Hey, Surf Punk here, a long way from the surf. I love to travel and on a couple occasions have tried a different style of travel, something like backpacking across Europe, but really roughing it. That’s what I call camping – really roughing it. Enough of the luxury hotels, I decided to go camping in the Canadian Rockies with my girlfriend.
Neither of us had ever been camping before so we had to buy all the camping equipment. That included a couple of sleeping bags, a tent, some cooking utensils and pots and pan, camping lanterns, food supplies, drinking supplies because we couldn’t forget the beer or wine (for my girlfriend) and plastic wine glasses. We were really roughing it, but she still needs a wine glass. The preparation for our camping trip took about two days and we had a laugh because we were so totally newbies at this. Beer and liquor store to pick up the real necessities, outdoor store to pick up the basics and grocery store to get the food. Even though we were having fun, we still needed to eat.
It was June but it was still rather cold in the mountains. We bought some warm clothes, some flannel shirts and some thermal underwear to wear at night. We were not doing glamour and we were not doing luxury hotels. We were roughing it in the bush.
We drove up to Banff and then onto Lake Louise. We didn’t exactly know where we were going, but luckily we had a map. We also didn’t know anything about the rules of camping, so we ignored them. We parked the car where we were supposed to and then laden down with our camping equipment, our back packs, our cooler, we hiked off to find the perfect place just for us. We found a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. Nobody was around. The perfect spot. Our view was the lake surrounded by the mountains.
The first task of the day when we found “our spot” was setting up our tent. That was a laugh and a half, man! Neither of us had ever set up a tent before, but we managed. Our new “home” for 4 days.
After that, we hiked deep into the woods, found some incredible mountains around the wilderness of Lake Louise. The air was slightly chilled and really fresh. There were so many photo ops. We hiked up the side of the mountain on the opposite end of the lake. There was still snow, there in June. Sliding down the snow was a riot.
Returning to our campsite for some brewskies and vino, we relaxed and talked. We set up a campfire for “dinner”. Let’s say, we did our best. The fire took a while to start, my girlfriend got out the food from the cooler and we shared the “cooking”. Dinner was hamburgers and salad and potato chips. Yogurt and apples for dessert. It was surprising how good this food out in the wilds tasted.
It was growing dark, the skies had clouded over and started to look a little threatening. We lit our camping lanterns, the best LED camping lanterns we could find at the outdoor store and we sat around the fire, drinking and watching the flames dance from the fire. It was a warm, cozy atmosphere. The fire died out and we put out the camping lanterns changed into our thermal underwear and hit the sack, our brand new sleeping bags.
At night, it began to rain and the noise awoke us. We awoke to find that the water was coming in all the floor edges of our tent. Our sleeping bags had soaked up a bit of water. Our back packs were wet. Hey, man, it’s wet in here! It was still dark outside, morning had not come. Of course, we’re trying to get our dry stuff away from the water. Disaster! However, we were still making a joke about it. Still able to laugh.
We didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Morning soon came and the rain had stopped. We were very wet from the rain. As a matter of fact, everything was soaking. The only thing we could do was pack up and head into town which we did.
Heading back along the trails to our parking spot we noticed a sign. “No Camping Allowed Beyond This Point”. Shit! We never knew!
We drove into town to find the nearest small hotel and spent the rest the our camping trip in the hotel. I decided after this trip that camping is somewhat fun, but I’m a hostel, hotel kinda guy. So much for camping in the wilderness this year.
