Two Loonies and a Penny: May Long Weekend Camping

This post topic is a little late but when starting to write a post about my front flower beds, I realized our May long weekends in northern Alberta are a little crazy.

It doesn't matter if it has been above 20°C and sunny for the first three weeks in May, you can bet your life savings that it is going to snow, hail, rain like a motha and/or get pretty close to freezing on the May long weekend. And, every year we make the same foolish decision to kick of the camping year with this particular weekend. This year was no exception, we headed out to Mariana Lakes to camp, which is also known as "Mariana Triangle" weather wise. Ironically, it did all of the above weather mishaps - snow, hail, rain and according to the thermometer we brought with us, the minimum temperature reached that weekend was 0.6°C.

The past few years we (Mr. Loonie, Stryker and I) along with our group of friends have been camping at the Mariana site furthest south on Hwy 63 when it is available. I don't know how long it has been there but there is an amazing teepee approximately 20 feet tall with a fire pit right in the center of it. To keep the wind and cold out and the heat in we wrap tarps around the outside, which is especially essential for May Long weekends.

Here are some past pictures we've taken of the South/old teepee site. This site also has a little dock perfect for fishing or just relaxing!

Unfortunately, we missed out on this spot this year and had to settle for the north site (they are only 2 minutes apart on the highway). There is more than one camping spot on this site but the nicest is right on the water, the downside is the wind off the lake. The only solution was to erect our very own teepee!!

So, the guys went to work! Conveniently four guys with ASRD (Alberta Sustainable Resource Development) and their helicopter were parked while on a fire watch and decided to help out!