It has been a busy summer filled with gatherings of friends and family, work all over the province and time to explore new regions.
I revisited one of my favourite places last week with my favourite people. My entire family from young nephews and nieces, to my siblings and their partners, to my parents headed up to Prince Albert National Park for the weekend. I've always loved the park. I spent many nights sleeping in tents wondering if we would be eaten by bears as a child, as a teen I would sneak up for the evening with friends and these days I enjoy sharing time with my own children when we drive out for an afternoon from my Mom's place in Prince Albert.
Last weekend I camped in the park for the first time in more than 20 years. It was still beautiful with room between sites, clean restrooms, reminders a person is visiting bear country and entertaining interpretive programming.
There have been changes to the way we camp with fewer tents and more luxury trailers, but the food is still as good as ever and as we've grown we've taken over work my mother once did.
This year each household took charge of a meal; planning, shopping, preparing and cooking. It meant less food to carry and less to spoil. There was a little bit of worry during the planning stages of the trip when we didn't know if there would be space available.
When I was young we would leave the house with a packed vehicle and drive until we were tired or found someplace beautiful. We stayed in campgrounds across western Canada never making a reservation and rarely were we turned away, even if the nicest sites were filled there were overflow areas.
This summer my daughter and I tried to do some drop-in camping and couldn't find a site at a few different parks. My mother made reservations for us at Beaver Glen for some of the last sites available for last weekend and we were surprised so many were vacant. It may have been because of the weather or maybe because people reserve and pay for sites just in case they feel like driving north.
I wondered if other families missed out on a fun weekend away because they were unable to reserve a site.
RVs are common in neighbourhoods all around us and I'm glad to see people exploring this great province. I'm a little confused by the large number of massive units in campgrounds that seem to be nothing more than fields, but maybe there isn't anywhere else to go.
