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Summer adventures in Prince George

For the first time in my adult life, I was able to take two weeks holidays in the summer, all at once.
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Cottonwood Island Park shows its fall colours in this

For the first time in my adult life, I was able to take two weeks holidays in the summer, all at once.After a busy summer, I was looking forward to spend the final weeks of my son's last summer before school at home doing fun things and being together as a family.

Because I was off work and we did not have any holiday plans, we invited my husband's nephews to come and stay with us for a week. Due to the distance between their home town, Cloverdale and our home town, Prince George, my husband and I have not had a chance to spend much time with them over the last few years so we were looking forward to getting to know them again as they have grown up a lot in the last few years.

I have to admit that I was a little bit nervous at the thought of hosting two boys from the city, aged seventeen and fifteen without their mom who was joining us later. I was nervous because I do not have any experience with what two teenaged-boys like to do for fun. We don't want to be the lame aunt and uncle. We wanted them to have the best time ever on their vacation to Prince George.Luckily, two boys from the city really loved the country.

Over this past week I have taken a toddler, a kid and two teenagers on four hikes and saw two lakes.And, I only got us lost once.

Our first adventure was to Shane Lake which, given the close proximity to UNBC, you would think that I had been to Shane Lake before - not so! We went through the Forest for the World entrance and did a short hike up to Shane Lake and I impressed the boys with my bush skills. When our daughter dropped her net into the murky water, I was able to scoop it out first try with someone's old hot dog stick.

It was very impressive.

On our way to the lake there was a fork in the trail with a trail signpost with a map of the hiking trails.Try as I might, I could not make heads or tails of the map as I could not find the "you are here" mark as I was distracted by the giant phallus lovingly hand-drawn over said map.

Disguising my embarrassment at staring at a hand-drawn package, I assertively told the boys, "we'll go on the left hand trail." I was pretty sure that the trail looped back around (it did) and reasonably sure that we would not get lost (we did not). Upon reaching the lake, I looked around and thought to myself, this looks pretty familiar, and then raked my brain to remember that I have indeed been here before. We had a fun morning at the lake and did not get lost.

Encouraged by the success of the first hike, we went to Ferguson Lake the second day.

Feeling bad about leaving our ancient dog at home the first day, I elected to take her to Ferguson for a little walk.After a really short distance past the creepy forest and to the abandoned ghost cabin, we had to turn back other we would have to carry our 40 kg dog back to the car.We had a picnic and came back with one sore puppy.When we came back and told family members we just went to Ferguson Lake, they asked us if we like the boardwalks.

To which I replied, "There are boardwalks?"

So Day 3, we went back to Ferguson Lake but without the dog.To make it more fun, we GeoCached around the lake.The boys had never heard of Geocaching (and I had never actually found a GeoCache before) and they were intrigued about the outdoor GPS scavenger hunt. If you are looking for things to do with teenagers in Prince George, you need to go GeoCaching at Ferguson Lake. There are six caches and we found them all.

Day four,I was exhausted and we borrowed a Nintendo 64 console and the boys played video games.

Day five we went to Cottonwood Island Park and I got us lost.

Attention City of Prince George Parks people, not everyone knows where they are going at Cottonwood Island Park.

There are no signs - not even trail signs with phalluses drawn on them.

There are also a lot of false trails leading to caverns and the ruins of old bridges.A bridge would have been helpful for saving my reputation as an expert woodsperson.I managed to get us all the way over to Mile 0 of the Centennial Trail (which I should explore at a later date) and then somehow turned us around the wrong way and we were heading to Lheidli T'enneh Memorial Park.

I figured it out fairly quickly and then back to the van we went, reputation in shatters.

All in all though, this was an exceptional week for exploring the city and we are both so grateful and happy that we were able to experience the great trails this city has to offer.It's all at our doorstep and we are so lucky. I am hopeful that our nephews had a good time and they are welcome to come again (this time I will learn how to read a map).