camping, cycling, hiking, travelling

At about noon, I came down with a headache.  It was heatstroke.

Heat exhaustion suggests strenuous activity mixed with heat as a cause, while heatstroke suggests simply overheating (too much exposure to the sun).

I decided to go home.  Besides, there was a machine droning noise from less than a kilometre away, like model airplanes or go-carts, for several house.  When that finally stopped, all I could hear was traffic noise from the nearby road, a connector road from the highway to in-town.

I went there to maybe meet friendly fellow campers and hang out and maybe suggest a hike or cycle somewhere.  People kept to themselves.

I got back at about 5pm, unpacked and put away everything, and lied down with lots of water.  Thus the end of my weekend get-away.

I called the night before last to book a spot at Sleepy Hollow Campground. Luckily, they had one left, except that, when I showed up yesterday evening, they had some cancellations and rebookings and had moved everyone around. At first the manager / owner was going to put me at a giant site big enough for a 30′ trailer (with power & water, which I don’t need), but I have a much smaller one instead.

It’s a good thing i brought along a bug screen tent. Sooooo many mosquitos here! It is my first time using it.

Breakfast was yoghurt with cereal and lunch was salad with hotdog wieners. The book I’m reading is The Friendship Book by Francis Gay and a Zane Grey novel I borrowed from F.

This was one of the most gruelling hikes for us – Mo & family and me.  We talked about a hike a few days before.  I brought a brochure of hikes in the Crowsnest Pass for Mo & family to look at.  Since S really wanted a hike during one of our last year’s camping trips, I suggested that she pick the spot.  She picked the North York Creek plane crash hike.  It’s south of Coleman, AB.  I asked if anybody mined that I drove because my stomach had been iffy – motion sickness often gets to me.  So we all piled into my van and went.  We stopped at Subway for a bite before heading up.  The weather was decidedly cool when we got out – a balmy 16°C.  We were wondering if it would be chilly and rainy all day.

We drove seemingly in every direction, winding through the town, before finally heading south up a paved then gravel road, higher and higher up the mountain.  We saw signs for our destination.  We found a parking area (called a staging area – not sure why), parked there, and ate half our subs before heading up the gravel road toward our destination.  Quads and dirt bikes screamed by.  We wondered if we were in the right area – after all, M & M have kids.  I asked a guy sitting in his truck if we were in the right spot; he suggested that we were way off, that we needed to keep going way up the road another few kilometres.  So we did.

Mo was a little freaked by all the potholes, concerned that it would damage the van.  It was rough, and we bounced around like a bunch of Mexican jumping beans in the van.  So we parked the van and started hiking.  More vehicles were going by.  It was still a long hike up, but we came across a bridge (that everyone told us about) and a fork and decided to go up the steeper grade.

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I’ve been back for a couple of days now.  I had a good time despite the weather.  Here are a few things I wrote along the way.

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I’m here.  I arrived at Fernie yesterday afternoon.

The place I’m staying at is actually someone’s apartment with the largest bedroom for their guest (me).  The rest of the apartment is shared.  They spend most of their time in their own rooms.

There is a music festival here this weekend, but I haven’t heard any yet.  I don’t even know where it will be.  I’m sure I’ll catch wind of it sooner or later.

It rained pretty much all yesterday and this morning.  The sun has come out now, in time for the festival.

More later.

Aizlynn asked me what I was doing for my birthday.  I had nothing planned.

I know it seems weird to think that that question seemed weird.  But it did.  “Nothing …”  I felt a bit…  Anyway, in an email a few days later she offered to pay for three nights at a B&B in Fernie, BC during their Harvest Feast & Fest.

At the time, BC was rife with forest fires.  Last year it was mid-September before a state of emergency was lifted.  So I thought this year there would be no point in making reservations.

I also thought I’d be employed by then, but I’m not.

So I’m going.  I’ll be there from Sept. 13 to 16, 2018.