Sunday Day Trip

Last Sunday, Margarit and I went out for an afternoon drive.  We took the cameras along, and left the girls behind.  Just the usual tooling around up in the rural countryside northeast of the city.  We found a couple of interesting old farmyards and poked around for a while.  The view camera made it out of the truck a couple of times and I actually exposed some film... a rare occurrence lately for me or so it seems.  At one of the yards we found the hive of some wild honey bees under the eave of an old shed.  There was definitely a feeling of fall in the air as there is sort of a crispness in the days now.  There were also flocks of migratory birds gathering.  I don't think they're quite ready to head south yet, but they're getting prepared.  Mostly we saw Canada Geese but there was at least a couple of flocks that sounded like Sandhill Cranes, though they were flying too high to confirm.  We stopped at three old farm yards and one cemetery, before eventually making our way back home to the city.  Once we got back and unpacked the gear we took the girls out for a late dinner of pizza.

Winter Hockey Season Begins

The winter hockey season began last night for my team, The Renegades.  This year we are playing in the south conference of the Capital City Recreational Hockey League [CCRHL], in  Division 7.  For the last dozen years or so we have played mostly on the north side of the city... at first in the old ERHL, which was recently taken over by the CCRHL, and more recently in the merged league.  The majority of our current players now live on the south side, and as team manager I was getting tired of the long commute to all the games in the north.  So this year I registered our team to play in the south conference.  As a result most of the teams in our division are new to us.  We have played against a couple of the teams in the past, during inter-conference games last season.

Last night our game was at the old South Side Arena, adjacent to Strathcona High School.  It was a late game, with the puck drop at 10:15pm.  We didn't have a full roster but managed to get 12 skaters and our goaltender out to the game.  We jumped out to an early two goal lead after which our opponents, the Canadian Mooseheads, rallied back to tie the game.  We then got four more goals to put ourselves into a comfortable lead to start the third period.  The Mooseheads put on a late push and made things close before we got one back.  Any chance of a recovery by the Mooseheads was wiped out when they took two late penalties in the last couple minutes and we hung on for a 7-5 victory.  

In years past the league has always had a pre-season but this year that was eliminated so this was a regular season game that counts in the standings. 

Across Country

After a couple days in the cool damp mountains around Nordegg we asked Karl and Martina if they would prefer to go somewhere else.  The forecast was calling for conditions to improve a little, but over on the other side of the province it was supposed to be even better.  We offered to take Karl and Martina across to the badlands and visit our place in East Coulee.  We left the mountains on Monday August 29th, after lunch and headed back to Rocky Mountain House.  From there we cut across to Bentley, Lacombe and on to Stettler.  From there we headed south to Drumheller and eventually on to East Coulee.  We set up the trailer on the RV Pad at the Dinosaur Valley Studios shop.  It was sunny and quite a bit warmer, with temperatures up into the high 20's.  

We had a BBQ that evening, and a fire, and then the next morning went out exploring.  Margarit headed over to check out an antique shop with the girls and I took Karl and Martina for a quick spin out onto some backroads.  We stopped and checked out the old Aerial Mine operation at Rosedale before eventually heading up the 11 Bridges Road to Wayne.  There we met up with the girls for lunch at the Last Chance Saloon.

There was a photograph in the saloon of an old Texaco Station with a hand written note on it that said "Movie Set from Running Brave 1981".  It sure looks a lot like our building in East Coulee, before it was renovated and added on to.  The original part of our building dates back to 1937 and is the former Sloan's Garage... a Texaco Station.  I'll have to ask around a little and see if any of the locals can shed some light on this.

Later in the afternoon we headed back over to Rosedale and took a walk across the suspension bridge to the former site of the Star Mine.  

Still later we headed back to the trailer at the shop in East Coulee.  No one was particularly hungry after the late lunch so we just had some snacks and relaxed.  In the evening we went for a walk over to the old timber bridge over the Red Deer River and then up into the hills above town.  The mosquitos were pretty bad and the Austrians were challenged by them.  But they weren't as bad as they had been a few weeks prior when Margarit and I went out for a walk.  We found the remains of an old coal mine up in the hills including an old concrete foundation, some wood railway ties and rails, and various scrap metal and debris.  There was also a lot of petrified wood associated with the coal seem that had been exploited, included a couple of enormous trunks and stumps.  On our way down out of the hills we also came across three crosses.  I'm not sure if these are actual graves, or just memorials to someone...?  Perhaps an accident at the mine... or maybe one on the nearby highway.

After we got back to the trailer we just relaxed and had an evening fire.  The next morning we had to pack up and make our way back home to Edmonton.  We had a restaurant reservation for that evening back in Edmonton to get together with a few friends and family before Karl and Martina have to return to Austria.

