Monday, August 3, 2015

Brightwood Ranch Visit

After about 3 weeks of Faith being at Brightwood Ranch Brian and I decided to make our way over there for a visit and little tour.  We were blown away by the look of the camp 
and the work that is being done there.  

Here is a picture of the girls' cabins.  All of the cabins have their own bathroom with showers.  
We were impressed by that.  So much easier to keep all the little munchkins clean and a lot less wakeups for counsellors to take a child to the bathrooms too, I'm sure.


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This is the cabin that some of the women staff stay in - including Faith.


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This is the boys cabin along with the Guys Staff cabin.  Such a cool set up.


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Faith took us on a small tour of one of the out camps - the Tee Pee Village.  The kids that come for Tee Pee Village stay there, eat there 
and have their own camp out there while the main camp has their camp.
Faith has to make the rounds each day to all of the outpost camps for medications.






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Brighwood Ranch is on a beautiful piece of property.


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Touring the horse barn.  A whole separate horse camp is running concurrently with the other camps all summer, with a wrangler training program and more.


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A petting zoo as well which gives the kids from the city a taste of farm life.


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Some of the kitchen Staff loving on Nurse Baymax (Faith)


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Faith with the other nurse on site for the summer - Martine (Sugar)
Martine is an incredible friend and mentor for Faith.  She is a 3rd year nursing student and has a heart the size of Texas.  Such a beautiful young woman.


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Sharing some stories and heart tugs.


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Emotional support as it was time to say goodbye to the campers.


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A really meaningful tradition.  When the buses leave to take the campers back to the city all of the staff and counselors run alongside the bus waving and yelling goodbyes as far as they can run until they run out of steam!  Tears streaming down so many faces - even ours as we sat to the side and watched.




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Immediately following the hard goodbyes the workers all meet 
for a couple of hours of prayer and support.



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Looks like a real good emotional release for some of the counselors in their free time following the supper and camp clean up between camps.


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The van comes to pick up all the luggage to take back to the city and meet back up with the campers.


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Yes, we are so proud of our daughter and her summer investment.  All of the staff here have a commitment to God to bring love to these children.  




Monday, June 29, 2015

Cooking Lake/Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area Sunday Hike

Well since it was a lazy Sunday afternoon we decided to check out some nearby walking trails.  We drove to the Cooking Lake/Blackfoot Prov. Rec. Area not even 10 minutes from us.

This recreation area is used for horseback riding, X-country skiing, hiking, biking, and some trails are open to snow mobiles too.  Hunting as well with special permit.

http://www.albertaparks.ca/media/123481/blackfoot-summer-web-map.pdf

The temperature at the site said +32C so we made sure we had our water bottle along.  For once.  Usually we find ourselves in the middle of a long, hot hike without water.  We are learning :D


The one thing we did not count on though was the mosquitoes.  They were vicious kamikazes.  We had no chance at all at not getting bitten since we did not bring any repellent along.  Oops!  Mostly we walked really fast during our 4 km hike, but you know me, I just have to stop to take pictures.... so I got bitten a lot and Brian kept saying:  "come on, let's keep moving!"  Some of these pics are not as clear as I would have liked them to be, but it's hard to be slapping off the mosquitoes and taking pictures at the same time.

The wild strawberries are ready.... and very tasty too.  


I always just love seeing all the neat plants that grow up in this area of North America.  They survive -40C in the winter and put up with nearly +40C in the summer.  Amazing, really.










Nature's Fireworks








 Beavers hard at work creating a home for themselves.


We decided we needed to come back again.  It is a beautiful location to go for a hike and so close to our home.  The site we drove to was the Waskehegan Staging Area.  We are starting to tentatively plan a 50th birthday party for Brian this fall and thought this would be just the right location.  It has a picnic area with a cookhouse and toilets too.... and would perfectly reflect our love for this area to have our friends/family come and celebrate with us here.  We'll see.

Sunday, June 21, 2015