That great big orange circle in the sky? Yes indeed, that’s our Sun. As seen of course, through hundreds of miles of atmospheric smoke haze. That’s the circumstance of massive forest fires in our neighbouring province of British Columbia. By the time you read this, skies hopefully may have cleared. Or maybe not. Although there are several forest fires in our own Northern Alberta, Sustainable Resources (SRD) says the smoke we are seeing locally is indeed BC smoke.
Meanwhile, back in our part of the land, and despite what for some people seems like a lot of moisture in the last several weeks or so, the regional fire danger is rated from “High” to “Very High” depending on the particular area.
With weather forecasts predicting hot weather the next few weeks, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on warnings.
You can pick up a link to the SRD situation right on the front page of southpeacenews.com, just under the daily weather report and forecasts.

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We like to pooh-pooh summer vacationers who think a British Columbia trip is a mandatory happening in summer. Crowded campgrounds and fire bans in that province are normal, especially in August when “No Campfires Allowed” is normal.
It can get worse. We’ve actually been in mountain campgrounds south of our Canadian border when even smoking a cigarette outside was banned. Propane cook stoves or barbecues forbidden. Only cooking inside a camper trailer, fifth wheel or motorhome allowed. Tenters wanting to cook up a meal? Too bad. Make a sandwich or head to the nearest restaurant.

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Although there were a few empty spaces here and there in local campgrounds, in fact the August long weekend recently was the busiest for campgrounds this season. Of course, we are a big supporter of tourism for our region, so it’s really great to see people coming from everywhere to enjoy our area.
We don’t know how each and every tourist and campground operator is averaging throughout the whole summer season. Like most businesses hit by the oil downturn four years ago, so were the tourist operators. Hopefully, these too are slowly recovering or are back on track.

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Interestingly, in tourism, there is no real organization promoting our region to the rest of Alberta. Big Lakes Country Tourism (BLCT) out of Slave Lake worked for years promoting, but is now gone. In any event, it didn’t do much promoting the west basin of Lesser Slave Lake.
One reason was the Town of High Prairie wasn’t a member, as if that made it legitimate for Big Lakes Tourism to keep “forgetting” so much of the rest of the area from Faust to Joussard to Grouard, High Prairie and Triangle. After all, Big Lakes County itself was a paid-up member. To illustrate how ridiculous BLCT was, a large map of the region was displayed in the tourist booth where Big Lakes had their office in Slave Lake.
The map had a big star covering up the name of “High Prairie” on it. Locals heading to the office in the highway tourist booth there might check. Is “High Prairie” still covered up?
At any rate, that organization collapsed a few years ago. It is now being reborn by some local governments in Slave Lake. Maybe the new folks will find the west end of Lesser Slave Lake. We’re counting on it.

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Here’s a reminder to tourist operators, event organizers from quad rallies to pow-wows to rodeos to just about anything that might be considered a tourist attraction, please contact this newspaper if you have photos or information that can be used for our 2019 Tourist Guide.
The Guide will be available early in 2019 in print, and online. Call the newspaper at 780.523.4484 to get your information listed.
And here’s a reminder, if you have good quality photos, bring them in to the High Prairie South Peace News office and get free publicity for next year.

Tourist operators, event organizers from quad rallies to pow-wows to rodeos to just about anything that might be considered a tourist attraction, please contact this newspaper if you have photos or information that can be used for our 2019 Tourist Guide like the photo above of the Joussard campground.