Tour de Alberta (Part 2): Leech Lake

In Cypress Hills Provinical Park, Kyler and I got to practice setting up our tent, with the fly on, in the rain.
We also got to figure out how to make dinner in the rain. Our solution was this set of covered picnic tables in the day use area.

The kiddos kept complaining they were cold,

But Calista found a way to make herself warm!

And by the time dinner was done,

Everyone was in a pretty good mood.

Even if it was wet.

Our campground was up a hill a bit, and completely covered in fog.

Honestly, you could have told me I was camping in Oregon and I would have believed you.

I actually kind of loved it.

In the morning, weather had cleared up a bit, so we decided to take a hike.

The trail was still very muddy from all the rain the day before

Which resulted in some very muddy moments for me.

I changed pants when we got back to the car.
Our next stop in Cypress Hills was an outdoor, self-guided forestry museum.

There was a ton of old equipment that the kiddos absolutely loved to climb on.

So we spent a while, letting them each climb and play.

We stopped by a couple of viewpoints.

Craig refused to get out at Horseshoe Canyon,

But he was willing to look at Reesor Lake.

While paused here, another car came up to us and told us they had just seen a couple of cougars down the road!

We continued down the road (via car) to Reesor Lake itself, where we ate lunch and played around for nearly 2 hours.

We didn't see any cougars, though. Just a couple of leeches.
Since weather was still holding,

We played a little at the playground and then headed to Elkwater Lake after dinner.

Of course the kids insisted on playing in the lake, even though they were fully clothed.

And of course, they got completely soaked. Whoops!

The short walk back to the car felt much longer with wet, whiny children

But once they were dry again their moods improved quite a bit.

Or they fell asleep, exhausted.

Another segment of our journey complete.  By this point, Kyler and I were looking at 5 days since we last showered (not part of the original plan, but most of the campsites had closed their showers due to Covid) and the kids had a perpetual layer of grime. Sounds about right for camping, I think,

Because of all the poor weather, we spent most of our time in Cypress Hills feeling like we were the only people in the world. It was kind of cool, actually. I'd love to go back and explore some more, including heading to the Saskatchewan side or learning to ski on the bunny slopes in the winter.

Our next stop would be warmer, drier, windier, and much busier. Bring on the hoodoos!

Tour de Alberta (Part 1): Dinosaurs

It's kind of funny. I spend pretty much 11 months planning this trip all over Alberta. I started booking things in December and January. Then the pandemic hit, and everything shut down, and we wondered if we would be able to go on our Tour of Alberta. We had to change our plans, and again, and again. But ultimately, this trip I've been planning for the last year ended up being pretty much the only kind of trip we could have done this year. And we pulled it off!

We started our (southern) Alberta tour by heading to Drumheller. After setting up camp,

we visited the big dinosaur

and several other smaller ones,

hung out by the river

and at the playground,

and the kiddos were so excited to set up our tent for the first time,

they promptly all climbed into their sleeping bags.

Sadly, getting them to sleep when it was actually nighttime was not as easy!

We also had to hit up the Royal Tyrell Museum, of course.

When we bought our timed tickets, I was a little worried with how the kiddos would do.

They usually like to rush through the entire museum, and then go back through a second time.

We couldn't do that this time.

So I decided to buy a "Fun Book" to help them focus on finding information and taking their time.

It mostly worked.


After the dinosaur museum, we headed to Dinosaur Provincial Park.

This place was probably our least favorite to camp at. There was large gravel over the entire campsite, tons of mosquitoes that wouldn't leave us alone, even when we had bug spray, a large, loud group just next to us, and it rained quite a bit. Still, we made the best of it.

While it was raining, we sought out slightly drier things to do, like the visitor center and Tyrell Museum Field Station.

It was inside and dry, and also had one of the coolest mounted dinosaurs I've ever seen.

It's a lambeosaurus being attacked by a pack of Dromaeosaurs.

After the visitor's centre, we headed to see the fossil houses. One is an in situ fossil of a duck billed dinosaur, and the other is a replica of a centrosaurus bone bed. 

We took the short hike between them through a little bit of badlands, 

and on the way back Craig slipped a little and got a bum full of mud.

The badlands are treacherous places in the sun and rain!

Since it was raining so much, we decided to talk a drive around the area,

although Calista wanted to get out a dance in the pouring rain. She was by far the most willing to get out of the car and look around, while the boys stayed inside.

When weather improved a bit, just she and I walked along this view point looking into the valley,

Pretty impressive, isn't it?
We all did head over to the Cottonwood Flats hike,

which was not dry as a bone.
As one might expect, there were tons of cottonwood trees, some of the a few hundred years old.

The old ones were massive and scared and absolutely breathtaking in their resilience.

In spite of the rain, we still had a good time and good attitudes.

Most of the time. 

The next morning, weather was a little bit better, so on our way out of town, 

after some breakfast, we tried out another Badlands hike.

It had dried out enough we could actually do it without falling.

Although we could see some places in the dried mud there people had clearly slipped the day before.

All in all, Dinosaur Provincial Park was good, even if the weather didn't cooperate

And if we didn't get to do the interpretive program I'd really wanted to do so badly. Stupid Covid. Oh well. Onto our next place, which we probably wouldn't have done if it wasn't for the corona virus: Cypress Hills Provincial Park.