Goose Lake

 Another weekend another trip but this time north of Edmonton to Goose Lake Campground, a private park about 200km north west of Edmonton.

The weather was not the best but we did set up in the dry but shortly after it started to rain which continued through to Saturday mid-morning though it was not a downpour. Consequently Friday evening was spent in the trailer tent playing games and eating snacks. Saturday morning revealed that we'd had a deer run through our site at about 9pm Friday evening while we were in the trailer. The trail cam still makes it look like it was a two legged deer!

That action was the only worthwhile footage from the trail cam the WHOLE trip so I have to include it.

Breakfast had been planned to be a fry up but we quickly discovered the eggs had gone off 😞. We quickly switched the plan to sausage sandwiches though Lauren went for a starter of a bowl of cereals.

Once the rain had cleared we went for a walk around one of the nearby trails, some of us were happier to go for the walk than others!

Having not gotten lost or eaten by a bear we were soon back at the campsite for lunch.

After lunch I decided to investigate the fishing so set off a couple of hundred metres away to the fishing spot. Since the dock was occupied by others fishing I fished from the lake shoreline. It soon became apparent that there were fish actively feeding and, after catching and releasing two perch, I 'ran' back to the campsite to get reinforcements who might like to fish. We were soon 3 of us fishing (although we only had two rods) and after a quick lesson on casting the two novices soon caught their very first fish. The perch were not of an edible size so they were mostly safely returned to the lake. Mother and daughter both ended the session with a total of four perch each, well done!

Having worked up great excitement we returned to the campsite for some games before supper of Doritos and mince - but not before some S'mores - yum!

 

 

 

All too soon it was time for bad....... 😴😴😴😴😴.

Sunday morning and it was time for a leisurely breakfast before packing up and heading back to Stony Plain. If we'd realised it though we would have headed north on highway 33 instead of south in order to visit the geographic centre of Alberta about 20km up the highway. 

As it was, we had decided to take a short detour into Fort Assiniboine to visit the world's largest cart wheel and pick axe with a mural thrown in for extra measure. 

Having deliberately taken one, short, detour, we retraced our steps to get back to Stony Plain but having been a little confused by some highway signage we missed the turn to Barrhead where we'd planned to fill up with gas. Uh-oh! We'd already experienced that turning around on a single lane carriageway is not recommended so we continued east (instead of west/south) and took a side turning through the township of Freedom. It didn't bring us much freedom though as the gravelled road changed to a muddy, potholed track. However, taking it slowly we finally come onto road 654 which joined highway 33 though south of Barrhead. Although gas was getting lower than we were comfortable with rather than head up to Barrhead we turned south. By the time we came onto highway 43 gas was of course much lower so we turned west for 1km to Gunn where we put enough gas to get up back though for the first time on the trip we didn't fill up as the price was1.379/l which was quite a bit more than we were used to paying. Feeling relieved with sufficient fuel we headed back to Stony Plain where we filled ourselves up with some tasty KFC before headed back to base.