Day Trip with Jeff

I remain way behind in editing my photos and putting together blog posts from all my activities this spring.  Way back on April 23rd I went out for a day trip with my friend Jeff.  I am just now getting around to putting this post together.

It was a cool, overcast and rather blustery day.  Jeff and I met at the north gate of Elk Island Park and headed off to the north.  We didn't expect to be able to do a lot outside due to the poor weather, but were hopeful we could find some old buildings that would allow us to work some interiors.

Our first stop was at the old railway trestle near Waskatenau.  This is by no means a really large bridge, at least not compared to some others around the province.  All the same we stopped and explored for a bit before continuing on our way.  

We stopped again a short distance down the road where the same rail line came to an end.  There was an old abandoned flat deck rail car sitting at the end of the line.  We noticed that the date spikes in the railway ties were dated 1944 and 1946.  We marvelled that this was over seventy years ago, at the end of the Second World War.  

After finishing up at the rail line we continued on for quite some distance, hoping to find some other photographic subjects.  We eventually came to an old abandoned house and spent quite a bit of time photographing the interior.  I didn't really take any photographs here with my digital camera, but did get a couple of good images with my 4x5 view camera on black and white film.  Some of those will be scanned and shared in future blog posts.

By mid afternoon we decided to call it a day.  Jeff headed back to his place in St. Albert and I made my way back in the general direction of home.  I noticed that north of the town of Lamont there was the smell of wood smoke in the air.  I had heard in the news that there had been a grass/brush fire in the area that for a time was out of control.  I drove the backroads for a while and eventually came upon the burned areas.  The fire was still smouldering in places.

This was nothing compared to the big fire, called The Beast, that some weeks later would engulf the City of Fort McMurray forcing the evacuation of nearly 100,000 people.  That fire destroyed nearly 2500 structures and is still burning to this day.  It is contained, but not fully under control and has burnt around three quarters of a million hectares, starting south of Fort McMurray, through some of the oil sands sites, and on into Saskatchewan.  It was extremely dry throughout the prairies this spring and there were quite a number of forest fires at one time.  On this particular day though is was overcast and threatening, we didn't really get any rain to speak of.  But by early May the rains came, and we have received quite a bit since then.  The timing was just about perfect for the farmers so hopefully they have a good year that perhaps can make up a little for the poor economic conditions we are currently experiencing due to low oil prices.