A Drive to the Southeast

My friend Arturo and I decided to head out for a day trip on Thursday June 3rd.  We elected to head back down to the southeast of the city.  We had explored this area a few weeks prior with our friends Court and Fred.  On that trip we ran out of time, and didn't have the opportunity to check out a few things that we saw, mostly on the way back home.  

We were headed in the general direction of the badlands and coal mines in Paintearth County, but never made it quite that far.  Our first stop was an old abandoned baseball diamond.  I hopped the fence and began to walk down towards the backstop.  But, there were a number of goats and sheep in that pasture and they quickly headed over to check me out.  I thought it best to make a hasty exit and never got to check out the sports field.

Later we made a stop at an old abandoned hilltop homestead.  The majestic old house was significantly overgrown with carraganas and lilacs.  We took a couple of photos here before moving on.  Later we found another old homestead.  It was located right beside the road, but also adjacent to a small creek down in a broad coulee.  We spent a great deal of time photographing here as both the interior and exterior of the old home were visually interesting.

Once we wrapped things up here we turned back in the general direction of home.  We checked out a number of small towns along the way including Meeting Creek, Edberg and New Norway.  Just when it seemed we had run out of subject matter we stumbled across an old abandoned community hall.  This one was very unique.  It consisted of a gable style roof built immediately upon a concrete foundation.  The foundation extended only a couple of feet above grade and there were no framed walls.  It was much like a bunker or a bomb shelter.  On this day when the temperature got up to 30C, it was very cool and pleasant down in that foundation.  The walls were decorated with a lot of really colorful graffiti and we took a couple of photos down there before eventually making our way back home.  We had a short outside visit on my patio back home, and shared a couple of beverages before Arturo made his way back to his place.  A very enjoyable day once again, and I hope I created a couple of worthwhile photographs.  Time will tell, when I get around to processing my film.  Although I brought both 4x5 and 8x10 cameras with me, I only ended up shooting with the smaller 4x5.  I exposed around 15 sheets of film and I'm hoping for one or two keepers.