Why we camp in May

Post date: 10-May-2010 01:07:50

A mother's memory of the pain of childbirth fades away as does an Albertan's memory of just how cold it was the last time we camped in May. We camped during the May long weekend last year, but this year we took it a step further by camping the second weekend in May (7-9th, 2010). The main reason we decided to camp earlier than the May long weekend is thanks to the too convenient method the Alberta Government has set up for booking campsites. Yes, it's faster to book online instead of spending hours on May 1st calling the campsite to book a site. However, most of the sites were completely booked up for the May long weekend by the end of April as were most of the long weekends in the summer. I know camping season is short but it gets more and more competitive to go camping each year.

The bonus of camping early and on a regular weekend instead of a long weekend is that we had the whole campsite area that we were in to ourselves. There were about 30 campers at the entire Wabamun Campground. Most people were in RVs and we only saw one other group of people (besides ourselves) in a tent. There were also leaves on many of the trees and no mosquitoes. However, there were many spiders and 3 crows that invaded our campsite each night. The first night Colin and I left a bag of Sun Chips in a compostable bag on the picnic table. The compostible bag was extremely loud and not crow proof. Three crows decided to raid our campsite at 7:00 AM to eat the chips. They pecked right through the bag! The crinkly bag sounded like a child playing with a crinkly rattle. I got up and put the chips in the garbage but later in the afternoon while we were sitting at our campsite they tried to get into our garbage bag.

On Saturday night, Colin's sister, her dog and cousin joined us for camping. They accidentally left a bag with muffins and cookies on the picnic table. At 8:00 AM we woke up to the sound of the same crows eating 6 muffins and 6 cookies! Savages. I know you're not supposed to leave any food out overnight but these were in plastic bags and the birds just picked up the bags and dumped the contents.

Winston's first time camping

We were a bit cold the first night (-5) but much warmer the second night (-1). There was frost all over my car in the morning. This was the first time we''ve camped that we didn't have to buy more ice the second night for our cooler. We came home with as much ice as we left with. Thankfully there wasn't a fire ban so we could stay warmer. Wabamun rarely has fire bans. We enjoyed finding 4 geocaches near the campsite and we also hid a geocache too. The weather held up for us and we only had 2 minor showers so it was perfect.

Therefore, we camp in May because we're inpatient for summer (who can wait to June), for the freshness, for the warmth of the fire and good company, bursts of sunlight, star gazing, geocaching, camping food, and getting in touch with nature.