Alberta Camping Adventure | Part One | Sylvan Lake

One summer we decided it would fun to take a tenting trip to Alberta with my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife.

We all met up at Sylvan Lake for our first night of camping. We had just gotten set up when our young son had to use the washroom. The washroom was within view when I was standing at the edge of our campsite and he ran off use it. My mother's instinct tingled, and I started walking closer to the building. Just as I got there, he came out and spotted a little path across the road and darted down it. The path he took was in a thick section of bush between the road and the river with trails running all through it. I could see the roaring river through the trees and started to panic. I finally caught up to him and the two of us eventually made it back up onto the road.

I have no sense of direction and was totally disoriented and soon realized we were lost. Of course, at that point, it had started to rain. We kept walking around that huge camping area not knowing which way to go. After a while, an RCMP officer drove by and noticed us pitiful, wet characters and stopped to see what our problem was. I confessed that we were lost. He put us in the back of his cruiser and started driving around looking for our campsite.  

We drove up and down each road trying to find our site. By this time my family was starting to wonder what in the world had happened to us. How much trouble could we get into going to the bathroom thirty feet away? They were standing on the road deciding where to start looking when the police cruiser pulled into the campsite. My son and I thanked the officer and sheepishly tumbled out of the cruiser with the family all staring at us with a “what the heck” look on their faces.

We had set dad's old army tent up and my sister, her husband, the Hubs, myself and our son snuggled in for the night. Our daughter slept with my brother and his wife in their tent. The Hubs is a bit of a bushman and is always on high alert for danger when he is in the wilderness. He was concerned that a bear might be around, so he had that thought in the back of his mind. He put a small axe under his pillow just in case and fell asleep. 

At some point in the night, my brother-in-law went out of the tent. I knew he had left because I had woken up when he stepped on my air mattress pillow and my head bounced up and down. The Hubs did not hear him leave but woke up when he sensed someone or something was coming into the tent when my brother-in-law returned. When he bent down to enter the tent the Hubs made a move for the axe under his pillow and I had to reassure him that it was the brother-in-law and not a bear.

The next day my sister and brother-in-law headed for home as they had already been camping for a few days before we joined them. They probably had a better sleep at home that night without any axe-wheelieing relatives nearby.

My family carried on with my brother and his wife for the next leg of the adventure. 

Visit my blog or podcast next week to see what shenanigans we got into in Alberta Camping Trip: Part Two: Bear Country

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