I was tired from the work week, and with the days getting shorter, we decided not to head away for the long weekend on Friday after work. Instead we planned on leaving on Saturday morning. I had great intentions of getting up early, getting the girls out the door, and hitting the road. When the time actually came I couldn't seem to motivate myself to pack up the last few things and get going. Finally we hit the road about 11:00AM. Originally we considered heading east into Saskatchewan, but that seemed such a long drive given the late start. And besides, the weather forecast was better to the west. So we headed off towards the front ranges. After a brief stop for fuel and lunch in Rocky Mountain House we continued west to Nordegg. From there we turned north onto the Forestry Trunk Road and eventually ended up at the Blackstone River. We had found this place last fall, and had been meaning to return all year. It was overcast and cool and in the middle of the afternoon and the temperature struggled up to +10C, at times hovering around +8 and +9. I don't think it froze at night, but it must have got pretty close because the furnace in the trailer sure ran a lot. We settled down in the unofficial camping spot beside the river. There were five or six other trailers spread out through the trees, but it was generally fairly quiet. This was going to be my weekend to finally get back into some large format photography and I had the new Ebony camera to try out to boot. The girls spent the weekend wandering along the river collecting wildflowers, rocks and fossils.
There is an outcrop of soft shale along one of the banks and when this material is split open there are a lot of plant fossils and leaf impressions. I imagine that this stuff dates back to the Cretaceous as it is probably the same formation as the coal beds of the front ranges.
I didn't take a lot of photographs with my little digital camera as I was too excited to get shooting with the new 4x5. In fact on three of the five walks that I went out on, I forgot the little camera back in the trailer. But I did end up shooting 36 sheets of 4x5 film and look forward to seeing some of the negatives when I get a chance to get back in the darkroom and start processing. Hailey went out for a walk with me on Labor Day Monday morning before we packed up and left. At the start of the walk she fell in the creek, but then we had an enjoyable couple of hours together exploring and making a few photographs.
On Sunday evening, while I was grilling some steaks, there were three guys loading up some ATV's. They had arrived in the morning and been out all day trail riding. As they were packing up to leave the youngest of the three guys kept looking at me, and eventually stopped his truck and called out to me. It was my cousin Victor from Innisfail. We hadn't seen each other for quite a while and we were both surprised to find each other in such an out of the way place. We visited for a while before he finally had to hit the road for home.
All in all it was a pretty relaxed and enjoyable weekend. It was also a good opportunity to try out the new camera and get familiar with it before I go on a longer trip. The camera is quite different from the Sinar that I am used it and there will be a bit of a learning curve until I get more comfortable with it. I learned an important lesson about my light tripod and will switch back to a heavier one for most shooting.
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