Sunday May 14th was Mothers Day. I had spent the entire weekend prior with my Mom, down at the Springfest in East Coulee. So on this day I just gave her a phone call. I had a bunch of rebar loaded onto a trailer and was hauling it out to our property at Nordegg. We are starting construction of our cottage this season and this rebar, which I had left over at my shop, will be used in our foundation. Hailey decided to come along with me for the day, while the other girls stayed home. At the last minute we decided to load up our ATV and take it out for a spin. Despite the fact that I bought the ATV last year, this was to be its maiden voyage. We have kept it in storage here in the city as we have no place to safely store it out at Nordegg. Since we were dragging a flat deck trailer out anyway, this seemed like a good time to load up the ATV.
We got everything hooked up and hit the road by about 10:00AM. This put us out at the property by about 1:00PM. I off-loaded all the rebar and stacked it on our lot. Then the ATV came off the trailer and Hailey and I headed out for a spin. It was a cool day with overcast skies, and the temperature only got up to about +10C. It felt a lot colder than that whizzing around the countryside in an open ATV. It rained and even snowed a little while we were out riding around. Hailey and I took turns driving the ATV and despite the fact that she really has no driving experience, she did OK. She seems to be a pretty cautious and safe driver so this bodes well for the day she will get her drivers license and starting driving on the roads.
There are a network of marked ATV trails in the hills above Nordegg. Some follow the old railway right of way while others seem to be old logging or mining roads. We eventually found ourselves up in the high country way above the townsite. At this point we ran into some fairly deep snow and couldn't get any further up the trail. I had my camera gear loaded into the ATV with us and on the way back down we stopped in town and I photographed the old bank building. By about 4:00PM we made our way back over to the lot and loaded the ATV back onto the flat deck.
The site clearing has been finished up by our contractor, and the excavation work down for our cottage foundation and for our septic tank. All of the trees have been cut up into firewood, and the leftover brush has been hauled away. A site has been leveled for the storage building that we are constructing adjacent to the cottage. This will be where we eventually park the ATV, and my old snowmobile.
We didn't see any wild horses on this trip, but we saw a number of deer. There were also some relatively fresh bear tracks right on our property. They were big, and the claws were evident so I suspect it was probably a grizzly. He walked right across the middle of the site that has been cleared for our storage building. The tracks were a couple of days old, but were still pretty fresh. This is a reminder to us that we will be residing in bear territory and have to be cautious when we are out here.
By about 5:00pm we had the ATV loaded up on the trailer and hit the road for home. We drove through a couple of showers on the way home, and got back to the city by about 8:00pm. By the time we off-loaded the ATV at the shop, put the trailer away, and got home, it was after 9:00PM. A long but very enjoyable and refreshing day.
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