My name is Tom and I want to tell you about my camping trip back to the place where I grew up which is a camp way out behind Massey. You have to take the old Tote road, which is all hills and curves, past three Bailey bridges beyond Whiskey Lake. Even though I hadn’t be there in several years I remembered exactly where it was.

The camp is way back in the woods and is an outfitters camp where we used to rent out cabins. The place looked different…my old cabin wasn’t being used anymore but I still went to see it. The old wood stove was still there but my red box was missing. I looked in my old room and everything was gone as it was being prepared to be rented out. I left pondering over my memories of the old cabin. My sister showed me the main house which was a lot bigger than the old place but many things were familiar to me. I saw the old record player and my sister Mary put on some old Stomping Tom and Hank Williams records.
Later on we went for a ride in the pontoon boat around the lake which I really enjoyed because the view is breathtaking. When the ride was over we walked back and passed the old Model A Ford pick-up truck that I used to play in for hours as a kid. Then I saw the old snow machine and noticed the motor was missing and there were plants where the seat used to be. Then I turned to my worker, Rob and said “that’s the machine I put in the ditch”. My sister mentioned a fire so I wanted to go cut wood like I used to but couldn’t find an axe so we went to the wood pile and got logs and kindling and I got everything ready to start the fire. We roasted marshmallows and hot dogs and then we went to bed. It was a great day!

The next day we had a good breakfast, packed a lunch and headed to the lake to go fishing. We got into the pontoon boat and headed to one of my favourite fishing spots. I caught several fish but most were small. I still wanted to keep them all. My sister pretended to keep them but threw most of them back. I did some trolling and caught some more. Between my sister and I we caught enough big ones for supper that night. After supper I showed Rob some pictures that brought up some of my favourite memories of going to the Calgary Stampede and the two trips to Alaska with my father. We had another campfire and packed up the jeep and turned in for the night.

In the morning we had a good breakfast, took one more look around and headed for home. I had a great time!