A favorite quote:

Make play a high priority in your life for if you die tomorrow no one can play for you, but someone can and will do your work for you!!!" Ken Beebe (Dr. Play)

Monday, June 22, 2009

Camping (living), in Okotoks…

So, after my computer issues, we finally got out to the campground. I took pictures every kilometer from my house just to make the trip more exciting and I ended up with 21 pictures.

I arrived at Okotoks Lions Campground CIMG6281on next to the beautiful Sheep River.CIMG6295Because I was going to commute back to work each day, Traci and Andrew hung back at the house for about an hour to give me time to get all set up for them. We are staying for a week so I wanted to do a really good job of setting them up to be comfortable.

I got set up in good time, Traci and Andrew showed up and went inside to get things ready for the week, and as I was doing the final touch-ups on the site, and elderly gentleman from the next site walks over and introduces himself. I think he said his name was Feryl (sp). He reached out to shake my hand and said he was very impressed with me, as I was the most organized camper set up he had ever seen. cool. Thanks Feryl. Later in the evening I had a chance to have a short conversation with him. It turns out he was a tail-gunner in a bomber in WWII. Wow. He went on to tell me he never fired one bullet. I was like ‘huh?’. He told me that every eighth bullet was a tracer and once you were spotted you were done. Turns out the best way to bomb Germany is to do it undetected. He said they never had any encounters with enemy aircraft in all his missions. I wonder how few people have that story. Remember the movie Memphis Belle? How amazing it was to have gone their 20 missions without an incident, and how it must have so incredibly nerve wracking on every mission, let alone the final one!! hoooooweee… Nice to meet you Feryl.

We spent some time getting settled in and then we just did some relaxing. We were both quite tired so it was hotdogs and chips for supper and then some more relaxing. Andrew seems quite content here in Okotoks doesn't he? CIMG6255

Our site backs onto the access road to the park which runs parallel to the 4 lane main thoroughfare in Okotoks… so it’s a bit noisy at times, not too noticeable during the noise of the day, but pretty noticeable as you are relaxing in the evening. It was a conscious choice to stay here instead of somewhere more remote for Traci’s comfort level while I am away during the day. Our biggest issue is the Homeless Family (it seems by the look of their site) who have 8 people staying in one small 5th wheel trailer. There is the Grandpa and Grandma, Mom, 3 kids and 2 boyfriends. The youngest girl in the site is 15 and she is pregnant ( it is a HUGE joke amongst the group). They all smoke like chimneys, sit and drink coffee all day and every second word out of each of them is F***. The (allegedly) father of the baby walks around all day without a shirt, in blue jeans and cowboy boots, with the most MASSIVE belt buckle and the skoal ring in the back pocket. He drive a rusty Dodge Dakota with no muffler and the words ‘caution redneck’ painted on the bumper. Apparently they have been here for 6 weeks. I don’t know why. Oh, they burned their garbage in the fire pit.

It’s amazing how the single bad thing takes away from all the good. The rest of the park is very nice. I got to meet my first real ‘fulltimers’ There are 3 couples that staff this park all summer, then they all go down to the BLMs in Arizona near Yuma for the rest of the year. They have nice rigs and are very hard working and very friendly.

Andrew got to sleep about 9:30, about 1.5 hours late, but we figured it would be as he sleeps in a blacked out room at home and it’s light SO late here right now. We weren’t to far behind him, and had a fairly good sleep. Andrew was a little restless as he was in his pack and play crib, which seemed a bit too small for him. Maybe tomorrow night we will figure out a better way for him. All in all a good start to the week long living-out experience.

Oh, We are still having problems with the furnace, it is very frustrating when it waits until 3:30am to stop lighting without some manual manipulation. Fractured sleep, my favorite.

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