Weekend in Calgary

On Saturday morning I got the girls up bright and early.  We were on the road to Calgary by about 8:30AM, after picking up one of my trucks, loaded with the crates full of prints, from my shop.  We made it through Calgary before lunch, but then I had trouble finding my way over to the Leighton Art Centre.  The roads had all been changed in the south part of Calgary with the recent opening of the south leg of their Ring Road.  I missed my turnoff and we ended up looping way around to the south before eventually circling through Black Diamond and Turner Valley and making my way back up to Leighton.  It is a beautiful mansion, built I believe in the 1950's, and originally belonging to landscape painter A.C. Leighton.  It is perched high up on a hill and overlooks the Rockies to the west.  Today it is a historic site, an art center, and a gallery.  After unloading and dropping off the prints, we did a quick tour of the gallery.  I had all three of my daughters with me on this trip as Margarit is down in California visiting her older sister.  After leaving Leighton we headed into Calgary and made our way over to my brother Wes's place.  The girls were anxious to visit with their cousin Simone, so we planned on staying the night at their place, and heading back to Edmonton on Sunday.  We had a late lunch together and visited through the evening.

On Sunday morning Wes and I packed up our camera gear and headed out south of Calgary for a drive.  The girls stayed behind with their cousins Sam and Simone and their Aunt Barb.  The weather was not great.  The temperature was fairly mild at -2C but it was snowing, heavily at times, there was a heavy cover of cloud, and the wind was rather brisk.  We made our way down to some old grain elevators that Wes had explored in the past.  Conditions weren't very good for any exterior images so we spent most of our time exploring the interior of these abandoned structures.  I set up the view camera a couple of times and did some detail shots on the interior.  I've attached a few snapshots taken during our outing.  After finishing up here we headed back into Calgary.  By mid afternoon I packed up the girls and all our stuff and we made the long boring drive back to Edmonton.  We settled down in the evening, with everyone needing a good night's rest to be ready for school and work tomorrow.