I Almosted Moosed That!

We traveled to Calgary yesterday morning so I could attend my Copics Certification course from 9-4. We left the house just after 5 am to ensure we made it to Calgary on time.

On our way, we saw this.... a moose! She was walking across the highway as we were between Longview and the road to Nanton in Highway 22. She literally just stood in the middle of the road for a few minutes.

Then a little critter came out of the bush on the right hand side of the road... her calf!!!! A mama moose and her baby! He was all legs!!!

When the calf was safely across the road, they trotted off in to the bush together.
Gotta love nature!

My course was great. The boys spent the day gallivanting around Calgary getting all kinds of things for Todd's new toy; a mini Bobcat excavator. The "Cat" is sitting in front the deck and he's been spending all morning getting things to run. Slowly but surely, each problem is being solved and I actually heard it run for the first time today! We're off to go swimming in Sparwood this afternoon. Hope everyone is fine and dandy.

A Great Anniversary!

Todd and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary yesterday. Well actually we celebrated it on Monday since I worked last night.

On Monday we got one of the teenagers I work with at Kapp's to watch Spencer so Todd and I could go out for an anniversary evening. We went to Sparwood to a restaurant we hadn't tried and had a nice dinner together. He had steak and I had shrimp... yum! Then we took the Jeep on a nice back road adventure, just the two of us. We ventured down a road inbetween Sparwood and Elkford and had a nice drive. We even managed to come across a mama moose and her baby on the trail! What an amazing site... and you guessed... NO CAMERA! Crap! We had a nice evening together though.

Yesterday while the boys were in Cranbrook getting a tool Todd needed, I stayed home because I had to work at 4pm. While I was getting ready, I noticed a young buck resting in the shade of the neighbour's house....



It's so common to look out a window in the house and see deer. We have lots of bucks, does and spotted fawns come through the yard each day. I love it here!

Daddy... can we do that again?!?

Yesterday we did a little more local adventuring with Dick and Judy. After lunch downtown we drove up to the Fording River mine site to see what we could see from the front gates. Todd had tried to get a mine truck to take us on a tour but as unable to.

When we arrived at the gate we saw a huge crane parked at the base of the coal loading tower. With the mine being on shutdown until tonight, they had brought in equipment to do maintenance on it.

Since the loading tower was down, they were having to load coal the old fashion way, by HUGE loader! This bucket can hold 5 regular sized dump trucks worth of coal in one load!

Spencer loved watching them load the coal in the coal rail cars.

Then we adventured back towards Elkford again and took the Fording Road off through the maintains. We came across a few rock slides along the edge of the river and easily made it over them with the Jeep. We took the Fording Road back to Sulphur Springs Road and then ventured up it to over look Elkford. I think we were at about 1400+ meters when this picture was taken.

At almost the end of Sulphur Springs Upper Road, there is Lost Lake. We walked the short distance in to have a peek at the calm lake. There was even a pair of loons there!

Back down the road we started towards the valley again. Just a few feet from the entrance to the Lost Lake trail we encountered a "puddle". Now to understand this, you must know that the front roof panels on the Jeep were OFF... so Todd INTENTIONALLY drove through the rather DEEP MUD puddle FAST and the muddy water splashed up and over the windshield, through the open roof, passing Todd and Dick in the front seats and WHAM!.... right across Judy's, Spencer's and my faces! The first thing out of Spencer's mouth was... "Daddy! Can we do that again!!!!????" It's was hilarious! We all couldn't stop howling! I wish I had gotten a picture of our 3 faces... covered in muddy water sitting in the back seat!

On our way back down the road to the valley again, we stopped to pick wild raspberries. Spencer ate more than he was putting in his bag.... which was expected!

Grandpa was helping Spencer fill his bag as fast as he could eat them!

We caught some photos of some bumble bees collecting pollen on the many brightly coloured thistles. There we clusters of them feeding on them.

We ventured back down the valley aways, crossed the river and back up past Grave Lake where we came across the same avalanche area that we had encountered in the winter time. This time there was no snow and just simply green everywhere. Here's a blog post with a picture of the exact same area in February... HERE (3rd picture in).

Spencer climbed up on a rock and did a little dance in celebration for getting out of the Jeep for a few minutes.

We arrived a home a little while later and had a nice porkchop dinner on the BBQ. Overall, it was a great day of adventuring!

Elk Lakes Adventure

Dick and Judy, Todd's parents arrived late on Saturday evening; just in time to see me go off to work. Todd and Spencer took them on a wild adventure down the hydro line in the Jeep. With the rain we had got the few hours before, they had a "fun" time getting up the steep hills of the some of gulleys along the trail.

Yesterday we all piled in the Jeep and started off on our adventure to Elk Lakes Provincial Park; about 65 km North of Elkford.

We had just got on the dirt road outside of Elkford when the boys yelled out "BEAR!". And there on the slope about 20 feet away from the road was a grizzly bear and her cub. The minute we got out to take a picture, her cub disapppeared in the brush above her. All we saw was a little dark bum disappear!

And then we taveled a little further up the road, maybe 3 minutes later and we came across this female moose in the middle of the bush. She took off running into the bush as we spooked her with a stamming door.

Our next stop was Blue Lake. It's a tiny little lake in the middle of nowhere but they have 3 user mantained campsites.

Spencer was enjoying wading in the water. We kept telling him to hike up his pants as he got deeper but that was a loosing battle! We ended up having to completely change his pants when we got back to the Jeep.

At Blue Lake....

So we traveled our 65km on all dirt roads to Elk Lake Provincial Park in one piece. We did stop at "the cabin" to use a picnic table and have a cheese and cracker snack and a drink.

Once we arrived at the park's parking lot, Judy, Todd, Spencer and I hiked in the 1.3km trail to see Elk Lake. Spencer just HAD to have a walking stick....

When we arrived, this is just one of the beautiful views we saw..... Simply a stunning view!

We ventured down the extremely well taken care of trails along the lake and took lots of photos of the water and the beautiful mountains.

We discovered 11 tents set up in the camping area. Each set of tents were pitched on leveled ground pads and each site had a fire pit. The area even had a VERY clean cedar wood pit toilet and one food cache area.

We turned back at the end of the lake and decided to head back to the trailhead, back to Dick in the parking lot.

We made one last stop along the edge of the lake to enjoy the view.

We just had to get at least one family picture too!

As we waited for Daddy, Spencer decided to venture into the shallows with his walking stick and play and splash in the FREEZING water! I mean it HAD to be freezing as some parts of the mountians around the lake still had snow on them.


We certainly enjoyed our drive and our little hike into the woods!