Fall Day Trip

On Thursday October 6th I spent most of the day working in the guest cottage.  I was up by 7:30AM, and after a leisurely morning coffee and breakfast, I headed over to the guest cottage about 9:30AM.  It dropped down to the freezing mark overnight, and by the time I headed out after breakfast it was only about 2 degrees.  

I spent a few hours putting down subfloor and working on some other little projects around the cottage.  By 3:00 in the afternoon I decided to take a break.  I locked things up, loaded my camera gear in the truck, and took a drive out to Abraham Lake.  My first stop was near Windy Point.  I'm so used to this place living up to its name.  Most of the time there are white caps on the lake and the wind is howling.  Sometimes it seems strong enough to blow the teeth out of your head, and you have to hang onto the truck door with two hands when you get out.

This time around it was almost dead calm.  I have only experienced this a couple of times in the past and I must say it is much more enjoyable than the usual alternative.  There was some haziness in the sky that was particularly visible when looking to the west into the sun.  I'm not sure, but this may still be coming from some of the forest fires that had been burning late this summer in British Columbia and up near Jasper.

I pulled out the view camera and took a couple of shots of Windy Point from along the highway.  The lake level was higher than I have ever seen it.  The water was just about up to the road and in many areas it had engulfed the trees.  Looking back to the east I could see that the water level was very near the top of the Bighorn Dam.

I drove a little further west and stopped at a spot where the water was right up into the aspens beside the road.  I pulled out the big camera and took a couple more shots here.  It was a beautiful day and the low fall light was just gorgeous.  The temperature peaked at about 21C.  I also took a couple of shots of the textured face of one of the nearby peaks.  I'm not sure of the name of this one, but I'll have to look it up and find out.  It might be Abraham Mountain, but I'll have to consult a better map to be sure.

On the way back to the cottage I took a side trip over to the Bighorn Dam.  I drove right out onto the dam and marveled at the level of the lake.  I found a spot nearby that afforded a gorgeous view of the backlit mountains with a foreground scattered with some fall colors.  The leaves have quickly been coming down the past few days and it seems that the fall colors have peaked for this year.  But I managed to get a few more shots before I packed things up and headed back over to the cottage for dinner.