Week ending Jul 10, 2014 Eagle Valley, Emerson Bridge District Park

Eagle Valley is a peaceful campsite and the weather is spectacular.  We feel like we are on vacation as we are just sitting around enjoying the warm weather.  Of course we are also watching Wimbledon and FIFA.  What a great life. Our plan is to relax here until Monday, as this is the first weekend of summer holidays and experience has taught us that with the school kids out trying to find available campsites  over weekends has its challenges. 

Monday we moved on to Emerson Bridge Regional Park, a small county park on the Red Deer River north of Brooks.  

Tuesday morning we walked along a path to the river. Not a well trodden trail, but we watched a couple of owls fly along with us.  Finally one owl and a crow had a few words and eventually they flew off together. 

Wednesday we decided to explore the area. We wandered down some country roads, out first point of interest was the Finnegan Ferry that took us across the  Red Deer River. 

The ferry was able to carry 6 vehicles, but on a Tuesday morning we were its only passengers. We had to wait for it to arrive from across the river.  The trip took about 10 minutes.  After chatting to the operator we were off to our next destination, which was a real "Gem", a hamlet with about 6 houses, a fire hall and community hall.  Then we checked out Countess, a community that exists because of its museum that is open on the occasional Saturday and Sunday.  Then we carried on to Rosemary. Our first stop was its community RV park. Only a dozen sites, but very nice with water and power.  The bathrooms are coded, so only paying campers can use them, so even though we couldn't check them out we assume they must be reasonably decent. Experience has taught us that coded bathrooms are well kept up. We then stopped at the bakery on main street to pick up some whole wheat bread. He only had white bread today, tomorrow was the day he was making whole wheat. We had never encountered that type of schedule before.   John was very disappointed as the bakery did not have any cinnamon buns either. Oh well on to Duchess for a lunch stop.  We hunted for a bakery in Duchess with no luck, not even one that only had white bread. There did not appear to be a community RV park to check out.   We didn't see anywhere that looked promising for lunch. We might have been a bit early to find a place with lots of customers, so we headed to Brooks. We stopped at Boston Pizza, then got diesel and headed back to Emerson Bridge to watch the semi-final FIFA match between Argentina and Netherlands.

Thursday, we are hanging around the campground, posting the blog, doing dishes, and enjoying the weather.   Tomorrow we return to Olds for a week.