On Sunday morning we packed up in Empress and made our way back west towards Drumheller. It was a cloudy and windy day, but with two days still left in our long weekend, we were optimistic that the weather would improve. We had been in touch with Margarit's brother Shawn and he was heading down to meet us for a couple of days. We headed to the Community Park in Dorothy and set up camp there. This was once a ghost town that was very photogenic and I used to shoot here a lot. The locals have a lot of pride in their small community and have put a lot of money and effort into restoring their town. They have sort of a makeshift museum set up in a few old buildings on the edge of town. The Community Hall is now mostly restored and it looks as though it has been used for some functions recently. Both the Catholic and the United Church are now fully restored on the interior, with just a few finishing touches left on the outside. The old Alberta Pacific Elevator still sits in a state of decay, as do a few remaining old buildings. The old playground is a popular place and every day a lot of the people passing by, stop to check it out.
Shawn and his two kids met us there and camped out with us. My friend Frank and his daughter Sabrina stopped by for a little while as well. We wandered around town, had a fire and a BBQ and just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves for a couple of days. The weather did eventually clear and by Tuesday when we had to pack up for home it was actually quite hot.
Julia in front of the old bunkhouse, which has now been restored.
The pincushions are present around here but weren't blooming. But the prickly pears were in bloom all over the place.
An old radio inside the restored house
An old lariat, seeing a second life... used to tie the gate shut
An unmarked grave in the hills behind town
Some views of the old Alberta Pacific elevator...
A fenceline and a few up the valley from the edge of town
On our way home we made a stop in East Coulee. At this point in time the commercial building was not yet mine, and we had to respect the fact that we couldn't do much there. I did use the realtors key and briefly went into the building to show the girls. I spent an hour or two taking some photographs of the building and while I was doing that, the girls wandered over to the nearby schoolhouse museum. By this time it was getting to be fairly late in the day so we eventually had to hit the road for home.
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