We are heading to Buck Lake! Another place we have not spent much time at. From Valleyview we headed south through Drayton Valley (oil and gas town) along the Cowboy Trail Highway 22 and crossed over the North Saskatchewan River.
First Stop…Alder Flats which is just a bit west of Buck Lake. Yes, we have to do a bit of Ancestry research at the cemetery!
We drove around the small town a bit. It is nice and neat and quite a bit of home pride ownership. Then on to Buck Lake. We figured we would stay at the Buck Lake Campground right in town on the southwest side of the lake so we could walk the town and explore some. Well NOT! We got there and the rodeo was going on and there was not a site to be had.
So off we went. Where now? We found Calhoun Bay Provincial Recreation Area on the east side of the lake and ventured over there.
We arrived to a quiet, peaceful campground with just a few campers and found a nice big site. But when it came time to register we discovered that all sites are reservable online with no on-site registration. So we parked in the site and I quickly got online to try and reserve the site before we set up camp. Perfect! It worked, I got the site, we paid, and we could now set up. Of course they want you to print our your camping permit and put one on your windshield and the other permit on your site post. Ahem….no printer. So I made my own and posted them. Seemed to work! I just copied exactly what was on the permit and put it on a piece of paper.
Campground: Calhoun Bay Provincial Recreation Area
Location: Buck Lake, Alberta
Site: 6 (back-in)
Cost: $28 (CAD)
Services: dry camp
Comments: We loved our site, we loved the campground, and we loved the lake. What a lovely time we had.
We were very close to the lake, i.e., right through the bushes at our site but we discovered later that site 8 would have given us a lake view. Site 7 is right there also and would have been terrific. They are both next to the boat launch so on a busy weekend it might not be so peaceful. Many of the other sites were in the trees and may have been a problem with mosquitos and/or Starlink reception. We had no bugs when we were there.
We took a few walks around the area and admired the water canals and flowers.
The access to Buck Lake at the boat launch was very close to our site so we could go over there now and then and watch the activities such as kayaking, paddle boarding, and fishing.
And we got to enjoy a few sunsets!
A beautiful place and I guess we lucked out by having the rodeo going on and us having to find another campground!
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