Kananaskis-ness

The weekend was a blast! Camping was a lot of fun. We spent Saturday afternoon trying to find a campground that wasn't full, and eventually settled into Canyon, just below the Upper Kanananskis Lake dam.



Doug, Nick, Joe and I travelled up in the morning, and I had my first beer cracked by 1:30pm. We went for a tour around the Upper lake and a bit of a swim before swinging back to the campsite and waiting for the rest of the gang to show up.




View from the campsite



Calvin, Doug and Curtis showed up around 5:00pm and Jeff showed up around 8:30pm. We went for another walk around the south side of the lake before settling on the campsite with plenty of beer and hoagies. Lots of laughs, lots of liquor. I was completely drained by 11pm or so and feel asleep (okay....passed out) on a blanket by the fire even before the guys headed back to Calgary. Sort of a loser move. What do you expect after drinking in the sun for ten hours?


Da boyz in da lake (Upper Kananaskis)

The Park Manager was a total arse though. When we first encountered him in the afternoon, we were considering squatting on one of the more scenic sites down by the stream. He said that there was a Grizzly roaming the stream below the campground and was occasionally moving through sites 7 & 8. Needless to say we moved to site 19. He said that he didn't want any tenters in those 'exposed' sites, but then he gave site 7 to some tenters anyways before the end of the day. At 11pm he came over to the site (again!) to be a nuisance and kick the guests out, and then informs those of us staying overnight that there isn't just one grizzly bear in the area, but THREE male grizzlies. What a freakin' boob. Doug was justified to have a hate on for the guy (he's encountered him before).




What a view....

Those campgrounds have more rules than an internment camp. It's pretty ridiculous. You're about to run out to the manager everytime he swings around on the golf-kart and say: "Look, we're trying to do some escapist zen thing from our freaking lives by being here, and you're REALLY making it hard to accomplish when you're constantly ON OUR ASSES! Bug off already, you loser!"

We had our tent set up and we were heading for a hike across the lake dam. Within FIVE MINUTES of leaving our site, he was already snooping around, taking down license plate numbers, etc., writing up reports that we had already littered the site with seven crushed beer cans....


Is this boy inventive or what?

...the only other issue was the fact we had to set up the tent on the gravelbed of the site and it felt like sleeping on a concrete slab Saturday night. We were all very tired Sunday morning.

We got back into Calgary around noon on Sunday. Joe and I spent the remainder of the day doing as little as possible.