weekend adventures: part deux.

See! I told you I’d be back!

Just a note further about my previous blog, I also went out to dinner on the Sunday night before my parents left, at the Moose Factory (picture large forest-dwelling creatures wearing hardhats) for Buffet. It’s actually a pretty classy joint. In any case, stuffed myself that night…
…fast forward to next weekend, and we plopped ourselves down in the natural habitat of the Moose… well, more so the Elk where we were: Jasper National Park, Whistler’s campground. What do you get when you take three tents, Four Edmontonians, and two Texans, and a dog? A small but dedicated group of campers, determined to sit around a fire and do nothing but eat and/ or drink even though it was supposed to rain all weekend.
Suzanne and I arrived first, setting up an overhead tarp to protect us from the rain, and then the tent underneath that. Shortly after, Neil, Erin, Melissa and Michael showed up to make camp. By then the rain had stopped, and the ground had already sucked up the water (and that was basically all the rain we saw all weekend… unlike them city folk back in Edmonton, getting drenched… hee hee hee). We settled in for some grub: burgers cooked over an open flame… okay, it was a brand new camps stove that was borrowed from friends, but you get the picture. And the burgers were pan-fried. Whatever. We brought out the butter to grease up the pan.
“Suzanne, could you please get the butter so we can grease the pan a bit”
“Sure… ewww, there’s dirt on it.”
Now, at this juncture, most would logically assess the situation, get a knife, and scrape the offending foreign object off the surface of the butter. Not Suzanne… she noted the speck of whateveritwas, and proceeded to turn the butter dish upside down to shake off the speck. Needless to say, our weekend’s supply of butter was now in an intimate relationship with the dirt at our feet.
Nice girl. Not too bright, but a nice girl 
Despite rocky beginnings, the rest of the meal worked out well enough. From there, the weekend was nice and relaxed, sitting around the fire partaking in a beverage or two, doing a bit of hiking at local lakes, wandering through the town of Jasper, and trying to stay away from the calving elk that spotted the campgrounds.
The nights were reasonably warm, and though the rain held up, it was overcast. The sun did break through on occasion to bathe us though, so that was nice. Especially for the Texans.
“Y’all, its 90 degrees back home. And you wonder why I’m wearing my wooly hat and three pairs of socks?” ( I admit, I wore sweats to bed… It’s just comfy, dagnabit!)
“Uhhh, we call that a toque. And that drink in your hand? That’s real beer, with real alcoholic content. Those things there? Those are mountains.”
So, by Sunday midday we all smelled sufficiently of campfire smoke and the great outdoors, and we’d all had our fill of R&R and plenty of food. Suzanne and I were the last to leave, we had a big chicken salad at Jasper Pizza on our way out; Neil and his entourage had left earlier. They had another family barbecue / drinking engagement to attend back in the city.

Little tip for long car rides… play a game called “top three”, where you come up with questions like “what are your top three movies of all time?” or, “what are the top three car games to play on a long drive?”  It’s a good way to kill off time, and you learn some interesting stuff about the people strapped in next to you ;)