Week ending Jul 21, 2016 Pincher Creek and Beaver Mines Lake Rec Area

Friday, Joan hadn't slept well because she couldn't find and catch a moth that was banging on the ceiling, or so she thought.  When she picked up our Koodo bag, she found that a mouse had chewed through the bag and into one of the foil wrapped granola bars left from our lunch on Thursday.  It might have been the mouse bumping around that she heard.     So out came our sticky pad mouse traps.  The next morning, we had a mouse in the trap. 

There were several deer in a little green area across the street behind the trailer.

Then we drove out to Beaver Mines Lake Rec Area.  It is a nice lake, and had large treed sites.  There were several of them backing onto an open area facing satellite- and sun-wards that looked like they would work for us.   We also checked out a couple of other rec areas that didn't look as promising.  On our way back towards town, we took a route that wound up dead-ending on a restricted Shell Gas Plant Road.  So, we decided to take the GPS recommendation of Adanac Road over a small pass (higher than Piney Point Viewpoint, which we did a few days ago) into Hillcrest, then back along highway 3.

Friday evening, there was a tornado warning for the Pincher Creek area.  We got quite a bit of hail, banging off the roof of the trailer, some about the size of twoonie, most of it early in the evening.
We lost our satellite signal for a few minutes a few times, which is when we first noticed the warning while checking on the internet to see how long the rain would last.  Trever also texted us about the tornado warning a few minutes later.  Fortunately, no evidence of a tornado near us.

Hail stone with toonie

Saturday, Sunday, we left the rec areas for the weekenders, and watched our usual sports.  We did see a mother deer with a couple of young ones behind the trailer.

Monday, packed up and went to Beaver Mines Lake Rec Area.  There is no cell service here, so no internet access either.  Our preferred site 26 was available.  After plugging in the solar panels,  getting a satellite signal and starting  the generator to make sure it was still happy,  we did a little walk down to the lake and along the shore.

Beaver Mines Lake

There were a few kayaks and a fishing boat on the lake.   We saw Camp Impeesa on the north side of the lake.  It is one of the premier Boy Scout camps.  We saw a raptor patrolling the trees along the shore.  Later in the afternoon we saw a herd of deer run through the open area behind the trailer.    The solar panels lost the sun about 4pm, since we didn't have enough line on them to get them past the trees on the west side of the trailer.

Tuesday morning, we found that the sun didn't get onto the solar panels until about 10:30.  That only gives us about 5.5 hours of solar during the day.  That just seems wrong with Alberta's long daylight. We went for a 5k walk around the rec area.  We had a short chat with the Conservation Officer and found out that the flood mitigation done in the park was because of flooding in 2013.  We had wind gusts in the afternoon which kept the flies down, so we dug out the chairs and hammock to enjoy the sun.

Wednesday morning, we walked the intrepretive trail through the rec area, a loop of about 4k.   On our way back from the far end, we chatted with a couple of park workers.  We checked whether we could move to a new site, since we were only 2 days into the week we had paid for.  No problem.  So we moved, and got set up again by about 2pm.  Much better solar access here, and a view of the lake.  Even with the solar unplugged for almost 2 hours during prime time while we moved, we got almost twice as many amp hours by the end of the day.

Beaver Mines Lake from campsite

north view of Table Mountain from campsite

Thursday, we walked along the South Castle Road.   Our plan was to follow an ATV route that looked like it followed a cut-line, since it goes straight for about 3 km.  However, we wound up doing an A shape away from that route.  We were surprised at the number of trailers boon-docking beside the trail route, since the road down to it was fairly steep and very eroded.  We chatted with a fellow, who said that they come in at a point further down that road, which turned out to be South Castle Road.  We carried on to that where that road came in from the road into the rec area, about 1 km from the rec area.  We carried on south along that road, and chatted with a couple of forestry folks on ATV's.  They had communication devices which they told us were the Spot systems.  We had looked at the Spot devices about 4 years ago at the recommendation of an RCMP officer vacationing in one of the campgrounds we stayed in.  It is used by the forestry folks to post their location periodically as they are patrolling the forest.   They did not know where our cut-line route was, but said that there was an ATV trail further up that came in from that side.   We carried on a bit and came to that point, followed it for about 50m and saw the cut-line route going in both directions.   We took the route away from the campground.  In a short distance, it rejoined the Castle road.  There was an ATV crossing at this point, but it didn't look like it aligned with the cut-line route.  According to our GPS, we were less than 2km from our trail-head, so we carried on the castle road until we were about 3km from our start point.  The problem was that we were now significantly off the line that the cut-line should have gone.   Time to stop for a snack, and head back.   When we got back to where the cut-line route met the road, we checked the other side of the road for the ATV trail.  The route in the direction we wanted to go dead-ended at a campsite, with an old privy.

We decided to return to the trail head, this time along the cut-line, to see where it came out.  We crossed a dry creek bed, that looked like it had flooded back in 2013.   This was an open area with great views of Table Mountain and its neighbours. 

west view of Table Mountain from cut-line trail

Carrying on, we came in through the boondocking area we had seen earlier.  No wonder we couldn't find the cut-line.    Our little trip was a bit more than 8km return, but there was only the one short steep slope heading down from the start, so it wasn't too strenuous.