This site is not just going to be the hub for the planning of our wedding; it’s been built from the ground up to be an ongoing portal through which we can share bits and pieces of our lives (and life together) with friends and family. Personally, I think this is given its most poignant example in the presence of our gallery. Given that we’re both no slouch with a camera, and given that we both enjoy photography to a certain degree (myself to an abnormally large degree), there are a lot of great pictures that we already have to share with the world, and more to come.

But enough of my blathering on about unrelated details. The title suggests that some camping took place, and so it did.

Grace’s sister Michel was playing in a soccer tournament in Camrose, AB, last weekend (June 8 – 11), and Grace wanted to catch a couple of the games. So we packed up some camping gear (most of it borrowed either from my parents or from the 59th Edmonton Scout Group) on Friday afternoon and made the not-quite-hour-length drive down to Camrose. Just before we left Edmonton, we stopped for a quick ‘road’ dinner and then picked up the last few supplies we needed at Canadian Tire…and then headed out, and attempted to find a place to stay.

Which you’d have thought would be easy, but this weekend was…special. In addition to the massive soccer tournament that was taking place that weekend, this tiny city was also going to be playing host to the people participating in the bike-a-thon for MS (multiple sclerosis, not the software company) research, which meant that the municipal campground was full and that the hotels were booked.

Not a problem — we had intended to camp, and were going to camp. We asked around and were told about a little campground just outside of Camrose, near the Battle River. As it turns out, it was actually right next to the Battle River, and while one site was in…less than optimal condition…for the most part it was a pretty little campground. We stopped at the Camrose Safeway just before we left to find this little spot, and bought a few light snacks and some food for breakfast.

Actually, the west-facing view was quite spectacular, and the sun was just beginning to really set as we were pitching the tent. I’m a big sucker for photos of a nice sunset, so I of course didn’t pass up the opportunity.

The tent that we had borrowed was one of the ‘old’ tents from the stores of the 59th Edmonton Scout Group, a big blue Eureaka! tent that was, for the most part, in decent shape. I hadn’t pitched one of these things in a few years, however, and so had forgotten that they have a few…quirks in their setup. That and the set of poles was a bit on the ‘thrown together’ side (seriously, I don’t want to know who was the last one to pack up this tent before I used it that weekend). And there were no pegs…why do people take the pegs out of the tent bag?

Fortunately, I was able to improvise some decent substitutes for pegs, and fortunately the various poles and pieces of pole that were in the tent bag could indeed be combined into something that would support the tent. It just…took a little longer than I thought it might (and by the end, I was very thankful for the Muskol insect repellent that we had brought with us)!

We unloaded the sleeping bags into the tent, and were officially ‘finished’ with the setup at about 8:50 PM. That still left us the better part of 40 minutes to get to Michel’s game, so we drove in to Camrose and stopped at the Safeway before heading on to Michel’s first game, which was being played at 9:30 PM that evening. If you think that’s late, well…yeah, it probably is. But then, this tournament had some of the teams in it playing until almost 3 AM, so…

Michel’s team (Vermilion) won the first game handily, scoring a 2-0 shutout over Stettler. The team played really well overall. Grace had asked if I wouldn’t mind taking some pictures (like anyone has to ask that!), and that proved to be a bit of a challenge, especially as the sun finished setting and things got progressively darker).

After the game, Grace and I hung out with Michel for a few minutes, and Grace presented her sister with a bag full of (healthy!) snacks and drinks. That would be the girl I love in a nutshell — she really cares about people, and goes out of her way for them.

We made our way back to the campsite, stopping for a late-night snack of our own along the way, and then attempted to sleep. I say ‘attempted’ because, due to things like two or three hours of rain pounding down, a slight slope in the ground on which the tent was situated (useful in light of the fact of rain, but not the easiest thing to sleep on), and some twit with a diesel engine and a massive trailer trying to fit himself into the campground at 1 AM, we only managed a couple of hours of sleep.

That’s not a complaint, mind you, although we were certainly both a little bleary-eyed the next morning.

[thumb:14:r:s=1:l=p]The other reason we only got a couple of hours of sleep is that we awoke rather early (think: 5 AM). Grace didn’t feel well, so we set a new speed record packing down the camp and headed into Camrose again. After driving around for a bit, we headed to the (still packed!) municipal campground, which at least had coin-operated showers. We caught another half-hour of rest there before moving on to yet another park in Camrose, where we decided to cook breakfast.

Although we did hit up the 7-11 for coffee before that point. Which means there’s a new group I can join on Facebook, apparently.

[thumb:17:l:s=1:l=p]Breakfast was great — there’s always something about cooking food on a camp stove that just makes it that much better. The park — I think it was called Mirror Lake Park — was just beautiful, with a little playground, some picnic tables, and wonderful view of a little municipal lake.

[thumb:18:r:s=1:l=p]So we cooked and ate breakfast (bacon, eggs, jalapeno havarti, apricots, and All Bran bars) and just took in some of the scenery. Grace was thankfully feeling much better both after her shower and a good meal, so we cleaned up and packed up our stuff and then drove off to where Michel would be playing her next game.

Unfortunately, Vermilion didn’t win the second game, against Rocky Mountain House. Rocky seemed like a pretty good team, and though this seemed to take Vermilion by surprise, Michel’s team quickly rallied and soon the two teams were, basically, playing at the same level. It was, toward the end, a pretty even match…except for the referee. In addition to calling one particularly stunning save a goal (the Vermilion goalie was just inside the goal line, but the ball — when she deflected it — was not), he ended the game about seven minutes early…blowing the whistle not two seconds after Vermilion won the kickoff after the aforementioned ‘goal’.

It wouldn’t have been quite as bad if the referee had made the call on the goal right away, but he didn’t — he made the call a couple minutes later, after one girl on the Rocky team complained to him. Now, I don’t remember much from my days as an umpire, but the general rule that I was taught was that if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen…and I should be more watchful the next time I see a similar situation emerging. It was just a bad call on this referee’s part, plain and simple.

That and his timepiece was evidently malfunctioning.

Still, despite the poor officiating, Vermilion did play a solid game, and the whole team went out to Boston Pizza afterward to share lunch. Grace and I went along, spending a last couple of hours with Michel before we had to head back to Edmonton. We had both taken a number of pictures at the second game, and some video as well, and would have liked to stick around for the finals later that evening. But alas, Grace had a night shift, and I also had made plans, so we had to leave Camrose on Saturday afternoon.

Overall, it was a good trip (despite the lack of sleep), and we both had a lot of fun. It’s nice sometimes to just get out and camp, especially for people like us who don’t get many opportunities to do so given the busy tempo of our lives these days.