Redneck Holiday

Lo and behold, a miracle happened on Canada Day Weekend - Jeff had all three days off work! To celebrate, we finally rented a truck and drove the Trunk Road (and others) up to Jasper. These are roads that I drive for work, so I was more than happy to let Jeff man the wheel. Friday night I ditched book club (sorry!) and we went to Burnt Timber Prov. Park, just over 100 km from town. Of the 7 campsites there, 3 were empty - and this is just over an hour outside Calgary on a holiday long weekend! Where does everyone else go? It was nice that the parks we stopped at weren't crowded (until we got to Jasper), but what is wrong with people these days?
Saturday we stopped for lunch at Ram Falls, just south of Nordegg, then continued north up the Trunk Road until we turned left to follow the Cardinal River. Although the route wasn't packed with people, every river and creek we passed had one or two trucks next to it with people standing in the river. Not a river was left empty! I had no idea that an Albertan's definition of fun is standing in a river - and a surprizing minority of these people had fishing poles.. what were all the others doing?
Late Saturday afternoon we tried 'green lane'-ing to get to a campground but got the rental truck into a bit of trouble. Luckily Jeff maneuvered well enough to avoid causing any visible damage and we headed back to the Trunk Road, amounting to a small 3 hour detour. Sunday we partook of Jasper tourist fun (hot springs, waterfalls, black bears, glacier walking) and poached a camp site along Abraham Lake. On Monday we quit the dirt roads and took the highway the 4 hours home. All in all, the 5 hour drive to Jasper took us a good 2 days and left us with a very very dirty truck. Good times had by all :)