Sunday in the Badlands

The weather was alright on Sunday the 13th of September.  It was still cool, but there was a little sun, and we managed to get out for a while.  We struggled to find a good place to go hiking, and Helena was getting a little down. 

After driving around for a while we eventually stopped near the Bleriot Ferry and wandered around a little.  Helena perked up a lot when we found a small garter snake.  She has no fear of snakes and was very quick to pick it up.  In her younger days she would have demanded that we take it home as a pet, but she has now come to realize that wild animals are meant to remain wild.  So she played with it for a while, and eventually let it go.

My hiking quickly became very limited as my old hiking boots finally gave up.  The foam cushioning between the sole and the boot totally failed and was crumbling away.  This left the sole dangling, and made it impossible to walk.  Of course I had left my shoes back at the trailer in East Coulee.  I suppose I got my money's worth out of these boots as I know I had them since at least 2013 and they had many miles on them.  I wore them for numerous hikes in the mountains and badlands as well as down in Utah and on the Oregon coast.  These were my boots when I did the hike into The Wave in northern Arizona back in 2013.

Later in the evening we headed back to the trailer and had a BBQ with some burgers and salad.  As it got dark we got a fire going in the chiminea.  The firewood was all pretty wet from all the recent rain and we had to use the tiger torch to get it going.  This was a real flash back to the days of camping with the trailer when the girls were all much younger.  My brother in law Shawn bought that chiminea for me at a garage sale and we took it out to East Coulee, where it has remained for many years.  Hopefully when Shawn recovers more from his heart surgery he can come down and enjoy a fire with us... likely next year.

Frank and Chris came out to visit and we hung around for a while swapping lies, telling stories and enjoying a few cold ones.  Later, after they left, Margarit, Helena, Hank and I went out for a walk and were amazed at the clear skies and how visible all the stars were.  There are only a handful of streetlights in East Coulee, and not a lot of light pollution, so the milky way and all the stars were gloriously obvious.  Helena was just blown away by the spectacle.

 

 

Diesel Price

The price of diesel fuel hit the highest level I have ever seen in my life.  I had to put a little in my tank today to be able to keep running errands, but only bought a small amount.  I'm hoping that this price spike is short lived.  The provincial government is talking about eliminating the provincial road tax starting on October 1st, which will knock 13 cents off the price per litre.  Today I put in 50 bucks worth at the ridiculous price of $2.639 per liter.  The price was actually $2.669 but I got a discount of 3 cents for being an AMA member.  The premium diesel was crowding three bucks...  YIKES...!!

Today is also the birthday of my oldest daughter Hailey.  She has been living out at our place in Nordegg through most of the summer, and is spending her 24th birthday there.  We look forward to seeing her again soon...!

 

 

CANCELLED...!! BP48.0

It seems I was premature in my announcement about our upcoming Beer Parlour Project outing.  Team member Connie has taken a turn for the worse.  She was rushed into hospital last night and is in significant pain.  The doctors are conducting a bunch of tests to determine if this is resulting from the chemotherapy that was recently initiated, or if the cancer is getting worse.  Needless to say we will not be heading out to the hotel on Friday as originally planned.

Hopefully over the coming days and weeks there is some improvement and we can consider rescheduling this outing. 

The Beer Parlour Project has visited 47 separate hotels, plus made return visits to at least four or five others.  This is the first time that we have ever had to cancel.  Obviously it is for a very legitimate and serious reason, but we still felt bad about it.  We apologized profusely to the owners and assured them that we will do our best to re-schedule as quickly as we possibly can. 

Beer Parlour Project - BP48.0 - Longview

The Beer Parlour Project team will be visiting the Twin Cities Hotel in Longview, Alberta on Friday September 25th.  Any friends or followers that will be in the area on Friday are encouraged to stop by. 

This one will be a somewhat sad and somber occasion as our collaborator Connie has recently had her cancer come back.  She just started some chemotherapy treatments, and will not be able to join us for this outing.  Her husband Chris is determined to keep the project going, and will be out for the event.  

 

 

Roadside Badlands

After exploring in the Rosebud Valley for a while, we took a drive along the Dinosaur Trail.  There was some exposure right beside the road, in an area that was unfenced and not posted.  So we wandered around for a little while to see what we could find.  By this time the weather was improving a little, and the clouds started to break up.  We wandered around beside the road and I took a couple of shots with my view camera.  Helena managed to find a few fossil dinosaur bones.  Mostly we just photographed them but she did pick up a few little scraps as souvenirs.

Later that evening we headed back into Drumheller.  We had dinner at a pub in town, before heading back out to our trailer at the shop.  Now that Helena has turned 18, we can take her anyplace and aren't limited in our choice of where to eat.  It was a pretty low key evening and we just hung around at the shop and turned in early. 

 

 

Rosebud Valley

Margarit and Helena and I headed down to East Coulee on the afternoon of Friday September 11th.  Helena is really passionate about rock collecting, geology, and fossils and has been bugging us to return to the badlands ever since our last visit in June.

On Friday evening we just picked up a few supplies and then headed over to East Coulee.  We would stay in our trailer, and hang around at the shop, when we weren't out exploring.  The next day, Saturday morning, we headed out. The weather was not great, and it was cool and overcast most of the time.  At times there was a cold wind, and it even rained a little.  We made the best of it and spent three days out exploring.

Our first stop was in the valley of the Rosebud River.  This smaller tributary of the Red Deer River joins the main valley at Rosedale, after passing through Wayne.  A rail line that once serviced the coal mines ran through the valley.  The road bed and most of the bridges remain, but the tracks are long gone.  The spot that we stopped at once had a siding with a grain elevator, but there is nothing left but the ruins of some small buildings, and a few abandoned cars.

