Before Spencer started up again into his schooling for another intensive 8 weeks we thought we would take our final weekend to go camping. So we picked a place that we had never been before and just went for the night. We packed up our car and off we went to Elk Island National Park. We loved it. It is close and we all enjoyed camping. Despite the name of the park we didn't actually see any Elk, but the park is home to a great herd of Buffalo that stopped us a few times on the road and we also saw some coyotes. We did get a few showers but that didn't last long.
Our campsite was smaller than we were use to but it had everything that we needed in close proximity. We even did this while Aaron was learning to potty train. You can pretty much go and do anything with pull ups!
Here we are enjoying our popcorn. We didn't have a camp stove it died last year and since we were only going camping for one night we decided to just cook over a fire. This was a little tricky....our fire building skills were a bit rusty and it took longer than we wanted to get going, then if we were really good campfire cooks, we would have waited until the fire died down. But the kids were hungry so we had most of our meals with the campfire kiss to them.
The kids loved chasing the dragon flies around since they were pleantiful due to the large number of misquitoes that we experienced this year. The kids had fun just hang out and being outside. We checked out the beach that was pretty close, but it was a bit cooler and windy and acutally more rocky. You can't swim in the water there but they did have a park to play on, some hikes to go on, some interpretive programs and a living boardwalk.
We hiked around the boardwalk that takes you around the shore of one of the lakes there and in the water you could see all sorts of little bugs and water critters. Evan made me promise that the next day before we left that we would come back and bring our net and a container to scoop up some water life to enjoy. So that is exactly what we did. The kids loved being there and trying to scoop up everything that moved. They learned about sharing and enjoyed watching all the bugs float and swim, just when they had a container full of things, Aaron would try their patience by dumping it all back into the lake....not to worry though they were more than happy to capture all the bugs again.
There is a snail, tadpole and a leech along with some smaller insects that you can't really see in this picture.
This was actually at the park, it is a ukrainian house from some of the first settlers in that area. It is traditional in design. We couldn't go inside this one, but after we packed up we drove to Ukrainian Heritage Village that was like 2 minutes away. This is an interpretive site and it was really good and interesting to go to. Megan actually studied about Ukraine in school this past year. So she actually got to see houses, schools, farms, churches etc, from the Ukraine Stettlers in Alberta. The guides and actors were really good. You could go inside the various buildings and ask questions and they would answer like they were back in the day. It is a fantistic place to visit.
It is quite a bit of walking but Spencer happened to get us on a wagon ride that took us to some of the parts that were further away in the park. So here are the kids in a school. They loved sitting in the desks and using the chalk boards.
Here we are in front of the grain elevator and a train. The early settlers worked hard to make a life for themselves and to be able to provide a better life for thier families.
