Week ending Aug 20, 2015 Twin Valley and Severin Reservoir

Friday was moving day. As the forecast was for grey drizzly weather we decided to see if we could get into Vulcan for the weekend. This was Vulcan's rodeo weekend so the campground was full. We then headed to Twin Valley Reservoir, a little gem of a place we discovered a few years ago. 30 amp power, but not much else, including cell service.  This seems to be the backup place when we need a campsite on long weekends, or any other weekend that all the places in the area are full.

Saturday was a bit of a dreary day, so we decided it was a good day to run into Cochrane to check on mail.    Naturally the only mail we had was a home lottery ad.   We did take the advantage of the trip to spend some time using  the library wi-fi.    While Joan was checking out kidney health cooking, John decided to download the upgrade to Windows 10 (advertised as the last edition of windows), which makes the primary interface the same as Windows 7, while still having some of the Windows 8 features available.  We'll see how this compromise works out.  

Sunday after the Nascar race we walked to the boat dock.  In the evening we watched the deer enjoy the grass in the campground.

Monday was moving day again. We chose Severin Reservoir, close to Standard. We noticed on our way past Arrowwood that our site was vacant, good news since a long weekend is coming. We arrived  at Severin Dam, just north of Standard, just after lunch.  This is not a very level area, maybe that's why there are very few people here. Oh well, we leveled well enough to get one of the main slides out, but left the tricky one in. We no sooner got our solar panels set up than the clouds rolled in. The TV is set up and with a bit of luck our solar panels will produce enough power to keep everything chugglng along happily. We do have a few electronics that need charging. The one really positive about this site is that our cell phone has four bars, a real treat, since usually dispersed camping in Alberta means no cell service.



Tuesday was still partly cloudy.  What's with that?  We need full sun to get maximum production out of the solar panels. We went for a walk on the east side of the reservoir and watched the pelicans, herons, cormerants and numerous ducks, as well as people fishing. We had been told this is a good fishing reservoir. There is toxin producing blue-green algae in the reservoir so no boating for us.

Wednesday was a perfect sunny Alberta day. Our solar panels were happier than they have been in a long time. The weather forecast is for cloud and rain starting later tomorrow so time to move to a full service park. We really just spent the day doing nothing and enjoying the hot sunny day.

Thursday we moved to Vulcan. Our coffee stop was Pete's Cafe at Cluny. While waiting for our early lunch  a native fellow entertained us with stories of his elders. We arrived in Vulcan early afternoon, got set up, got groceries and called it a day.  We like this full service campground because it does not allow campfires and has okay wi-fi.  It is close enough to Calgary we can run in and see the kids and doctors.

 As a footnote, the Windows 10 upgrade, although it took several hours to get downloaded and installed, has gone reasonably well.  The only significant issue so far, has been that the Mail application, didn't keep the emails that had been previously downloaded from a couple of email accounts, and took a significant time downloading, particularly since we weren't on good internet for it.   All other files and applications seem to be working okay so far. We'll see how it all goes now that we are on internet in Vulcan for a few days.