The Final Leg

I got up the next morning in Medicine Hat feeling refreshed.  I was looking forward to getting home, but also hopeful for the opportunity to take a few more photographs along the way.  There was virtually no snow left in Medicine Hat and I read in the newspaper that the local driving range had opened for the season a few days prior.  After breakfast I checked out, fueled the truck, and hit the road.  I headed northwest from Medicine Hat, in the general direction of Dinosaur Provincial Park.  The further I drove the more snow there was.  The skies were generally clear and sunny, but there was some lingering patchy fog.  At one point, from up on a high rise, I looked back towards the eastern sun and there was an unusual glow from the light burning through some low lying fog.  I got out the big camera and took a couple of shots of this.  After being out for about 20 minutes setting up my camera for the shot, and then packing up again, I began to get rather cold.  I had gone out with just a light hoodie and no gloves as the sun seemed so warm and inviting.  When I got back into the truck and looked at the thermometer I was surprised to see that it read -9C.

I continued on from here, evenutally stopping at Steveville.  The badlands of the Red Deer River Valley looked really cool with snow and I stopped to make a few photographs here with the big camera.  By this time it was warming up nicely and was quite pleasant.

Eventually I made my way over the ruins of an old stone house.  I was quite familiar with this spot and have photographed here many times in the past.  But, I had never been here in the winter with fresh snow.  I made a point of going out of my way to see it.  I was not disappointed as the snow was crisp and white with interesting drift patterns.  The low winter light was crisp and clear and showed really nice tonality and texture in the old stone walls.  I spent quite a bit of time here with my big camera and took several photographs.

I continued north and eventually I found myself up in Paintearth County.  I knew that a whole bunch of wind turbines had been installed here last year for power generation.  I actually saw them last fall when I was returning home from the prostecting trip down along the South Saskatchewan badlands.  At that point there were not yet operational and were still in the process of being installed.  I thought I might be able to capture some long time exposures of the rotating turbines against the winter sky.  I stopped at a spot near Halkirk and set up the big camera.  I was surprised that even though there was only a very light breeze to be felt down at the ground, that the big turbines were spinning at about one rotation every five seconds.  I made a few photographs here and packed my camera up for the last time this trip.

After this top I just carried on home.  It was still about three hours to go.  I finally arrived home just before 7:00PM, happy to finally be back, to see my girls, and to get away from behind the wheel.  Over 2300km of driving over four days.  More hotel rooms than I care to remember... particularly the one in Regina.  It was good to be back home...