Down in the valley the shrubs were just loaded with choke cherries.  In places they were hanging off the branches like grapes.  You could see where wildlife, most likely mule deer, had been gorging on them, and left big poop piles full of cherry pits.

We stumbled across a huge spider on a web in the sage.  I think it was some sort of a tiger spider.  The abdomen of this beast was about the size of a small grape.  It was probably about 2 inches or more in diameter, including the legs.  I checked with my entomologist brother and he says it is Agiope Trifsciata.

I got the view camera out and rattled off a few sheets of film.  Mostly just some shots of the old abandoned cars, and one of the bridge. 

 

 

BP42.0 - Czar Hotel - Ted

This is a scan of another negative from our Beer Parlour Project outing to the Czar Hotel.  This is one of the sheets of Kodak Tri-X Pan 320 that I developed on August 27th.  The film was significantly underexposed, achieved by rating it at 1600iso, rather than the box speed of 320.  To compensate for that underexposure, the film was over developed in highly dilute developer.  I used Kodak HC-110 diluted 1:100, and developed for 2-1/2 hours.  Agitation was minimal at only once every thirty minutes.  By comparison, normal development is usually something in the range of 7 to 10 minutes, with dilution at around 1:30, and much more regular agitation.

This is a portrait of Ted, one of the locals at Bella's Bar in the Czar Hotel.  He was there, like everyone else, to enjoy Steak Night.  This portrait is cropped a little from the full frame shot.  I took this photograph on April 10th of 2026 at about 8:00 in the evening.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Nikkor 210mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F7.0.

 

Shunda Falls

Later on September 5th, after our stop at the old pumphouse, Margarit and Hank and I continued on our ride in the Side-By-Side.  We ended up at Shunda Creek, at an area with a number of small cascades.  I have always called this Shunda Falls, but I don't think that is the proper name, or if it even has one.  I've heard people call it Fairy Falls, and at one time someone had left a bunch of gnome figurines in the woods nearby.

Despite the cool overcast weather it was a great place to spend a couple of hours, and we really enjoyed the sound of rushing water and the solitude.  We didn't see a soul the entire time we were there.  

Hank loved the place and was running back and forth and crossing over the creek on some logs.  We managed to get most of the mud from our previous stop, washed out of his fur.

I took a couple of shots here with my view camera before we eventually packed up and returned to the cottage.  It was getting late in the afternoon by the time we got back, and had been cool and drizzly all day long.  We were pretty tired and chilled by the time we returned and ended up just making dinner and having a fire in the woodstove. 

Old Pumphouse

On Saturday September 5th Margarit and I were out at Nordegg, and went for a ride in the Side-By-Side.  We ended up on the Rail Trail, and found ourselves down by the old pumphouse.  When we first discovered this place a number of years ago, it was in much better shape.  Now the old building is on its last legs and is slowly losing the war with gravity. 

This creek and spring was once the winter water supply for the Nordegg town site.  The water here has a high mineral content, likely sulfur based on the smell, and does not freeze in the winter.  I'm told that back in the day the locals thought the water had health benefits.  I'm not sure if it was ever tested to confirm anything, but considering the size of the nearby coal mining operations, the sulfur was likely coming off the coal seams.  

The creek downstream from the pumphouse recently was dammed by beavers and a large number of trees were flooded and drowned.  The beaver dam has since been breached and the water level has receded, leaving all of these standing dead trees.  I find this visually interesting and struggled to find some photographic compositions in the chaos of the area.  I ended up taking a couple of shots with my view camera before we continued on our way.

We had Hank along with us for the day and of course he found the biggest mudhole that he could and more or less jumped right into it.  He was indeed a filthy beast but we managed to clean him up a little before we ended up back at the cottage. 

Back to the Darkroom

On September 9th I spent the entire day in the darkroom printing.  I had a number of things that I needed to print, and it took me all day.  I think I made something like 23 prints, of various sizes, from six different negatives.  There were two, that were from Beer Parlour Project outings and were requested by subjects.  One was a shot of a couple that visited the Edgerton Hotel while we were there.  A second was from the same hotel outing, from a guy that actually lives in Calgary.  His name is Trevor, and he later visited us during our Beer Parlour Project outing in Cochrane.

A lady called me the other day and saw one of my prints at the Beehive Market in Nordegg.  She wants to buy it for her husband as a gift, but couldn't purchase it there because he was present.  The three others were large 16x20 prints that I wanted to see printed for consideration in Apparitions.  Ultimately I only elected to include one of the three.

Through September 10th the prints were all in the wash.  On the morning of the 11th I pulled all of them and left them to dry as we hit the road yet again.  This time around Margarit and I are taking Helena down to East Coulee for a couple of days.

Flooded Birch

I took this photograph back in July when Margarit and I were returning to the city from a day trip.  I was fascinated at the contrast of the dead birch trunks that had been drowned in this beaver pond.  This was taken in Elk Island National Park.

I added this sheet to a batch of film that I was processing, the day after taking the shot.  This is a scan of a 4" x 5" sheet of Ilford FP4+ film, rated at 160 iso and given N+1 Development in Kodak HC-110 developer, dilution B, for 14:20 minutes at 20C.  This development expands contrast by one stop.  The sky was rather blank due to smoky conditions from forest fires in British Columbia.  But I hoped that the extra development would make the birch trunks stand out against the darker background.  I also added a #25 Red Filter to further pump up the contrast.

I took this photograph on July 24th of 2026 at about 5:15 in the afternoon.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Fujinon 250mm lnes.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F29.0.