Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

The first time I camped under canvas was way back in 1973 - I was just 6 months old, and I apparently slept much better in a tent than I did in my cot back home. Even now, all these years later, I find sleeping in a tent extremely relaxing, and I generally have a decent night's sleep. Last weekend, I headed off for another camping trip, this time at Long Lake, which is about two hours drive from home. The plan was for Wilson and I to do a walk-in camp for the weekend, whilst Andy stayed with the girls and kept them entertained in our absence.  I was going to be using just basic gear, and my accommodation would be a tarp which I would be making into a tent. I took everything in my backpack just to test things out for future backpacking trips, whilst Wilson would be carrying some of his own stuff in a little doggy backpack that we had recently purchased for him. The weather for the weekend looked to be warm and dry, although it was expected to get close to freezing point overnight,so...

 It's been another fun weekend, and whilst our next camping trip isn't until next weekend, I've still managed to get outdoors and do some if the things I love to do. We also celebrated a fellow Youtuber's 40th birthday, and it was great to finally meet them and put faces to names we only ever hear in a video. It started with a lovely walk with the pups at the Terwilliger dog park. This area is great for walking the dogs, with tons of trails and wide open spaces, and a couple of doggy beaches alongside the river which is certainly the main attraction for Wilson, Tillie and April. Dog park fun ... Wilson and Tillie :) Dog park fun with April! Beautiful autumn colours :) We were there for a good couple of hours again whilst the three dogs had a good swim and a play, explored the woods and got excited when spotting the squirrels, and of course socializing with all the other dogs and tiring themselves out. It's definitely their favourite dig park, and seeing them looking...

We've been talking about "wild" camping in Alberta for a while now, but we've never really known where we could legally camp, nor which areas of the province fall under public lands aka Crown Land. Official campgrounds are always fully booked months in advance, and being spur of the moment people, we don't always like to plan out our lives months in advance, preferring instead to live from day to day and have fun along the way. A couple of months ago, I was chatting with my boss at work, and he mentioned that he'd been out to Abraham Lake on a long weekend, and whilst he'd not camped out there, he  did say that it was public land and you could camp there for free. I'd heard of Abraham Lake but hadn't really done much reading about it. I knew it was out near Nordegg on the road to Saskatchewan Crossing which sits on the Icefields Parkway, but other than that, I didn't really know much else about the area. I also wasn't sure how comfortable I...