Oct 3 2011

Super Camp

Daniela

I was too pooped from our weekend to write about it last night.  Actually we were all too pooped.  We were so tired, that we all hit the sack at 9 pm. 

This weekend we attended the “Super Camp”.  This was a camp put on by our ski club, Foothills Nordic, and was attended by skiers from ages 9 to 20ish, and their families.  The camp was held in Kananaskis country, at the Lower Kananaskis Lake Group Site.  That’s correct, we were camping. 

Kevin and the kids headed out on Friday after school.  I was not able to leave town until after work on Saturday.  The different training groups had activities planned for them all weekend. Sara is now in the high performance training group and she had to work awfully hard this weekend.  On Saturday morning, she skied 30 km, on roller skis.  The route…from the campground up the Highwood Pass.  The Highwood Pass is the highest paved road in Canada, and tops out at 2206m.  They skied for almost 4 hours.  That was only the morning workout.  In the afternoon, she went for a “short” 45 minute run…uphill!!  Poor girl.  She was pretty tired after that.  Sean spent the morning on a scavenger hunt.  In the afternoon, he played a game in the forest, with his group. 

Sunday, Sara was still exhausted, so her coaches decided she should join the younger training groups and the adults for a family hike.  We hiked to Fox Lake and back, a three hour hike.  It was a nice hike and the fall forest looked and smelled fabulous!  I am sorry that I don’t have any pictures of the hike, you will just have to take my word for it!

The dogs came along with us and joined us for the hike and a few other walks.  Kevin came to pick the dogs and I up on Saturday, and shortly after we arrived, Kevin and I took the hounds out for a walk along the lake.  Officially, dogs are supposed to stay on leash in provincial parks, but there were very few other people out there this weekend and once we were part way around the lake, Kevin and I decided to let the boys off leash for a little lake shore exploration.  There was much to smell and the dogs had a great old time running back and forth along the banks.  We had reached a position where the lake narrowed and the opposite shore was only about 15 feet away.  The water was deep but there was a fair amount of grass growing up from the lake bottom.  I am not sure what Sargon saw, but all of a sudden he took a flying leap into the water.  It seemed like he thought the water was not very deep.  Perhaps he thought he could hit the bottom and spring across.  THAT did NOT happen.  He  just sunk like a stone, head and all.  SPLOOOSH!!!!  He came up sputtering and splashing and swam to shore!  As he shook himself off he seemed to be thinking, “There that was fun…no harm done.”  What he failed to realize was that he was now soaking wet and it was about 5 degrees outside!  Some dogs can handle this, but ridgebacks don’t even have a double coat, and in no time at all he was DARN COLD!

We ended up sacrificing a blanket to dry the hound off as best as possible and he spent the rest of the afternoon drying off in the car.  Luckily, it doesn’t take long to dry a short coated hound! 

All in all it was an exciting weekend.  I think we will need the whole week to recuperate!!