The wilder side...

We leave Leduc and take a secondary road south through farms on our way to Crimson Lake Provicial Park.  We want to get away from "parking lot" camping lifestyle, though it has its merits.  It's raining all day as we head south and west.

We are favored with a nice campsite which takes a bit of maneuvering on Dale's part to get the trailer in.  A respite from the rain and we set up and go check out the lake.  We manage to enjoy some sunshine at the lake, wading until Dale found a leech...eeeeekk!  A beautiful loon came close to us twice for lots of good looks and I like them even more since discovering that they eat leeches.

The wind started blowing and and it looked like our nice weather was about to  end.  We headed back to the camper, ate supper, and played cards until a storm interrupted our game.  It brought wind, rain, and then marble sized hail which quickly covered the ground at our campsite.  The hail and rain subsided and we heard some crackling and pops which we attributed to fireworks.  After a while, activity on the campground road, made us venture out to look.  Trees had snapped off and uprooted, crashing into campers, tents, vehicles!!

Directly in front of our campsite many trees had come down, one hitting this big RV.  Campground workers quickly moved the tree off the camper with their equipment.  We found out later from another camper that there was quite a bit of destruction, but fortunately no injuries.   

 The people in this campsite took off--too close for comfort.  We figured the worst was over, and we had nowhere else to go.