It’s almost the end of another month spent winter camping at Valens Conservation Area! We spent only four nights at Valens in March, but they were both wonderful weekends! Both times I came up early on Friday and got camp set up and a fire started for my love to come home to after work. I dewinterized our water system and filled the fresh water tank without any issues both weekends. It is a bit of work to haul the four 6 gallon jugs to the comfort station to fill then back to the fiver to pump into the tank, but for hot running water, it’s worth it! It usually takes me about two trips to fill all four jugs twice, to fill our fresh water tank. I also use some of the water to pump the pink out of the lines before filling the tanks.

This past weekend we had much better weather than our previous visits, although still cold from the wind chill. Mornings were below zero with a windchill, but it warmed up significantly by afternoon. The sunshine during the day was spectacular and warmed things up wonderfully. Both Dave and I at one time or another fell asleep in the sunshine sitting around the fire. I got in some excellent hikes, topping out my step count at over 21,000 on Friday and over 12,000 on Saturday.

The swans still have not returned, but it looks like the dam isn’t in yet as the water level has not yet risen. We didn’t hear the coyotes either, but the variety of birds were amazing! Around my feeders, I had two pair of bluejays, a pair of cardinals, two pair of doves, a Downy Woodpecker, a Red Bellied Woodpecker, Red Breasted Nuthatches, House Sparrows and a Red Winged Blackbird! The doves and the Red Winged Blackbird were new arrivals this year! This is the first year they’ve visited. Of course the psycho female cardinal was back again flying at its reflection in the truck window, mirror, chrome bumper and of course any window of the fiver it flew past. Both my suction cup window feeders were on the ground and broken when I arrived on Friday as was one of the larger feeders that had been knocked to the ground.

As is usually the case, we ate well, got a lot of outdoor exercise time in and a lot of time relaxing around the campfire. We were fortunate to have our oldest daughter and her husband come out to see us and stay overnight on Saturday. We had a fire all day which lasted well into the night. The skies were so clear both nights with many, many stars visible. We spent a good amount of time with the Google Sky app checking out the starry sky! It was such an amazing weekend. The company, the weather, the beautiful place we spend our time camping all  made for an amazing time away.

April will see us visiting Valens twice more. Once at the beginning of April and the third weekend of April which will be the last time out for the winter program and a short weekend as we won’t be able to arrive until Friday evening. April 29th we pick our fiver up at Valens and drop it at Fifty Point Conservation Area. We’ll spend the week there and the weekend of May 4th. This will give us time to clean out the fiver, hopefully give it a quick wash, flush all the tanks and test anything we haven’t over the winter such as the AC. After we leave Fifty Point, our fiver goes back to the dealer for some minor warranty work. They’ll likely have it for the week then it will have to be stored for a couple weeks until we can move it to our seasonal site which is the week of May 14th.

When you camp every month of year and every season, one just seems to run into the other. The winter season at Valens has seemed to go by so quickly! Spring is here but the weather has yet to catch up. I’m hoping for warmer temperatures our first trip out in April, but we’ll have to wait and see. If all goes according to schedule, we’ll stay a couple days longer that trip which will see us over by two nights in the winter program.  I look forward to seeing Spring come at Valens!

HAPPY CAMPING!!!