On Saturday afternoon Margarit and I went out for a day trip. It was a beautiful fall day with clear warm light. The light is so nice at this time of year with the sun lower in the sky and wonderful side light on everything.
We left the three girls at home, with Hailey in charge. She seems to enjoy the responsibility of looking after her two younger sisters. And, the younger ones don't seem to mind having their big sister in charge. Margarit and I are just grateful that we finally get some time to ourselves.
We didn't have a lot of time so we headed out to the northeast and explored the usual area, up in Lamont County. We drove around for quite a while and didn't initially find anything that was particularly interesting. The harvest is just about complete at this time of year but we did come across one field of flax that was yet to be combined. Sure wish we would have found this one back in June when it was in bloom!
We drove around for a while longer and Margarit spotted this carcass out in a slough. It a little too muddy to get really close to it. Once things freeze up in the coming weeks, and before we get too much snow, this might be worth coming back to. It would make a very stark and graphic black and white image to photograph this skeleton frozen into the slough.
Eventually we came upon an old abandoned farm yard that was worthy of some exploration. We wandered around for a while and took some snapshots with the digital cameras. Nothing really seemed strong enough to justify bringing out the 4x5. But, we did spend an hour or so here checking out a bunch of old junk including a combine, a thrashing machine, an auger, as well as some abandoned old buildings.
We continued on and came across another old yard. Though there wasn't as much junk lying around, the buildings were a little more photogenic. I ended up bringing out the big camera and took a couple of images. By this time it was getting to be moderately late in the afternoon and the light was getting even better. The breeze that had been rather brisk all day was beginning to die down too. The weather was particularly mild and the temperature got up to around +20C. Pretty nice for mid-October in central Alberta. In fact by Monday, there were around 30 temperature records set across the province with some areas getting as warm as +25C.
After finishing up here we began to make our way back home. We thought that the girls had been on their own long enough and we'd better get back before some sort of squabble erupted and things got ugly. We made our way back towards the city and passed through Elk Island National Park. Near the north gate of the park we came across a group of vehicles parked along the road. Several photographers were out in the ditch with their big digital cameras and big "potato-masher" telephoto lenses. Soon we saw what they were photographing. There was a coyote laying in the grass beside the road, just 10 or 15 feet away from the photographers. This was the very spot where I had seen two very tame coyotes just a few weeks prior, and one coyote on another occasion a week or so before that. This guy was obviously feeling at home around here, and was not at all intimidated by human presence. Eventually he wandered over towards a fallen log and began chewing on it. Then he move over towards one of the photographers to check him out. First he sniffed at him, and then be began to poke at his hiking boots. Eventually he got even bolder and began to chew and pull on his boot laces. All the while the cameras were clicking, including ours, and the photographers in attendance rattled off hundreds of images. Margarit took all of these as she was on the side of the truck that had the best few of the activities. Eventually the coyote wandered off into the bush and the photographers dispersed. We realized that one of the other vehicles present belonged to my friend Mark from the Monochrome Guild.
As we got back towards the south end of the park we came across a couple of bison right beside the road. Of course we have seen these big guys hundreds of times before but this time, with the beautiful fall light, we just had to stop and take some more photographs. After moving on from here we made yet one more stop in the late afternoon light as we came across a Great Horned Owl in the trees near the road. It is so much easier to spot the wildlife now that the leaves have all dropped. After this last stop we headed for home. The girls were well behaved in our absence and there we no issues. We all went out for dinner together once the camera gear had been put away.
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