Heading South

Our Indian Summer ended abruptly.  The evening that we left Wood Buffalo, we set up camp in the chill of an evening rainstorm at Twin Lakes. 

From there, we traveled on to Grande Prairie.  Throughout our trip, we had been puzzled at the lack of migrating birds we had seen.  About an hour north of Grande Prairie, however, we found the geese.  We saw hundreds of them, gleaning fields to prepare for their long flight south.

We opted to spend the night in a motel at Grande Prairie.  In addition to our relishing hot showers, the Xterra needed an oil change, we had laundry to wash, and shopping to do.  It took us until around 2:30 to finish all our errands. 

We decided to drive on towards Jasper National Park but had difficulty finding a good campground along the way.  The first one we stopped at was situated less than a hundred yards from a railroad track.  The second had over a dozen trucks and horse trailers in it, obviously a staging ground for outfitters. 

Finally, we arrived at Pierre Grave Lake Campground and found a beautiful site.  Unfortunately, however, it was so cold that we huddled in Oz rather than hike around the park.  By morning, the temperature registered 31 degrees inside the camper.  We discovered that Rox’s water bowl had frozen over and the condensate on the inside of Oz was frost.  I was so cold that my leg muscles hurt from being balled up in the sleeping bag.  It was not a pretty sight breaking camp that morning!

David suggested a hot breakfast, so we drove into Hinton before heading on to Jasper.  Once in the park, we went straight to last year’s campsite, hoping to once again be in the middle of the bull elk’s harem and wondering what new wonders we would see there.