Camp Cold Comfort

Early Morning Bathroom Break (note the shoes: I grabbed Peter's and Pip put on Tabs')

Breakfast!

A Morning Read in the Car

Marshmallow Breakfast

The River at Our Campsite, Just as the Morning Sun Peaked Above the Mountain

Peter Teaching Pip How to Fly

Supper! Veggie Dogs...YUMMY ;)

Me and My Vienie

Camp Girls

Cuddle Time

Fire Time with Papa Ganoosh

Our Tent Site at Illecillewaet Camp Ground


Illecillewaet Campground, Glacier National Park, Canada

Our tent site lay right on the bank of a glacier fed river. The amazing roar of the rapids was most unusual to try and sleep to. At first I liked the roaring sound but in the evening, by the fire, I longed for a little quiet highlighted by the odd owl or wolf. 
The park had the best campfire sing along in the evening--the girls and I ventured out while Peter napped in the tent. We sang many great songs (can't beat Country Roads! Also a few the ranger made up about the area to The Eagles tunes) and the park ranger played both guitar and banjo and told great historical and ecological  stories of the area.

That night, as I was drifting off to sleep in our tent, the roar was rather disturbing. Though, I noted that just before I nodded off, the roar became so distant to me, I hardly heard it--weird how the brain can dull the sound. Alas, I was innocent in thinking the only negative to the roaring rapids at night was the noise. Sleeping beside an icy glacial river is well...glacial! 

We all finally nestled down for the night in the tent. OMG was it a COLD night! I was hypothermic. To make the night worse, I awoke at about 1 a.m. feeling deathly ill. I felt super weak and nauseous. I crawled out of the tent into the dark and into the car. I asked Peter to follow me. I told him he better drive me to Revelstoke to a hotel as I was going to be up all night vomiting. I realized though, that it couldn't be done. The nearest town was 2 h away in either direction and we could not leave the children in the tent. So I lay in the car, still, and freezing to death. I did not sleep a wink yet, amazingly enough, the virus was short lived and had passed by morning. 

I had fantasies though, that I would start up the car and drive it out to the campground parking lot and crank up the heat and heated seats until I was warm again. Alas, I could not as I knew the crew in the tent would freak if they heard me drive away and I was too weak to walk back to the tent and tell them my plans. 

I waited for the crack of dawn and stumbled from the car to attempt to make a fire. Damn if I couldn't do it! It was so stubborn. After an hour I woke up Peter for his assistance. Thank G he was a cub scout. The fire was soon blazing.

 Despite the cold, the campground was so wondrously beautiful and the mountain air so fresh--I didn't want to leave.

Sasquatch Country: Harrison Lake, British Columbia

Above: Building a sand village on Harrison Lake BC. And Tabs looking for treasure in the shallows.

Below: A gorgeous moss covered tree stump in the forest that looked like a diplodocus ready to spring to life at dusk.

Parasitic flowers on the forest floor.

Harrison Lake--private beach that took hiking on death defying cliffs to reach--worth it though, the water was so clean and refreshing.

Kyran making his best Sasquatch face!

The tiniest campers with their Sasquatch "Quatchie" dolls.

Buddies. Finally--I caught Kyran unaware!

The gruesome twosome caught their favorite cuz. And Kyran making yet another one of his comical faces! It is impossible to photograph him in repose.

Canoeing in Sasquatch Country

We had a wonderful canoe to a private beach. We went in circles for awhile because Kyran was a much stronger paddler than I. But I got stronger and he calmed his strokes and I steered the canoe back to shore! The picks are from Hicks Lake which was a quiet, mountain surrounded gorgeous little lake. The toad was at least 8 inches long and so adorable.

Miranda is now known as 'Hot Wheels' as she peeled into the camp site at such a speed that the park warden gave her a talking to and neighbor campers shouted "give her paper!" (ticket) But it was due to stress as we had dismantled our entire tent site to move to a new camp ground on the lake only to have to move our camp 3x's as the sites turned out to be reserved! All worked out for the best as we discovered a new almost empty camp ground deep in the forest that backed an amazing wild ravine.

We had many, many adventures. We found an amazing hike to a private beach on Harrison Lake. We had to hike way up through the deep cedar forest on narrow rocky cliff-rimmed trails (I was a little terrified as cliffs, kids and I don't mix!) But the beach was gorgeous and obviously remote. Harrison Lake is HUGE and so clean. The mighty Fraser River flows from Harrison to Vancouver. One can boat to and from Vancouver from Harrison Lake. We hiked past the hot spring source and witnessed 65 oC water bubbling to the surface. I love Harrison Lake. It is massive and clean with tall coastal mountains surrounding it. The mountains surrounding the lake are crown land so the population of humans is very low (bonus!).

Our craziest adventure happened on our last night. Miranda woke me in a panic, something big was outside our tent and did we remember to put away our food coolers? I was so dead tired and it was pitch black inside the tent--I kept thinking Miranda's voice was coming from the opposite direction and I must have turned myself around in the night. Once I got my barrings, the answer to her question was no. YIKES! Mistaya and Kyran woke in the tent next to us. They said something big was walking outside their tent and it was really stinky. At that stinky info, terror flowed through my brains. All I could think of was the recent bear attack on several tenters in Yellowstone. I wanted to make noise to scare it away, Miranda wanted to remain quiet and let it go about its business of eating our supplies. I warned our kids, "Stay in your tent and be quiet. Worst case senerio, throw yourselves on top of the little kids and form a huddle--if I yell huddle." We decided to use our car keys to flash our car lights and beep the van horn. Next, Miranda took out the lantern and discovered the creature gone and our coolers tossed about. I joined M to clean up and saw a large creature in the shadows. It turned out to be a very big raccoon, sitting on its haunches, eating one of our bagels and smacking its lips! A huge relief that it wasn't a bear or worse a grizzly as Sasquatch park is home to all types of bears, cougars and wolves too. But raccoons can be very aggressive so we were happy when it stopped to lick its long tail and headed for the forest. Sleeping after that was near impossible. I kept hearing sounds and sure enough, the loud "Whoop! Whoop! of an unusual forest owl that sounded more like a primate than a bird--it had kept me guessing the night before. And several frightened little girls needed trips to the outhouse which was 1/2 km away and a very dark trip indeed.

Camp Sasquatch

Park entrance--adventure awaits us!

Suspicious foot print we found on the shore of Hicks Lake--Kyran's foot in comparison.

Pip and Atremis telling Sasquatch stories to each other.

Tabs, Artemis and Nemi

Mist and Kyran

Chef Miranda with her specialty a la Jiffy Pop!

Melissa (me) sampling Miranda's scrambled eggs (NOT! I hate eggs in actuality)

Chef Miranda presiding over the breakfast table.

Chef Melissa very pleased that she didn't have to cook the scrambled eggs! Note the steep ravine behind our tent--very wild and lush with ferns and a bog style creek at the bottom (Mist, Nem and Tabs sunk up to their knees in boggy black mud--I fear the little Pip and Artemis would have disappeared from sight all together if they stepped down from the log bridges!

Kyran as Jorge (pronounced Horhay)-his latin alter ego. Jorge was most entertaining, helpful and in fact kept me in stitches the entire time!