Finishing the list…

9. Walkabout

We had a nice walk around the campsite, pretty much stopping at all the playgrounds for Andrew. I can’t remember anything that stood out on our walk… so here are the pics.

I’ll take dat one!I never had a coffee from here, but they had some pretty fancy stuff on the menu… 25 cents a ride… Nice comfy seats while you wait your turn… The beach access…

10. Driveabout

I was still pretty grumpy about our living arrangements, so I decided a driving tour of the area was in order. we really enjoy exploring (as you know) and today was no different. We headed a few kms east to Rochon Sands and the connecting Prov. Park. Traci and I stayed here a million years ago, so we had an idea what it was like, and as we remembered it, it was still very nice. The only reason we don’t camp here is it is dry camping. We promised Andrew another playground and we found one here.

The playground had a bouncy bridge to get to the big slide and he didn’t want anything to do with it at first. After a while of up and down the small slide, I was able to talk him into coming across holding my hand. After a few trips like that, he went over part way on his own and then all of a sudden he looks at me and says “NO DADDY!” i’m like: What? he says “NO Daddy, you stay there!”. I went out one step onto the bridge with him and he freaks out. “DADDY! Andrew do it HISSELF!”… ok then… he just grew up a little more right in front of our eyes.

We carried on from Rochon, to the Village of White Sand. This place was really nice. Very well kept. The only one problem is access in on gravel roads. I guess I’ve been living in the city a long time, because, as Andrew would say, ‘I no like it’.

After out tour in White Sand we went around the east end of the lake (Buffalo Lake) to the Buffalo Lake Recreational Area, to have a look at the campground there. Nope. Never gonna camp there. 5 cattle grates, and a very rough road in, and then once you get there, it’s all unsecured and kinda unruly.

We travelled from there into the Town of Stettler. If you ever win the lottery in Alberta, this is where you have to go to claim your prize. Just so you know. Stettler is famous for railways and oil. It has a very cool train ride from this town to Big Valley. Apparently you get robbed along the way by bandits and generally have an authentic old school train experience. We will go there one day. Andrew spotted the big Steamer and he immediately wanted to ride ‘Thomas’. We toured town a bit, got a coffee from Tim Hortons and then started to head back to camp… then…

11. Andrew walmart

Andrew spots Walmart. “ Let’s go to big mollmart” he says. No sweetie, we don’t need to go there. “Let’s go to big mollmart!!!”. What do you need from Walmart? we ask. He sits for a moment, then in all sincerity he says “I need daipers.”

Fair enough, we went to big Mollmart!

12. Creepy handshaker

I debated putting this one up because it shows how dense I can be some days.

I made friends with the family next door to us (on the services side of the camper) and spent some time across the tailate getting to know them. Their 12 year old daughter was really smitten with the pugs.

The next day she was just sitting in their site so I asked her is she wanted to take the pugs for a walk. She did. It was getting dusky out and the sun was going down, and when she got back I was heading down to the beach to take some pictures of the sunset. She asked if she could come with me and I said sure.

Yeah. I have no idea what I was thinking. I didn’t even think about it until we got back.

I walked back into the site, realizing by then that it is not normal for grown men to go down to the beach with someone elses 12year old to take pictures of the sunset. Like seriously, am I that stupid?

It was fine, she was just a chatty 12 year old. I started to wonder what her parents must have thought though. I started to wonder why on earth they let her go with me, in this day and age. Anyway, I felt bad enough that I lost some sleep over it. In the morning I went over to the Dad and said “I need to apologize to you, I can be a Naive Dunce some days” He looks at me, I continue “You must have been pretty weirded out yesterday, and I just wanted to apologize for not checking with you, and/or saying no to your Daughter” He says “Well we sort of looked at her when she ‘told’ us she was going to take pictures at the beach, and we decided we were ok with it, as an afterthought we were a bit weirded out… but it’s ok.” ok… Our conversation turned to what this world has come to for us to having this conversation, and we parted ways. They were packing up and going home, so that was that.

12. sunset

Oh here is the results of the weird sunset photo session…

13. Other campground shots…

These funny pedal carts were all over the place…We took our ride on Sunday Evening! Andrew loved it! Mommy and Daddy were a sweaty mess after all the pedalling. Climb up wit me Daddy! This was the Full moon on Sat Night… Of course, here is the awesome site we moved too… Notice Traci sound asleep in the LaFuma on the right side… Andrew got to pet a Hursh… and one of the 3 little piggies… I think that one went to market… mmmmm pork. Turned out our weekend was awesome… even though I can be grumpy, and/or stupid some times…