Out Again with the Camera

I woke up fairly early on Sunday morning, in my trailer, which was in the shop.  I finished up the last of the winter preparations with the trailer.  This included running some plumbing antifreeze into the lines, cleaning out all the perishables, and disconnecting the battery.  I packed all my tools and camera gear into the truck, locked up the shop, and hit the road.

I made a quick run into Drumheller to fuel up the truck and grab a quick bite to eat.  Then I hit the road and headed east onto the prairie.  It seemed as though today would be a day to see a lot of wildlife.  I started out by getting a pretty good shot of a Prairie Falcon as I set out from East Coulee.  I saw numerous deer throughout the day, including one pretty impressive buck.  I also saw a coyote, a garter snake, and some migrating Sandhill Cranes.  There were also a lot of waterfowl including ducks, grebes, geese and cormorants.  I managed to get photographs of a number of them.

In the early afternoon I met up with my friends from Calgary, Chris and Connie. They put together the "Off the Beaten Path" blog.  Check it out at www.bigdoer.com   We've stayed in touch over the summer and connected a couple of times before.  This time we were out to try and locate and explore the remains of an old stone house.  We travelled as far as we could by road, and then set off on foot.  After hiking about 3/4 of a mile we arrived at our destination.  The century old remains of a once grand old house.  We marvelled at how remote the place was now, and how isolated the original homesteaders must have felt when they first built the place.  We spent a couple of hours here before eventually hiking back out.

We decided to make another stop at an old yard that I had spotted while driving in.  This yard wasn't nearly as old as the stone one.  The remains of this house had more modern finishing and electric power.  There was the carcass of a cow and some old junk lying about.  Of more interest to us was the junkyard a short distance away across the pasture.  This contained the remains of a bunch of old farm machinery, and some vehicles that dated back to about the same era as the old stone house.  We spent quite a bit of time exploring and photographing here.  It was after 5:00PM when we said our goodbyes and headed off in opposite directions.  I had a drive of over 4 hours to make it back home to Edmonton.  Although it had been really warm at about 24C all afternoon, with barely a puff of a breeze, it quickly clouded over and became rainy as I made my way back home and I drove through fairly heavy rain for the last couple hours of my return trip.