ALBERTA CANADA

One of the places Dan has wanted to go for a very long time is Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada. Why Pincher Creek? Well, because it's the home of his very favorite author, Andy Russell. Andy was an outdoorsman extraordinaire. He was a guide, hunter, fisherman, packer, tracker, you name it, if it had anything to do with being out doors, Andy was into it. That is Dan in a nutshell too. Any of you who know him, know that he is a major hunter and outdoorsman. He loves to "commune with nature" and be out there just enjoying his solitude.

My friend Barb Michel let me know of a presentation that Andy Russell's son, Charlie Russell was putting on about changing how the average person feels about Grizzly bears. We are typically terrified of them, but Charlie showed us that the Grizzlies are "programed" to be fearful of humans by the way we treat them, and that is what makes them dangerous. He showed a slide show of him living with very wild bears on a Russian peninsula. Some of the photographs where incredibly beautiful. Those bears where amazing looking. There was one that was absolutely golden in color. I wish I had a picture of her, she was spectacular.

Our camping site was perfect, even though we don't normally like camping in campgrounds. We were in Beauvais Lake campground. They were full on reservations, but still had 3 "first come first serve" sites left, and we got the  best of those. We had no one on the front door side of our camper, all there was was woods and then the road that lead out of the campground. On the back side of our camper was another family, however, while there wasn't really a lot of room between our spot and theirs, there was a lot of trees and other foliage between us, so it gave the illusion of a great deal of privacy. The only problem was their dog barking at our dogs a LOT. It was a collie, and VERY annoying, but, Beau and Riley did really well at not barking back, so that was good.

We spent some time at Harvest Festival where we saw lots of old tractors, cars and pioneer stuff. It was nice, but it was hot, and Riley was yankin' on my arm every time he saw another dog. He was being such a jerk!!  I ended up with a headache and we left before we had seen everything we wanted to. I really need to work with him more!

One thing that was really funny was as soon as we crossed the border into Canada, the speed limit signs changed and just said 100 that was all, just  100, I was like WOW!!! We can drive 100 mph in Canada....and then Dan reminded me that it wasn't mph, but rather kph. so 100kph is more like 60mph.

One nice thing, is that it wasn't hot at all really.....the warmest it got was 75ish, and as opposed to the triple digits we've had down here, Dan and I actually threw out the idea of moving up there, at least in the summer! It was so pretty, the weather was so nice...But I'd have to figure out their money system.  Their gas was about 4 bucks a gallon in American money. I just don't quite get the exchange rate, which isn't surprising since I'm mathematically challenged!

You can see the pictures from this on my Facebook page, I hope you enjoy them. We certainly had a wonderful time. As Dan said on our way home...this was by far one of the very best camping trips we've ever been on!

Kind of looks like Ireland doesn't it!