Surprise...!!

My mother-in-law turned 80 last fall.  She finally agreed that she was no longer able to look after her acreage by herself.  Last spring she moved into a seniors apartment in the city.  Finally this summer she agreed to put her property up for sale.  The property sold this summer, and although the buyer intends to knock down the old house and build on the land, we were responsible for emptying the buildings and cleaning things up by the possession date.  My wife struggled with this as her Mom was reluctant to let go, and not particularly cooperative.  My sister-in-law and the eldest daughter in the family, although very helpful earlier on, was not able to travel from her home in California to help out with the final clean-up.  I was very busy at work so the brunt of it fell on my wife's shoulders.  To cheer her up a little after such a difficult task I bought her a car.  One of our neighbors had a nicely restored 1972 VW Beetle for sale.  My wife grew up learning to drive on Beetles and has a nostalgic attraction to them.  So I bought this one for her, and surprised her with it.  This will be her summer car, and is just for her.  We now need to clean out our cluttered garage to make room to park it, but Margarit relishes this challenge as she does not wish witness a repeat of the clean up that she just endured at her Mom's place.  We will work together to get our place in order and not have to subject our kids to such an indignity in the years to come.

Another Batch of Ilford SFX

A rather frustrating week for me at the end of July.  Some genius in civic government decided that re-surfacing the roads in our neighborhood would be an acceptable alternative to the complete re-construction that is really necessary, given the fact that everything is over 40 years old.  All this despite the fact that they played the same game a few short years ago.  An incompetent contractor that was undoubtedly the "low-bidder" was hired but was seriously lacking in communication skills.  So, the no parking signs went up and we were not allowed to park on our street.  As the long weekend drew nearer, I became more and more anxious to bring our trailer home, so that we could pack for our weekend travels.  Nearly two weeks later, following numerous trailer moves, and countless phone calls, the bulk of the re-surfacing was completed today, yet it is obvious that patching and further work remains necessary.  What a collosal waste of taxpayers money!! Eventually we snuck the trailer home long enough to get packed up and head out for the long weekend.  We spent a very relaxing three days at Ram Falls on the Forestry Trunk Road.  I have a number of snapshots, as well as some more serious images from that trip, that I will post in the coming days.  The current stumbling block remains the fact that my computers hard drive is full, and I can't download any further images from my digital camera.  Thank goodness for film!!!  When we returned from our weekend trip I processed a few rolls of Ilford SFX that were shot in my 6x24 panoramic camera.  This film has extended red sensitivity that approaches the look of true infrared films.  I'm beginning to fine tune the exposure and processing of this film, and am getting closer to the "Look and Feel" that I have been striving for.  This batch includes a shot of the aspen grove along the Miette River in Jasper National Park, an image of a country road south of the city, a couple shots of the boulders at Red Rock Coulee in southern Alberta, and finally a couple images taken along the Ram River this past weekend.

Hopefully in the coming days I can resolve my computer issues and will be able to download and post some additional images.  There were a lot of wildflowers blooming in the front ranges of the Rockies, and I think I captured a couple of acceptable images.

Dude Ranch

I spent the last couple of weekends camping at our favorite Dude Ranch down in the badlands, with my girls.  A couple of weeks ago I was down there with my eldest daughter Hailey, and my youngest daughter Helena.  We headed out for the weekend with my brother-in-law Shawn and his two kids, Bethany and Garrett.  We had a great time down at the ranch.  Garrett caught his first fish, and both of Shawn's kids got to go on their first trail ride.  Hailey had just learned to ride a bike without training wheels, and brought hers along for the weekend.  She spent most of the time that she wasn't on the back of a horse ripping around on her bike.  Margarit was out on Vancouver Island visiting friends with Annelise.  Helena is fearless around the horses and just can't get enough of hanging around the corrals.  We've decided that she needs to wait one more year before she can go out with her older sisters on a trail ride.

A week later, Annelise felt horse-deprived and needed to head out to the ranch.  So we took advantage of the opportunity and made it the annual Dad-and-Anna weekend.  There had been a lot of rain in recent days and it was very muddy.  But the two of us camped out, and spent most of the weekend out on trail rides, and hanging around with the horses.