Our three girls returned to school on Thursday and I had to go back to work.  Margarit took Karl and Martina to the airport on Friday morning for their flight back home.  There were some sad good byes and a lot of fond memories following their visit.

A Visit to Nordegg with the Austrians

On Friday August 26th I took Karl and Martina to the Edmonton Eskimos football game at Commonwealth Stadium.  I think they were a little bewildered by the game and struggled to understand what was going on.  At the end of it all I had lost my voice but the Green and Gold came out victorious over the visiting Saskatchewan Roughriders.  The next morning, with the trailer already packed up and ready to go, we hit the road for Nordegg.

The weather was not great but we made the best of it, hoping to show our visiting family our new property, and an area of Alberta near and dear to our hearts.  When we arrived at our property just after lunch on Saturday it had obviously recently finished raining.  There was standing water everywhere and it was very cool and damp.  We had trouble getting the soggy firewood to burn, even with the tiger torch.  Nobody ventured far from the campfire for long but we made the best of it and enjoyed the evening.  The next day it was cooler and still overcast.  We set out for a drive down the Forestry Trunk Road to Ram Falls.  It had been a couple of years since I had been down that way and we wanted to show Karl and Martina the spectacular front ranges of the Rockies.  We got hit by a few light showers along the way but mostly it was just overcast.  The Ram River was running higher and faster than I had ever seen it at this time of year.  We walked over to the viewpoint at the edge of Ram Canyon and did a short hike through the forest.  With all the wet weather this year there were mushrooms everywhere and we enjoyed exploring and finding them all.

While we were at the viewpoint overlooking the falls, Martina spotted a Bighorn Ram on the cliffs on the opposite side of the canyon.  If you look closely in this first overview image, you can spot him on the cliff, near the top.  This is followed by two telephoto images taken across the canyon, from the viewing platform.  Later we headed down to the river beside the bridge and wandered around on the gravel bar for a a while.  Lots of interesting rocks and fossils down here and I even found a small, partial cast of an ammonite.

By late afternoon we began to make our way back to Nordegg.  We stopped for a little while at the Aylmer Campsite where the Trunk Road crosses the North Saskatchewan River.  The water here was running high as well.  A short time later we continued on our way.  As we passed over the ridge and started to make our descent down towards Nordegg we came across a herd of wild horses just off the road.  Being the horse lovers that they are, the girls tried to approach them.  These guys were definitely wild as they were very skittish and did not let the girls get very close at all.  After admiring them for a while we made our way back to our trailer in Nordegg and got the barbecue going for our evening meal.  We sat around the fire for quite a while in the evening and although it still got pretty cool, it was not nearly as damp as the night before.

Edmonton Marathon

The Edmonton Marathon was held back on August 21st.  There were various races including the 5km, 10km, half marathon [21km] and the full marathon [42km].  Karl had entered the half marathon and we brought him down to the starting line in front of Canada Place, at 7:30AM, wearing his Austrian colors.  The start times were staggered so that all the races were going on more or less at the same time.  The half marathon started out heading west down Jasper Avenue from Canada Place.  The route swung north onto 102 Avenue and Stony Plain Road before turning south on 142 Street.  From there it wound through the older neighborhoods of Glenora and Valleyview before eventually retracing the same route back, to finish at the starting line.  It was a clear morning with a light breeze and cool temperatures... perfect for the run.
We watched Karl start out with a group of several hundred runners.  We then jumped in our vehicle and headed over to St. Georges Crescent just in time to see Karl run by... at about the 5km point of the race.  Then we headed back over to the downtown, found a parking spot and walked over to the finish area.  Karl ran the race in about the time he expected.  It was officially a time of 1:50:31 but with such a big group starting, he didn't actually cross the starting line until about 30 seconds in. Everything was over and done with before noon so we packed up and went home before the downtown area got really busy, and before the day got warmer.

AG2 at Pyne Logs Art Gallery in Invermere

Its been ages since I've had time to post anything on my blog.  It has been a very busy summer and for the past couple of weeks my wife's cousins have been visiting from Austria.  We had a great time with Martina and Karl and there will be some upcoming blog posts featuring some of the things we did.  They just flew back home this morning and we find the house kind of empty without them.  Yet the past couple of days have been busy, squeezing in last minute activities, working, and the girls starting a new school year.  In between all of that I have a gallery show starting next week in Invermere, British Columbia.  My collaborator and friend Rob Michiel was able to look after delivering the prints from his place in Vernon, to the gallery in Invermere.  The show opens after the long weekend, and will be on display for a couple of weeks.  Thankfully Rob was able to look after delivery this time, as he still had the crates of prints at his place from a previous show in Armstrong.  My days have been full with work, the new property in Nordegg and more recently the Austrian visitors.  Here is a copy of the promotional poster from our upcoming exhibition...