July 7 - How Lac La Biche Became Cold Lake

The next planned stop was Lac La Biche; however I decided to take a detour and drive to Cold Lake. I'd never been before and wanted to see its beauty first hand. My sister-in-law lived there at one point. Plus I’ve had either friends visit and they all had great things to say about it. Plus, it was slightly closer than Lac La Biche and the boys were ready to call it a day.

We drove into the Cold Lake Provincial Park and looked for a spot. While it was a nice campground, the spots seemed smaller than those at Ross Lake and we couldn't find any that were right on the water; although, I am sure that there must be some. Instead we drove to the Cold Lake M.D. campground. We needed to call from my cell phone for directions, but we did eventually find it. We ended up with a lovely spot close to the water. Generally we like sites that are a bit more private, but it worked well for one night.

For $5 we got a huge amount of wood; in fact we even turned some down. Looking back we should have taken it for future camping trips. Due to the rain, the wood lot was very muddy and I almost got stuck backing into the wood pile. Of course I was surrounded by men, so all I could do was joke about being a "women driver". I had a lot of help filling the back of the van, mostly with smaller piece that would require little cutting. With only two young boys to help me this was very important.

Before unloading the van back at the campsite, the boys really wanted to go for a swim. Once again we tied Buzz up to the "no dogs on beach sign" and got ready to play around in the water. I now know why it is called Cold Lake. It was freezing. I was the first one to get my hair wet and eventually did get used to the fridget temperature. The boys became fasinated by these tiny minoes swimming around near the shore, so we decided to try and catch them. I soon discovered that the trick was to disorientate them from their school and was the first one to catch one. However, the boys quickly caught on. I do have to admit that the occasional fish didn't make it through the boy's accidental pinching.

Now extremely wet and cold, it was time to light a fire. We did it in under 15 minutes and sat back to watch our camping neighbour try to start theirs. We could certainly sympathize with the frustration in not being able to start one. As the night went one, I did need one of the neighbours to chop some of the wood for us. Laughing at our small hatchet, he brought over his own axe. In return, I gave him some extra paper to see if that helped to get his fire started. I believe that all it did was create extra smoke.

With a park close by, the boys went off to play. As with many of their escapades this one didn't last long. They quickly returned asking to show me a rock. Reluctantly I followed them to three rocks that had been graffitied to say "the penis rock", which as it turned out was very fitting. Unfortunately now when people ask my boys what their favourite "big thing" has been so small they chuckle and answers, "the rock".