mean, not that I don't appreciate the gesture, but not enough to immerse myself in that lake, despite the heat getting up to 33 one day while we were there.

Two of the three campsite loops are also currently without potable water, and even having brought 11L: with us, we still needed to refill at the Co-op in Mayerthorpe (about 25 min away).

Lastly was Canéla - this was her first time camping, and she still has a lot of insecurities. As a result, every time someone went up or down the stairs, she felt obligated to bark and snarl like the most vicious of beasts, even though all she is saying is "HEY! HI! COME HERE! I WANNA SAY HI! HEY!"

We explained this to her a number of times, but she still seems to be missing the core concept, so the struggle of socializing continues. In the meantime though, it was lovely to watch her exploring the sights and smells of the lakeshore, occasionally pouncing into the underbrush after detecting movement. This was usually due to the dozens of tiny frogs, smaller than your thumbnail, that could almost pass unnoticed in the taller grass

This left her tired enough at night that the only problem was keeping her off of our beds.

Still, we had a tremendous amount of shade, with our picnic table only being in direct sunlight for a little more than an hour each day, and never the whole thing at one time. This gave us a nice spot to play games on, including cribbage, Hive, Skip-Bo, and even a couple of games of Connect Four on the little travel set that we keep in the trailer. I did pretty well at Hive but got skunked in two consecutive games of cribbage.

Mayerthorpe has a fascinatingly cluttered old hardware store on its main street, a Burger Baron close to the highway, and the first Fields store we had seen in ages and which Audrey took full advantage of. We also made sure to pay our respects at the Fallen Four Memorial, commemorating the four Mounties killed there in an ambush in 2005.

I found it strange that the memorial made no mention of the 2005 tragedy, but not as strange as the realization that a decade and a half have already passed since then.

We also visited Barrhead, which is only 15 minutes away and has a Tim Hortons, whose wifi I gladly used to download the season finale of Loki while Audrey took Canéla to the local off-leash park. There is also a delightful local drive-in, Sal's that we split a donair and fries from, then got immense breakfast bowls from on Friday on our way back home.

Lots of Dutch connections in this area - about 20 minutes north of Barrhead is Neerlandia, a hamlet where the two tallest buildings are the Christian Reform Church and the Canadian Reform Church, and whose gargantuan Co-op store boasts an enormous selection of Dutch candies, licorice, stumpot seasoning and other trinkets.

Back in Barrhead, the De Herdt Gardens are an immense plant store and greenhouse (with an astonishing selection of succulents) but also host a coffee nook and Elieneke's Bake Shop, which is developing quite the reputation for its scratch-made pastries, Belgian chocolates and artisanal breads. The rustic sourdough we brought home with us is delicious, and makes me wish we had bought more. 

All in all, we had a lovely week at Thunder Lake. Hot during the day, but bearable in the shade (or in an air-conditioned Flex on the road to somewhere or other) and then cooling to 15 degrees of less at night. It rained a couple of times overnight later in the week, but the ground was practically dry by morning, and we never got tired of sausages and eggs cooked outdoors on the old Coleman stove.

We enjoyed lakeside walks with the dog, listening to loons and seeing at least one spectacular sunset.

But at least once a day, whether setting up a two-player game or preparing a dinner for two, or even just bedding down for the night, one or the other of us would wistfully express how simply strange it seemed for both girls to be absent from our campsite for the first time in over twenty years.

This is the way of things, I suppose, and I am glad both girls get the experience of working in Churchill for the summer, but I still hope one or both of them are able to join us camping before too long!

In the meantime, I am grateful to be married to someone who enjoys the time we spend together, even (or especially) when we do nothing at all.