Saunders

I spent Wednesday August 25th out at the cottage by myself.  Initially Margarit and the girls were going to come out and join me, but they decided to stay home for an extra day.

I spent part of the morning splitting and stacking some firewood.  We heat with wood in the winter, and you can't have too much.  We still have one huge and one small pile of cut logs that date back about four or five years to when we cleared out lot.  This stuff needs to be dealt with before it rots and becomes unusable as firewood.  We will not run out of wood for some time to come as we have several piles of cut logs at our second property, and lots of standing dead trees and deadfall.

By early afternoon I decided to take a drive up to Saunders.  There was once a town and a coal mine at Saunders Creek, and it was in operation until the 1950's.  There is not much left of anything now.  It was along the rail line that extended from Rocky Mountain House to Nordegg.  There are a few old foundations left, but no buildings.  The railroad right of way is still evident.  There are some large slag piles and a rock dump just beyond the mine.  There is still a small stream trickling out of the old mine shaft and it smells of sulphur.

On the road in to Saunders there is a gorgeous hillside covered with huge, mature aspens.  One of the reasons that I waited until afternoon to visit was that I knew the sidelight on the trunks would be best at this time of day.  It was gloriously quiet and I wandered around the old mining area with my 4x5 for a while, before moving on to the roadside aspens.  I had both my 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras with me, and shot some images with both of them.  There were no campers at the campsite, and only one vehicle passed me on the road.  Even this one was late in the day as I was taking my last photograph.  It was a very relaxing and pleasant afternoon.