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| Lac le JeuneView of the lake from near the playground |
We love camping and hiking and have several books which have ragged edges of where our next hike or campsite should be.
With having young children and not being 20 ourselves anymore, car camping is great. We love it, both of us grew up camping with our parents and now we're returning that experience to our own children.
We also love backpacking and our 11 year old daughter has started to enjoy that experience with us (which meant the purchase of an awesome new 3 person ultralight tent).
I'll put the rest of who I am and who my family is in the appropriate spot for your enjoyment, but the rest here is where I will start to outline our outdoor camping and hiking adventures from this year.
Enjoy!
Last week we drove up to Lac Le Jeune provincial park between Merritt and Kamloops. It took less than 4 hours driving including a lunch stop in Hope for little ones to stretch their restless legs.
The weather was pretty hot, the lake deliciously cool and after ditching my husband to get our kids to the naturalist program down at the beach on time, we settled in nicely.
We used two tents, a large six person for our three kids so they can really stretch out and have space in the centre for play. We love that tent! You can stand up inside it and still have some headroom! We also brought our newest addition to our tent collection, an extra long three person ultralight used mainly for backpacking.
I don't know the temperature of the lake but it's nicely refreshing and not too cold that it takes your breath away. Even our youngest got in which is rare. A small sandy beach worked great for entertaining the kids so bring along sand toys if you're heading there.
Downside: It seemed to be leech breading season while we were there and a few people including our kids got their first lessons in leeches! Also, the geese this year stayed all summer which meant the grassy area was totally covered in goose poop but the park did hire a "goose poop picker upper" who worked tirelessly from about 5-10am every day. What a job!
The kids loved the naturalist program and they earned all their Jerry Ranger stickers!
There is also a decent playground for younger kids to enjoy. The paved roads are perfect for riding bikes plus the dirt trails surrounding the lake.
Since the logpine beetles destroyed so many trees there, a few years back they had to take out a lot of the pine trees which has left the campsite fairly open, with a lack of privacy and shade. The upside of that is the campsite will take on new looks over the years as the new, young trees grow up.
Unfortunately, the day before we were expected to depart the forest fire smoke from the fires at Williams Lake blew in and the smoke was thick enough at the campsite that all our eyes were starting to be bothered and by lunchtime we decided it wasn't going to improve and we broke camp. Breathing in smoke wasn't our idea of a good time. I know it was worse in the surrounding areas after we listnened to the news on the way home so we knew we made the right call.
Will we go back? Probably, in a few years when the trees have grown more. I found this campsite really great for relaxing. There isn't too much to do if you don't have a boat with you or you have really young kids who won't hike or bike for hours on end. We got some fishing in from the shore but no bites although we heard tales from previous years of 3-4 pounders being caught.
On the bug side of things, they weren't bad at all. Just a few mosquitos and wasps but nothing compared to previous camping in other spots.
Final note: I saw the milky way in the middle of the night and we had the privilige of listening to loons and owls all night every night which we honestly enjoyed and missed on our first night back home.
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