We had an early breakfast in the morning, again courtesy of our hotel. Then we checked out and loaded all our gear... more than a little grossed out by the issues with the ticks the day before. This day would be another hot one, much like the day before. There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was burning down onto us. For the the first couple of days of our trip we had clouds roll in by mid-afternoon and it not only provided for more interesting skies, but also took the edge off the heat a little.
We headed to the southwest of Saskatoon and planned to do a big loop around and return home to Edmonton by evening. As we were heading along some backroads we came across the Hillview School. I'm not sure how it ever got that name as the land around it is flat as a pancake and there are no hills to be seen.... at least by Alberta standards.
Later we came upon another ghost town. This was one that we knew of, and we hoped to be able to locate the landowner and get permission to go in. But we could not find his residence. We walked in to the town and photographed an old grain elevator that was about to fall over. We also photographed an old store. But, without permission we didn't want to do anything more than a few quick photos, so we did that and then left.
After that we did a big circle route down to Hershel and on to Stranraer. I would like to return to Hershel some day, as there are some petroglyphs there I would like to see. But on this occasion we did not have time to take the tour. There was a really nice old church in Stranraer and we stopped to take a few photos of it.
Once we finished up there we travelled on to Dodsland. Sharon's father was born in Dodsland and her grandfather immigrated from England and homesteaded near there around 1910. An really nice elderly gentleman that ran the only gas station in town, directed us over to the town office. He even solicited some of the locals that work for the town to head over and help us out. This was really going above and beyond as by this time, it was 5:00 in the afternoon on a Friday. But, the town staff were able to pinpoint the location of Sharon's grandfather's farm based on some old Dominion Maps. The family had lost the farm near the end of the Depression, just before the Second World War broke out. At that point they moved away to Saskatoon.
After shooting an old building in Dodsland we hit the gravel roads heading west and eventually found the section of land that had once belonged to Sharon's family. It was just an open piece of cropland with a couple of oilwells, but no buildings.
Once we had completed this it was time to hit the road. It was late afternoon and we still had five hours drive ahead of us to get back to Edmonton. We crossed the border at Macklin and followed Alberta Highway 13 through Provost, Hardisty and Camrose. We finally got back home to the city around 10:30PM. By the time we dropped off Arturo and Sharon it ended up being about 11:00 before Margarit and I rolled up to the house. But it was a fantastic trip and we really enjoyed the time with our friends. I came back with around fifty sheets of exposed film, and look forward to seeing some of the images once I develop them.
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