Labour Day Monday was the last day of summer holidays for my kids and we all wanted to do something fun to cap off a fantastic summer.
We rounded up some tubes and went for a float down the Sheep River. We figured it would take 2.5 to three hours to float down from the pumphouse west of town to the Lions campground in Okotoks. My sister, brother-in-law and their kids came along for the adventure.
We started our float at 2 p.m. to get the best heat of the day. The first thing I noticed was how incredibly slow the water was moving.
I had planned on a low water level in the river, which I saw as a good thing for safety, but I hadn’t factored in how much slower the low water would move.
The scenery was spectacular with leaves starting to turn colour and we spotted lots of different wildlife. Two of our six tubes popped and there were many funny mishaps along the way.
My abs are still sore from laughing.
We left our watches and phones at home because we didn’t want to risk water damage so we had no way to know what time it was.
We knew we had been on the river a long time as the sun was nearing the horizon.
The air temperature was dropping as big shadows were cast along the river from the low sun.
We finally arrived in Okotoks at 8:30 p.m. This was when we realized that the vehicle we had left there wouldn’t start with just the key we had brought and we needed the electronic key fob too.
