Glamping with the Giesens

Our pastor and his wife, Geoff and Janel, and their kids, are embarking on an adventure. They left earlier this month on a 60-day trailer-trek across Canada and the U.S. It's a dream come true for Janel and a nightmare for Geoff - but he's a great guy, a good husband, and an awesome father, so he gave in for the love of his family. Janel, who is also our church's worship leader and an awesome musician, started a great blog to document her trip and keep all her fans informed. Check it out. It's funny and I look forward to reading it regularly over the 60-days. I'd love to do something like this. https://thisishowweroll17.wordpress.com/ The Heth clan sans one kid. 

Welcome to a brand new year! We’re excited for all that camping will bring in 2017. Though we have all our trips booked from now until October, we have less trips planned overall. In February we bought a cabin back in Ontario, so we will be flying back 2-3 times this summer in order to leverage that investment. Unfortunately, that cuts into our trailer glamping time. However, being in a cabin in the woods is still glamping, technically. I think include our Ontario adventures so it doesn't really feel like we’re really not missing out on any glamping fun. We just got back from our first glamping trip this year. We hadn’t planned to go out – well, sort of. Back in February, we made a reservation at one of our fave sites, Mt. Kidd, with the intention of cancelling if there was still snow on the ground, which is entirely possible in May in Alberta. Then we promptly forgot about it. When I came home from work this past Tuesday, Dave announced that we were indeed going camping this wee...

1.      You cook all your meals over an open campfire – even when you are in your home in the suburbs. I’m talking fire pit, not BBQ. So much so that your neighbours think your stove must be broken and they bring you over a casserole to help out. 2.      Your RV kitchen is better stocked than your one at home. “Honey, where’s my big spoon?” “It’s in the trailer…” You have spices, condiments and other staples stocked and ready to go. All you bring from trip to trip are perishables. 3.      Everything ends up in the trailer: board games, toys, gadgets. You can’t find anything at home but when camping, everything is within reach. 4.      Your calendar in March and April is marked with the dates you have to call for certain campsites to get the weekends you want. You make sure you are home so you can spend hours on the phone and you cancel plans to make sure that you’re home. 5.  ...

We’re back from what was an awesome first weekend of the season at one of our favourite sites, Mt. Kidd in Kananaskis. While it was cooler there than in Calgary (it is the Rocky Mountains after all, and there’s lots of trees and shade), the weather was awesome and we had an amazing time. Arriving at our campsite in record time by 6:30 PM (we still had a LONG evening ahead of us), Dave backed into our site, with me navigating on the phone, the very first time. Not even one forward correction needed. We high-fived and complimented each other on not losing our touch over the winter. Then Dave built a fire. In three minutes he had a roaring blaze. Again, we felt pretty good about ourselves and I already had the words for this blog post forming in my heads. Feeling pretty good about ourselves, we ate dinner by the fire and enjoyed the flames for a few hours before the cold inspired us to go inside. That’s when things started to go sideways. :P Here's just a few of the mishaps we laughed...

S pring is here and a brand new glamping season officially starts – today! Yep, you read that right. The Giesens are going glamping in APRIL – I never would have thought it was possible to go this early. Calgary has had a very warm winter and very little snow, so over a month ago, we took a chance and booked the April 1 weekend, thinking we’d cancel it last minute if the weather ended up being bad. Our gamble paid off – temps will reach 20+ degrees this weekend! Some summers the weather doesn’t even get that nice! :P And while we have seen weather like this in April in previous years, we NEVER considered going out in the trailer. Does that mean we are getting braver? More comfortable driving a massive condo-on-wheels behind us? Loving glamping more? Perhaps it means all of it. Needless to say, we four are very excited. We’ve been talking about it non-stop for the last few days and we’re almost ready to go, even though it’s only Wednesday. The thought actually came to us when we f...

This past weekend was a complete 180 from our last. If we camped OFF the grid at Barrier Mountain Outfitters, we were definitely glamping ON the grid at Canyon RV in Radium Hot Springs, BC. From our beautiful, grassy site to Wi-Fi, to clean washrooms and free showers with hot, running water, this was definitely our kind of glamping. We five (including Kira’s BFF Jaylene), had the best time. The kids cried a little when it was over and Dave said he wished we could have stayed a whole week. I was truly relaxed as I read magazines in our hammock. The weather was perfect – sunny and hot all three days we were there. We went to the Fairmont Hot Springs in nearby Fairmont and soaked in the naturally hot water. We went shopping in Invermere. We ate dinner at our favourite place out there, the Black Forest Inn, and even got dressed up for it! Yes – dresses and makeup for the ladies and showers for all. Of course, we went geocaching and hiked up to the Sinclair Creek waterfall. We ran out of ti...