We went camping at Waterton Lakes National Park for the Canada Day long weekend. We had never been there before but we went with Rich and Patti (and Keiran and Brenna) who had, and so we had some help figuring out where to go. They suggested a very nice campground and they had a list of kid friendly hikes that we could all do.

Although the park is in the Rockies, the terrain is surprisingly different than we see in the Mountain Parks closer to Calgary. The wildflowers were in full bloom for our visit and so it was a great time of year to be there!

The one major downside to Waterton is the wind… Apparently it is the windiest place in North America, and we felt it! The first night we were there the wind picked up around 10:00 and absolutely screamed all night and most of the next day. It didn’t bother us too much except that we ended up with a damaged pole in our tent, and so we were quite concerned about the overall integrity of the tent. We put out a few extra guy lines and it seemed to hold up OK.

We took Melanie camping for the first time last year and she was so excited about it that she literally bounced off the walls of the tent well into the night. This year she was much better and actually went to sleep pretty easily!