Last night at Crimson Lake - A T-Storm and a Moose

Thunderstorm at Crimson Lake – and a  Moose

It’s best to leave a place at an exciting moment, and my last night at Crimson Lake was just that.

But even earlier that day when Baloo and I were walking to the lake to take its daily measure I saw a huge fake moose in the main day use parking lot. I thought that was pretty cool on the part of Parks Alberta as today was a national celebration of parks across Canada,and lots of fun activities were planned such as sand sculptures, geocaching, and a scavenger hunt, all topped off with a big chocolate cake. But back to the fake moose, as we drew closer Baloo went ballistic, and that woke up the big boy, who started and then with a big shake of its antlers in our direction, it took off for the woods. I wonder how close I would have got if Baloo hadn’t started to bark?

It was a fun day and there were lots of junior girl forest rangers to help out, they have a pretty neat job for the summer, staying in camps and helping out on park projects. I talked to their leader and she told me that she had biked along from Alaska to San Francisco, with no money, just to see how that would work out. She camped on the side of the road in the forest, and sometimes she met people who offered her meals and a place to crash, and on occasion she stopped in a town and worked for cash. But her main source of food was outside of grocery stores because she said they chuck out so much stuff as soon as the date is expired, but the food is still completely edible. Wow, what courage! And on another trip she walked 300 km in the desert in Israel. And she wants to go back and walk some more.

My favourite family were back for the weekend, and they won the sand sculpture, they created the life cycle of a frog, sculpting the four stages. One of the 3 girls found me on the beach. "Janice" she said, and reaching up, gently took my hand and led me to their sculpture.  There are four kids, they are bilingual, and love being out in the forest and camping.  They are so respectful and yet a ton of fun. I will certainly miss them.

So, the cake was done, the party was over, and then came the dark sky. It looked and felt really strange to me so after a moment of indecision, I pulled down my awning.  I stepped inside the trailer, and the door banged behind me as a big wind came rushing through the trees. It got really dark and then hail began banging on the roof and walls of my trailer. I pulled my ceiling vents down and then sat and tried not to be scared. The hail sounded like golf balls being hit against my trailer. When it hit the vents I was sure the glass was cracking. I couldn’t figure out an escape route so I got out my cycling helmet and put that on. I looked in the mirror and thought boy does that look stupid, but it sure felt better, and I was keeping it on.   After 10 minutes or so, the hail stopped, and the rain came down in buckets. My fire was barely smoking, and the ground was all flooded so I decided to go to bed. The rain had come through onto the foot of my bed, and it was really wet, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.