Visiting and Camping and Kayaking

Friday we head to Lethbridge. M our daughter and G live there and we have not seen them for a couple of years. Debbie snuck down once but I stayed back. Lethbridge is a small city and even though it has most of the big city amenities it does not have the humanity. Saturday morning, we set off on a walk and take in a small section of the huge river valley park called Indian Battle Park, where Fort Whoop Up is located. In an hour we pass maybe 5 people. In Edmonton’s river valley on a Saturday morning we would pass 20 times that.

While walking along the river I was scouting kayaking possibilities. It looks good. I think M can expect to see us again soon and we will have kayaks on our car roof.

We really like to kayak on the Battle River. It is very slow and we can easily paddle upstream. This means we can enjoy all the benefits of river paddling, no waves, minor wind, constantly changing vista, of course the downstream advantage of river flow and we don’t have to shuttle cars as we do on most rivers. So we take an extra day on the way home and stop at Big Knife Provincial Park to spend a couple of hours on each of Sunday and Monday on the river. The campground there is quite small but again quiet and treed. There is plenty of room when we arrive on Sunday afternoon and it is not even half full by the evening. Mosquitoes seem to be in abundance this year. Again there is plenty around, mostly just annoying but don’t forget your DEET. The Oldman River Campground had gophers, Big Knife has squirrels. They are friendly, I think they are use to campers and those campers have to eat and that means bread crumbs or the occasional french fry is to be had. Their shyness disappears when food is involved. Big Knife is a really good place if you fish or river boat or if you just want to chill for a few days. It’s one of our go to camping spots.

Murray on the Battle River

From Lethbridge home we again use the back roads. Most of them we have never been on before. One that was indicated on the map, yes, a paper MAP, as gravel turned out to be paved and it was smooth sailing the entire way. There is very little traffic. I don’t think we had to pass a single vehicle and no one passed us. The scenery was terrific, rolling hills to dead flat prairie. The only thing that bothered me a bit was in some spots all you could see was canola in every direction. We had the AC on or I would have had to hold my breath for very long periods of time. Blooming canola has the strange affect on me of limiting my breathing to a minimum. But it was pretty, acres and acres of bright yellow carpet.

We will soon be off again. I hope the paddling is as good.

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