The Siever Family

We went to the Calgary Alberta Temple open house tonight. It was actually the last day of the nearly-one-month-long open house. We arrived into Calgary early because we wanted to stop off at Peters’ Drive-In for supper. It was the very first time we had been there, and many people we know kept raving about it.

The food was okay. The temple was pretty cool. It is really nice inside, but it sure feels small.

Regan and I went backcountry camping this weekend. This was Regan’s first time backcountry camping, and it was my first time without having someone with me who had been there before. Even so, I spent weeks researching where we were going to go, which was tough because there were no photos or reports on camping in the area where I wanted to go; most of the reports were for hiking.

Here we are at the camping area. We started on the trail on the left, going up the hill. We took it because of what we saw on the sign, which seemed to indicate following the sign would lead to the Bob Creek Wildland Park.

After about a half-hour hike, and once we reached the first summit, we ran into a Public Lands Administration employee, and he showed us the direction we needed to go, which was in the middle ground of the photo below, and off to the left of the photo.

We hiked down to the parking area, and got on the right trail, crossing Bob Creek.

Shortly after the creek, we came across this forest, and the trail took us right through it.

The trail eventually forked, and the left fork led us to this gate, which I assume is the boundary between Black Creek Ranchlands, where we cannot camp, and Bob Creek Wildland.

We went through the gate, hiked over a small hill, crossed Bob Creek twice, and up in a meadow, where we decided to set up camp.

Here is a view of the campsite from the latrine:

Here is the creek where we got our drinking water and where we cooled off from the hot afternoon sun:

We built a small cooking fire around supper time by digging a pit, then using only small diameter wood.

Regan having supper. We brought dehydrated food for supper and breakfast. All we had to do was add hot water.

After the fire burned down and we doused it, we went to bed. We played games (Backgammon, Connect Four, Tic Tac Toe, Checkers, etc) for about an hour or so.

We had a pretty uneventful sleep, but around daybreak, I hear coyotes barking in the distance, and I thought I heard a bear grunting near our campsite. I did see a deer shortly after we arrived at camp. We go up around 6:30 and watched the sun come over the hill to the east of our site. Once it started drying our tent, we started a breakfast fire and rehydrated some breakfast.

We broke camp and left shortly after 10:00. Here are a couple of shots of Regan hiking back to the van.

We came across this frog on the way back.

We saw a coyote cross the road shortly after we drove away from the parking area, and saw a badge cross the road a few minutes later. I can’t wait to take Sinéad next year.

I took the three middle children—Regan, Ash, and Ace—camping to Castle Falls this weekend. The sites are first- come, first-served, so I took the day off in order to get their earlier than the after-work crowd.

We arrived shortly after noon and quickly set up camp.

We did a bit of exploring, and came across the water source. Here is Regan pumping out water:

We went for a bit of a hike, and found a great place to go swimming. It was pretty warm out, and we really wanted to cool off. Here we are hiking down to our spot:

Here is what the river looked like from our swimming hole:

The children a little apprehensive about getting into the very cold water:

Regan after going all the way under:

This is as far as Ash could make it:

Ace made it a bitter further:

Regan skipping rocks:

We stopped off at the falls on the way back to the campsite:

After supper, we took a trip down to the river, which was just a few dozen metres from our campsite:

It started raining in the middle of night. There was even a lot of lightning and thunder, which was pretty cool when it lit up the tent. Anyhow, the rain didn’t let up, so we had to skip the pancakes we had planned, broke camp in the rain, and we had apples and trail mix for breakfast before heading home.

Here’s the view on the way home.

It sure was a great time, and Mary fell in love with the site just by seeing the photos. She hopes to join us next year.