On Tuesday October 21st the Guild gang packed up from our rental house in East Coulee, and headed southeast towards Dinosaur Provincial Park. We left moderately early... around 9:30AM... but the days are short at this time of year, and there was a frost in the morning. There was no point leaving too early. Along the way we made a stop at the Turner House. Only two stone walls remain standing from this once proud old homestead. In fact, they have stood like this for as long as I can remember, and I know I photographed them as far back as 25 years ago. In recent years they have shown signs of collapsing, and someone has welded some old pipe together to hold them up just a little longer. This happened sometime in the past 5 years or so.... An information plaque has also been added.
It was a beautiful clear day with wonderful light. The temperature peaked at about 17 degrees in the afternoon. We spent the entire day wandering around with our cameras in Dinosaur Provincial Park.
It was a perfect day, as there were not a lot of other people around. We hiked several of the trails with our cameras, and basically spread out in different directions on our own. The low, clear fall light was wonderful and created some great highlights and shadows. The only down side was that there weren't really any clouds. But that was not a huge problem as I managed to keep the sky to a minimum in my compositions.
Helena hung around with me part of the time, but mostly wandered off on her own exploring. She has been to the park in the past, but it has been quite some time. She was very young the last time we were here and she could barely remember it. Our last stroll of the afternoon was down along the river, among the cottonwoods. Helena took a shot here with the view camera of the Spirit Tree. As we were wrapping things up a number of very tame Mule Deer wandered out in the sage flats and approached very closely.
By this time it was getting to be late in the afternoon so we hit the road on the 90 minute drive back to East Coulee. By the time we arrived back at the AirBnB it was already dark. But we went out for a walk after dinner and admired the clear sky and all the stars. The Big Dipper and the Milky Way were clearly visible. It started to cool off quite a bit once the sun set, but it was still very mild considering the time of year.
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