Summer Hockey... Done

The Renegades Summer hockey season has come to an end.  We stretched out our playoff run somewhat, but couldn't quite make it to the finals.  I had a lot of fun this year, and now can take a month of, mostly to heal, before winter season starts up in September.  After losing to the Mighty Peking Ducks a few days ago, we went on to face Papa Johns Pizza.  We defeated them by a 4-1 score and then moved on to face The Wild.  I played against Papa John's but had to miss the game against The Wild.  The Wild finished first in the regular season.  With a short bench our team defeated them by a 7-4 score.  To this point in the playoffs the Renegades were responsible for eliminating three of the four teams that had been knocked out.  Last night we went to the semi finals, a re-match with the Mighty Peking Ducks.  Once again we had very short bench with a number of our guys hurt, away and suspended.  The game was tied 2-2 at the end of the second period.  But, the officials seemed to take offense to our rough style of play and called a steady stream of penalties, all against us.  By the end of the game we had 52 penalty minutes to only 2 for the Ducks.  Tempers started to flare as we all felt that the calls were unfairly one-sided.  We were pushing to try and come back from a 3-2 deficit late in the game and we just ran out of gas, and all the penalties caught up to us.  We ended our season with a 5-2 loss.  The Ducks now move on to the best-of-three final against the Henchmen.  The Henchmen are probably relieved to not have to face the Renegades!!

More Scans

The latest batch of Kodak 4x5 High Speed Infrared is now dry....   I've scanned a few of the best shots and posted them for comment.  These all date back to 2009 and 2010...

Summer Spent Indoors...

After the long weekend the girls spent several days out at Pigeon Lake.  Work was very busy for me, and this was right in the middle of a stretch of hockey games.  I had one evening to myself, which I spent processing some film.  This was mostly a backlog of old 4x5 Infrared Film that dates back to 2009.  This batch included a few sheets exposed on the recent long weekend trip to southern Alberta.  Then, this past weekend it was so cool and rainy that we didn't even consider heading out with the trailer, even though the girls and the trailer returned from the lake.  So I processed even more film, including a couple of rolls shot with the panoramic.  Even more is still drying as I write this, so I should have more scans to post in the coming days.

Canada Day Long Weekend

I managed to get an extra day off work and we were able to turn the Canada Day Long Weekend into a four day weekend.  The mountain parks and the lakes are always too busy at this time of year so like in past summers, we headed south towards the badlands.  We left the city on Thursday morning, heading south for the Red Deer River Badlands.  Along the way we stopped for a drink of cold water at the Lowden Lake spring...

We continued south, passing through Drumheller and stopping briefly for fuel.  Showers had moved in by this time and it was starting to rain.  So, we kept moving south and east, eventually ending up along the Red Deer River just outside of Dinosaur Park.  We shared the small community campsite with one other trailer.  The Cottonwoods had gone to seed, and Margarit struggled with her allergies.  To make matters worse, the mosquitos were voracious...

That night and the next morning we wandered around a bit.  I photographed some of the majestic Cottonwoods in the area with my big camera. We also found some diamond willow growing along the banks of the river, and I made some walking sticks for the girls.  As we returned back to our trailer after photographing some of the trees, we were startled by a loud buzzing sound coming from the Texas gate we were stepping over.  To our surprise there was a good sized Prairie Rattlesnake coiled up in the corner, and the girls thought he was pretty cool!

The next day we headed further south and east, with a pit stop in Medicine Hat for more fuel and a few supplies.  Turns out we had forgotten dish soap, dog food, and a few other things.  After stocking up we headed south to Red Rock Coulee.  There were a number of other hikers and photographers around during the day, but by evening we had the place to ourselves.  This is such a wonderful place to be out in as the sun sets over the prairie.  The badlands were more green and lush than I have seen them in decades with sweet clover and green grass all over the place.  The Gumbo Evening Primroses, among other wildflowers, were in bloom.

We all hiked down the coulee into some of the areas of badlands exposure.  This is well below the big spheroid concretions up near the parking area.  Once again I took some photographs with my big camera and the girls and I enjoyed the day exploring.  We found some wildflowers, some cool rocks, took some photographs, and found a couple of shell impressions to boot.

By Saturday afternoon we packed up and wanted to make it part way back home.  It is just too far to drive from Red Rock Coulee all the way back home in one day, with three little girls.  So we split the trip in half and headed back towards the Drumheller area.  We stopped in Dorothy, and once again had the campsite to ourselves.  The ghost town used to be a lot more photographically interesting.  Now it has become too popular, and the two old churches are almost completely restored.  The old United Church, where I proposed to Margarit over a decade ago, was in ruin at that time, and is now completely restored.  The Catholic Church is nearly completed now too.

On Sunday afternoon, as we were packing up to head for home, we could see a large thunderstorm building in the west.  As we put the last of our gear in the trailer and hit the road, it was still sunny, and +31C.  As we drove towards Drumheller we were hit by strong winds, a wall of dust, and eventually heavy rain.  By the time we drove up out of the valley, north of Drumheller, about a half hour later, the temperature had dropped to +13C.  What a difference...!!   We dropped our trailer off out at my brothers cabin at Pigeon Lake and headed for home with just the truck.  The girls were planning to spend the week out at the lake with my brother, and their cousins and would head back out there on their own the next day.  I of course had to return to work!!