May 20, 2005

May 20, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 3 of 113

DAY 337

 

Today started out cloudy and cool, but by early afternoon the sky had cleared, and it warmed up. It turned out to be a very pleasant day, and warm evening. I am typing this sitting at the picnic table beside our trailer at 11:30 P.M. Bo is sitting on the picnic table beside me, snapping at moths attracted to the lantern light. The campground is quiet. The much anticipated drunkenness and rowdyness is non-existent tonight. Let's hope that lasts for the entire weekend. The Park Patrol staff are on duty until 5:00 A.M., and are making their presence obvious. So are the RCMP who drive through the campground every couple of hours.

We wanted to go out to buy some groceries at Falcon Lake this morning. Since we still had not met with our "boss" Courtney Killaby, I went to the campground office to find out when we might expect her. I didn't want to be out at Falcon Lake when she came by. Courtney was going to be working the "long weekend late shift" tonight, from 7:00 P.M. to 5:00 A.M., so Sylvia said we should expect that Courtney would come by some time this evening. She didn't ! We are still uncertain of what our job responsibilities are, but obviously not much is expected of us this weekend.

We started out by driving around and exploring a bit. We drove around West Hawk Lake townsite. It was smaller than we expected. A couple of resorts, a couple of gas stations, none with diesel, a bar, a restaurant, a marina, our short stay campground, and a seasonal campground with semi-permanent sites. We drove northwest on Hwy. 44 all the way to Caddy Lake. We turned around, and drove down the back road route to Falcon Lake, which is 11 km. / 7 mi. from West Hawk, if you take the main highway. Falcon Lake has a medium sized, full line grocery store. We bought some groceries, then I walked over to the nearby bakery and bought some baked goods. We drove around Falcon Lake townsite. It too was smaller than we expected. A few resorts, grocery store, convenience store, restaurant, bakery, doctor's office, two short stay campgrounds, and a golf course. We drove into the main campground to introduce ourselves to the Falcon Lake campground hosts, but the designated campground host site was vacant.

We drove back to West Hawk, had lunch, read the paper, I napped ... nice work if you can get it ! I spent the late afternoon and early part of the evening puttering around with some maintenance chores, and wandering around the campground, introducing myself to staff. The lady who has the firewood concession for this campground showed up around 5:00 P.M. and set up beside the large picnic shelter behind our campsite. She came over and introduced herself, and chatted with Joanne while I did some repairs on the roof of the trailer. While trying to shoe horn into this site, I did some minor damage to the radio antenna mounted on the roof of the trailer. I had to repair it, and reseal it with rubber roof cement. We had pizza for supper, then walked around the campground with Bo. We did that quite a few times today. Bo likes this place. So do we. Ann, the firewood lady had started a fire in the huge stone fireplace in the picnic shelter, so after she left, we took over her campfire in the picnic shelter, and spent the evening in there with Teddy and Bo.

It was a lovely, peaceful, relaxing day.

DSK