CAMPING! First trip of 2021! A bit of a jaunt out of town at a two and a half hour drive but a good road trip is always fun! Prairie Creek Provincial Recreational Area, somewhere I’ve never been until now and I do like going to new places. I want to say it was a remote area being that there were no cellular services and it was mostly quiet and very dark at night, but the campground loop we were in was close to the highway and if you got on it and drove about 5 minutes east, there was full services on our phones. LTE even, ha. The campsites were indeed a phone free area though, nice to unplug for the most part!
The weather could have been worse. Eleven of us in 6 tents and we saw rain off and on for most of Saturday. Enough to keep us from straying too far from the campsite, but not nearly enough to pack things up and go home.
I pretty much have this signature set up going on now, matching blue gear with an everything-I-need coffee station. I think on my next camping trip I’m going to put up the awning on the end of my tent. Yes it has one. I put it up on my first trip ever with this tent and the wind darned near ripped it off. Gonna try again though, it would have come in handy on Saturday when it rained. The tarp also went over the tent after the rain started, haha. The awning does have rope and tent pegs too which may help with the wind. I don’t think I used those last time.
Yup bear country again! Kinda difficult to avoid it when you camp near the mountains! This picture once I saw it enlarged on my desktop computer and could see everything in it more clearly, the only thing I could think of was Game of Thrones and the Starbucks cup incident. That’s EXACTLY what’s happening here! Yes. Yes it is.
Had some new gadgets to put to the test on this trip in an effort to battle the evening chill… A heated vest and heated sleeping bag! Like what the heck, who knew this stuff exists!! I stumbled across the sleeping bag on Amazon and then started searching for heated camping anything and wow! Insta-buy, and worth it too. Both items passed the night time coldness test and will be used on every camping trip going forward! The vest was great for sitting around the campfire and walking around (wore it under a jacket) while the sleeping bag was wonderful for the tent.
Both have 3 heat settings. The hottest setting I wouldn’t say is super hot, but for me it was enough to take away the chill of sleeping outside and it kept me warm enough all night! The battery is a regular ol’ power bank that you would use for your phone or other electronic devices, and it lasted pretty much all night. Even when it ran out of juice I was still warm enough until it was time to get up. I had one power bank for each night and a separate one that came with the vest so I was set up for SUCCESS!
I attempted to research nearby geocaches before heading out to the campground and was surprised there are absolutely zero in the immediate (walking distance) area. It really made me wonder if they are allowed there. Seems odd they wouldn’t be but I guess you never know. I started thinking maybe this area is where I should hide my first geocache. I VOWED that I would hide one this year and it’s already June and I’m not anywhere toward achieving that vow! Maybe I could hide one at the creek across the highway or somewhere in the area if the campground is not allowed. I’d have to find out what the rules are. Also it’s a bit of a trek to have to come and maintain it, but what if it was super duper durable like in a waterproof ammo can or something like that? Hmmmm… The gears are turning!
The geocaches on the map to the south east (the little green dots) appear to be near a different campground but after sifting through some of the logs for them, it sounds like they are still a bit of a hike to reach. Guess we could have drove to Rocky Mountain House since it seems they’ve got quite a few!
And what have we here… Someone in my group asked if we’d be doing any geocaching and when I started carrying on about how there were none nearby but then thinking that we should scope out potential hiding spots, I was offered this ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS light-up Pride pin to place in my first cache hide as SWAG. HOW INSPIRATIONAL IS THAT?!!! Now I want to get on this cache hiding thing and achieve my vow even more! Whether I hide my first cache out here in the boonies or choose a location closer to home, THIS PIN is going into it for the first lucky person to grab, HA!
This 7 second video shows the pin in ALL IT’S PRIDE GLORY. Warning: The video may cause blindness… BEDAZZLE AND BEWARE!
And hey it’s June… Happy Pride month everyone!
Managed to get out for a quick walk to the actual creek at Prairie Creek in between the rain on Saturday. Yes it rained on and off for a good portion of the day, no downpours at least. And no wind, woo hoo!
This is about as good as it get folks… Tossing rocks into the creek, who knew?? Exciting times right here!
The gang’s all here! Well actually no, there were 11 of us in total on this camping adventure so this is only the partial gang. Yes we are standing in the middle of the highway. And as you can see we did an AMAZING job at social distancing.
Two cast iron pots on the fire can only mean one thing: CHILI COOKOUT!! Tasty AS ALWAYS!
More entertainment at the campsite! Petey and Petunia stopped by for numerous visits and to hang out with us, although Petunia was a bit shy and hid a lot. Petey was much more social. I think Petey may actually be a chipmunk, but his NAME was ‘Petey the Squirrel’, so species is totally irrelevant!
Here’s a couple of big ol’ rocks for good measure. The photo opportunities are just ENDLESS. Until next time!
