It was the last day of the month, a Friday, and the first day of a long weekend. I had forgotten all of that. Long vacations play hell with my sense of time. The kids and Alison had breakfast while I started packing up. We had planned a hike up Castle Mountain on the 31st and I wanted to get started before we lost too much daylight.

We dropped the trailer off at the Douglas Fir Resort, where we had reservations for that night, then drove out along the old parkway to the Castle Mountain trail head. The sign says Rockbound Lake, but that’s just the name of the lake on the trail up Castle Mountain.

We started up. Baby Girl faded quickly, once she realised that our day was going to be a long walk uphill. She wanted to see snow, but maybe not that bad. We had a great argument, agreed not to talk to each other, then made up. I offered to give her my favourite knife. After that things were mostly okay, although she was adamant that she was not climbing to the summit.

We stopped a couple of times on the way up to Rockbound, for rest and drinks. Once we reached the lake, under the looming wall of the Castle Mountain bowl, we stopped for a picnic lunch. Baby Girl said it looked like a fairy tale lake and I had to agree. The sun shining on the remarkable turquoise water was amazing.

We continued our climb up and over the wall to the second, smaller lake. Alison had gone off to explore a rock fall on the other side of the lake so I took the opportunity to go skinny dipping in the really frigid waters of the lake. I’ll be honest, I didn’t last long. It seemed like a better idea in my head.

I found some marmots in the rock field near the trail on the way out and beckoned the team over to see. There were at least a couple of adults, and one small juvenile. I like marmots. They’re cool because they’re grumpy.

As a wise parent, I had saved a litre of Coca-Cola for the hike back down. When Those Johnston Kids started to groan about the distance still to go, I fed them snacks and generous swigs of soda. This was noteworthy because they don’t get soda – ever. They did not stop talking for about 30 minutes straight while Alison and I nodded politely and led them down the mountain. When the caffeine buzz waned, I gave them the other half of the bottle and that was enough to get them back to the parking lot. This is why you shouldn’t give your kids soda on a regular basis. They’ll develop resistance and it won’t work when you need it to.

Those Johnston Kids were pretty well exhausted by the time we got back to the car. The hike had taken about 6.5 hours, and we’d climbed 750 metres over about 5 kilometres. That’s a lot for wee ones.

When we checked in at the Douglas Fir 30 minutes later, however, the exhausted children found the energy to go to the waterslide and climb half a dozen flights of stairs repeatedly – with me in tow. I had to drag them back to the room for dinner.

They were mollified by staying up late to watch the The Fantastic Four movie (the old bad one) on Teletoon. Hypnotised, rather, because they get television as often as they get soda. This is why you shouldn’t let your kids watch television. It works whether you want it to or not.