Dad and Hailey Day

Not to be outdone by her sister, my eldest daughter Hailey decided that she also needed to get out on a day trip with her Dad.  This time around my friend Rob came along with us.  We were still enjoying mild fall like weather conditions and just needed to take advantage of the opportunity.  Living here in Alberta we know that it is only a matter of time before winter settles in and gets a choke hold on us!!  So on January 8th, early Sunday morning, we once again headed out into Lamont County to do some exploring.  We started out with a stop at the abandoned Creekland School.  This two room school house is heavily vandilized and probably not long for this world.  I took a shot with the big 4x5 before we moved on further north to the Skaro Shrine.

After exploring the huge stone altar at the shrine we focused our attention on an old farm yard immediately north.  The ice crusted snow and the strong side light made for some interesting compositions...

After that we decided to carry on and check out the old Russian Monastery up in Smoky Lake County.  Although I had just shot there a short time before, neither Rob nor Hailey had ever seen it.  So we continued on up there and spent a couple hours shooting.  This time around the big view camera came out once again and I set up a couple of compositions at the monastery.  As we were leaving, and heading back to the south we came upon an old barn that was worth a little closer look...

As we made our way back into the city, after a very enjoyable day out in the country, we reflected at how we had cheated Old Man Winter out of one more weekend....