Bring It On!: Candle Lake Re-Visited

I just arrived home from Candle Lake. It was a fantastic couple of days - lots of laughs, lots of good food, lots of golf and lots of memories made. Thanks to Shardelle for including us in on her "Stay and Play" holiday - we had an incredible time.

Me, Kris, Chantelle and Shardelle

Candle was "my lake" while growing up, but I hadn't been there in years. It has changed a lot since back then, but it is still one of the best vacations spots in Saskatchewan in my estimation. We couldn't have asked for better weather, with the exception of the first night at the cabin. Turns out old Barbie-Cakes is a pretty solid sleeper. According to the girls, while I slept peacefully, they ALL got up to batten down the hatches in the middle of the night. Kristie was pretty sure there was a tornado en route to flatten us and all our neighbours and I didn't hear a thing. Too bad, I enjoy a good thunder-boomer now and then.

We stayed at the Candle Lake Golf Resort - in this little cabin:

The amenities were awesome - turns out the accomadations even came complete with our own little "pet". The first morning we were there, Chantelle called us up to the bedroom because she spotted a little fox in the backyard. Cute, right? Sure, in the daytime. Not so much when he decided to make multiple trips to hang with the girls in cabin #6. In the dark. With a full moon. Fast forward to Tuesday night. We were all sitting around the fire pit, playing a very competitive game of "Name that Tune" on Chantelle's iPod, while intermittently breaking out in (not so harmonious) song to the likes of Chris Isaak, Blue Rodeo and Bon Jovi (talk about Girls Gone Wild!). Very focused on the game, our attention very abruptly changed gears when something caught Telly's attention in her peripheral vision. Although you can't see it in the picture, there is a big sandbox about 12 paces to the left of the cabin, and in it she saw the eyes of some woodland creature. At first we thought it was a skunk, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be our little furry friend the fox, taking care of some business in the sandbox. All was fine until he finished and started doing laps around the sandbox, scooting around like crazy getting ever closer to our little circle. Convinced that he was rabid, we all ran onto the deck until he went on his way. Laughing, we thought that was the end of it when he quietly disappeared. Wrong. Again,right in the midst of a (terrible) rendition of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", all of a sudden Shardelle freezes like she's seen a ghost, and without a word of warning to anyone, starts sprinting to the cabin. In an effort to not upset us (and possibly prevent Kristie from going into pre-term labour), she decided not to scream and just make a run for it when the fox once again entered our campsite. Directly to Kristie's left. Seriously, he could have been in her lap before Shar thought to warn us. Of course, when we too recognized that we weren't alone, we all screamed like little girls and again, ran for the safety of the cabin. At this point, you'd think we would just give up and go in? No, no, no. We weren't going to let some slinky little fox ruin our fun, besides, we spent $15 on two bundles of wood and we wanted to burn it. UNTIL, the third time when out of no where he bolted out from under the van and made a bee-line for the space under our deck. At that point, he had us all held at bay in the parking lot - let me repeat this, four grown women stranded 30 feet from our cabin because everyone thought he was going to jump up the stairs,bit one of us and give us rabies (he did look a little on the mangy side). However, if there is one positive thing I can say about having canser, it's that after the initial shock, I don't stay afraid of anything for long and started walking up to the cabin. Where I immediately got yelled at by Chantelle, asking me what I was doing and telling me to get back to the group until she could get the flashlight app on her iPhone to look under the deck.Needless to say, that was the end of our fire pit, but not the end of our night. I have to say, sitting around the kitchen table, gabbing with the girls, I laughed harder than I have in years. Those ladies are very good for my soul.

The Candle Lake Golf Resort is absolutely beautiful and they treated us very, very well. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys golf and losing the occasional ball.