On Sunday July 9th Hailey and I took another trip out to Nordegg. This time around we got a relatively early start and were on the road by around 8:00AM. This put us out in Nordegg well before lunch. I had spent the day prior pre-fabricating many of the pieces for our out building. We stopped at our property and unloaded everything. Once that was finished we headed over to the storage facility where we now park our ATV. We pulled it out of the storage building and Hailey drove it back over to our property. This is a drive of a few miles so this took a bit of time.
I then proceeded to put together for our outbuilding. There were four walls that I had pre-built back home. These were lined with 1/4" pre-painted plywood. I assembled these on the base that I had set up a couple of weeks ago. These wall panels were screwed together on the corners and screwed down to the base. Later I sheeted the exterior of the walls with precut panels of 1/2" plywood that were clad with 26 ga. galvanized sheet metal. This was followed by some aluminum angle extrusions at the corners and around the door opening. Finally a pyramid shaped skylight was mounted on top to create the roof. I still need to make a door and next time we come out I will finish this project off. Officially it is a smoke house....
In between all this Hailey rode around a bit on the ATV. We also took a break and went into town for lunch. We stopped at the restaurant at the Nordegg Lodge. It was really hot all day long with temperatures approaching 30C. It was also very humid, and the air was hazy with smoke from numerous forest fires that were burning in the interior of British Columbia. I guzzled down a lot of iced tea during that lunch and just couldn't seem to quench my thirst.
The forms that were set a week ago for the footings of our cottage have now been poured. The forms have been stripped away. The ICF insulated foam blocks that will become the forms for our concrete foundation walls have been delivered to site and are ready to be assembled. In the upcoming week or two our contractor will be setting these forms and pouring the foundation. This will be followed by installation of the water storage cistern and the sewage holding tank. After that we will await the arrival of the framing crew to begin building the cottage.
It was somewhat quiet around the subdivision this weekend, in comparison to the July long weekend a week prior. A few neighbors were around, but not all that many. Late in the afternoon, once we had finished up, we loaded some of the construction waste into the ATV and hauled it over to the nearby town burn site. Then we took the ATV back up to the storage compound in the Industrial Park. After we put it away we noticed a herd of wild horses not far away. There are numerous herds in the area and we saw several of them when we were out during the winter months. This was the first time we had seen them in a while. They were pretty skittish and got spooked when Hailey tried to approach them.
This is a shot taken from the Forestry Trunk Road right up by the Industrial Park. The knob on the left is Baldy [Shunda] Mountain. There is a road up to the top, and a fire lookup at the peak. We haven't had a chance to drive up there yet. I'm told that it is gated part way up, but that ATV's can go around the gate and drive to the summit. Yet another destination that we need to check out. The large mountain in the center of the image is Coliseum Mountain. It rises to an elevation of nearly 7000 feet. This mountain is immediately behind our subdivision and the lots rise up onto the lower flanks. Our property would be near the center of this image, slightly to the right. If there weren't so many trees in the way you would be able to see some of the building from here... but we like it secluded, private and unknown.
After putting away the ATV, we packed up and headed for home. It was around 6:00PM when we hit the road for the three hour drive back to the city. We followed some large thunderstorms all the way home. We saw lightning in the distance, and the roads were wet, but we never actually got rained on. We made a brief side trip near Wetaskiwin, over to the mineral rights holdings owned by our extended family group of aunts, uncles and cousins. I was the spokesman for our family group when we negotiated a mineral rights lease last winter. A well was drill on our holdings, but as it extends beyond our interests horizontally, we are probably not entitled to any royalty from this well. There is a pumpjack there that is producing so we are hopeful that additional wells might be drilled.
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