BP37.0 - Roadhouse Bed and BBQ - Rosedale Hotel

We dragged a rather large entourage into the Rosedale Hotel for Episode 37.0 of the Beer Parlour Project.  This included my colleague Chris, my brothers Greg and Wes, and my friend Frank and his wife Chris.  Chris Doering brought along his inlaw David Clarke as a guest photographer.  This ragtaggle entourage joined the collection of locals that were hanging out there.

New owners of the establishment, Dave and April were most hospitable.  We really felt at home, and enjoyed the evening we spent with them.  Kudos to them for re-opening his historical old establishment, after it had been closed for a around a decade.  The locals really seem to have latched on, and support them in their endeavor... as we do.

We met up with one of our followers at this outing.  Ken is an instructor at SAIT in Calgary, but also has a part time residence in nearby Cambria.  We thank him for coming out, and to supporting both us, and more importantly, the Roadhouse.  We hope to reconnect with him and explore some of the mine workings near his residence.

Local resident Todd did a great job entertaining the locals with his music.  I understand that some refer to him not as Todd, but as Toddler.  My brother Wes also took the stage and played a couple of songs.  A great time was had by all.

As we were leaving we saw a poster up at the bar that advertised Monte.... one of the outlaws from the train holdup at Big Valley.  This one featured an image from our previous Beer Parlour Project outing... I think one of Chris'

It was great to get out again on one of our outings.  We have experienced a bit of of a break since our most recent outing at Ferintosh, and it was good to get back into the groove.

December Calendar Image

I post this as I am frantically working on putting together my 2026 calendar.  This is the final image from my 2025 Calendar.  It's hard to believe that this image was taken in December.  It was back in 2023, when I went out on a day trip with my friend Steve and we explored the old abandoned Russian Monastery.  It was an abnormally mild fall and there was no snow, and warm temperatures.... much like this year.

I don't think this poor old piano will hang on much longer.  It was left at the monastery a few years ago, presumably as some sort of offering.  It has fallen into very poor condition suffering through the elements.  Sure makes for a great photo though...!

Apple Tree

I was driving backroads, exploring with my camera, in April of 1999.  I saw this solitary tree out in a field north of Warburg.  So I ended up taking a couple of photographs of it.  In those days I was using a very bulky and heavy Sinar monorail view camera.

This shot was taken on a sheet of Kodak High Speed Infrared film, on April 11th 1999 at about noon.  I used my Sinar camera and a wide Nikkor 75mm lens.  The use of infrared film dictated that I had to use a #25 Red Filter.  The film was processed in Kodak T-Max Developer, 1:6, for 7:00 minutes at 20C.  The exposure was for 1/15 second at F25.0.

Fast forward years later and I learned that this Apple Tree was once in the farm yard of a friend of ours.  Brenda grew up here, until the land was taken over for a coal mine for the Genesee power plant.  We became friends with Brenda and her husband Mike when our daughters ended up in school together.  Hailey and Emily are still friends, over twenty years later.  At the time that I took this photo, the girls weren't even born yet.

Some years ago I framed a large print of this same tree, from a different negative, taken at the same time.  That one hangs at Brenda and Mike's house.  Recently Brenda asked me to make three smaller 8x10 prints of this second negative.  She is going to gift them to her siblings this Christmas.

I managed to finish them up and get them mounted and matted before I took off to Nordegg.  Brenda will pick them up from our house while I am away.

Getting Loaded

My brothers Wes and Greg and I spent the weekend of November 15th and 16th loading up a bunch of woodworking equipment from Mom's shop.  Due to Mom's declining mental health, she will no longer be able to use this stuff.  I brought my little trailer home from Nordegg a few weeks back.  We spent the weekend going through all the tools in the shop and loading this stuff up.  On November 20th we all met in East Coulee and we unloaded it all, and put it away in the shop down there.  It will all stay in the family, we will just have to go to the shop down in East Coulee to use it, whenever the need arises.

After we were done with the unloading, my brothers stayed for the night at the shop.  My colleague Chris from the Beer Parlour Project, and an inlaw of his, met us down there, and they stayed at the shop as well.  We headed over to the Roadhouse in the Rosedale Hotel for something to eat, and also for episode 37 of the Beer Parlour Project.  Frank and Chris joined us there as well, so it was a big crowd.  Later we all headed back over to the shop and played some music and stayed up until the wee hours drinking beer.  Sadly Frank's PA system broke down so we were unable to have the jam session we had hoped for.