Quite a number of times over the past decade... and more... my friend and business partner Frank and I, along with various friends and relatives, have taken a trip out to southeastern Alberta to prospect for Dinosaur fossils. Most years we have ended up out in the badlands of either the Red Deer River or the South Saskatchewan River. The past couple of years we just couldn't "get around to it..." so the trip didn't happen. This year we were determined to get out again, and to continue the tradition in the years to come.
I booked the Friday and the Monday off from work to make the weekend worthwhile, particularly in light of the driving distances involved. I left home early on the morning of October 14th. The trip almost didn't materialize for me... My wife and three daughters were leaving the next morning, to fly down to California to visit her sister. After I was already out the door she realized that some of the paperwork necessary for her to leave the country with our daughters, which I needed to sign, had not been organized. Eventually after much stress and chaos, we got everything together, found a way to get the document notarized, and I was on my way. I was traveling with my friend Louis, a relative of Frank's. Louis is an avid photographer, though he lives on the "other" side and does not shoot film, preferring the digital realm. We were both more interested in making photographs, than looking for fossils....
After a couple hours of driving we came upon an old farm yard that looked interesting. We turned off Highway 12 to check it out. Turned out that the house was nothing special, but there were a couple of really cool old cars in the yard...
A little while later we turned south onto Highway 41. We came upon the turnoff to the Mud Buttes. I had driven past this area a number of times in the past, but was always in a hurry to get somewhere and always had my trailer in tow. This trip we had plenty of time, so we decided to check them out. Up on a high rise, overlooking the surrounding prairie, we found a fairly extensive area of badlands exposure. We spent a couple of hours hiking around and photographing, sharing the afternoon with a group of school kids out on a field trip.
We eventually hit the road again, but not before a cell phone call from my lawyer, who needed to speak to me before completing the paperwork necessary for Margarit and the girls to leave the country the next morning. What a relief it was to get that overwith and know that I could continue on to southern Alberta, without the possibility of having to make a quick trip back home. Later that afternoon Louis and I rolled into the Sandy Point campsite on the South Saskatchewan River. My friends Frank and Jim had arrived there the evening before and set up camp. The two of them... avid fossil hunters... were out prospecting when Louis and I arrived. We pitched our tents in the campsite and settled down for the evening. This was quite a switch for me as for the past decade I always traveled with my trailer, and prior to that, with my pickup camper. But, I had just bought a tent, a winter sleeping bag, and was decent air mattress and was determined to give it a go. Good thing that sleeping bag was a warm one... for despite the fact that the days were mostly sunny, with a light breeze, and high temperatures in the range of +10C to +14C, the nights were quite cold, with the temperature dropping off to several degrees below freezing.
That night we stayed up really late, trying to keep warm around the fire, and trying to put a dent into the beer supply that we had brought to the site. We did a pretty good job, and ended up sleeping in a bit. After a breakfast of sausage and eggs, we headed out to the badlands about 30 miles to the southwest. Frank and Jim were interested in prospecting for fossils, while Louis and I were interested in both the fossils, and the photographic opportunities at hand. The area is very remote, and we drove for many miles on gravel roads, that eventually became rough roads out to well sites, and eventually just tire tracks across the pasture to the edge of the valley. We spent the entire day hiking and prospecting and had the area completely to ourselves... Initially I hiked around for a while, and found a shattered Albertosaurus tooth [note the serrations visible on the tip] and various other bones and fossils, including part of a very small ornithamimed claw. But eventually the fossil prospecting was forgotten, and I focused my attention on making photographs.
As evening came upon us we left the badlands and headed in the general direction of camp. We came upon an abandoned farm yard that we just had to stop and check out. The light was phenomenal and we wandered about checking out the old buildings. We quickly discovered that the old buildings were inhabited by a pair of Great Horned Owls. We spent some time there making photographs as the light faded into night. We then hit the road back to the campsite to make dinner, start a fire and continue with our task of consuming the supply of beer that had come with us.
It was a cold and frosty morning and Louis and I wandered around the campsite before eventually rousing Frank and Jim from their beer-induced sleep. We threw together another hearty breakfast before setting out for the day.
Louis and I dropped off Frank and Jim at White Rock Coulee, a Provincial Natural Area, and headed back to the old farm yard that we had found the evening before. We spent a good part of the afternoon there making more photographs of the old buildings.
Later we headed back out to the badlands and spent a couple hours photographing in the evening light before eventually meeting up with Frank and Jim and heading back to the campsite for the night.
Eventually the guys woke up and we had our last breakfast together. We planned on getting out hiking in the badlands one last time before we had to pack up and head for home. Frank and Jim headed out to the badlands while Louis and I took down our tents and packed up our gear. Eventually we headed out to meet up with Frank and Jim. But, we quickly became distracted when we came across a couple of massive fields of sunflowers. We were so blown away by the photographic compositions that we were presented with, and this graphic subject matter, that we ended up spending a couple of hours there. By the time we finally packed up our cameras, it was too late to bother trying to meet up with Frank and Jim. So, we just pointed the truck north and started in the general direction of home.
All the way home we kept searching for opportunities to get out with our cameras. We checked out an alkali slough near Czar and an old farm house near Hardisty. As the sun was setting we stopped at the Ribstones near Viking. Just as the last glimmer of twilight was in the sky we came across a couple of combines completing the last of the harvest. From then on it was just another hour of pounding the pavement back into the city to eventually find our way home. It was sure nice to unpack, settle down, have a shower, and sleep in a real bed...
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