Elbow Falls Park

Saturday was a good day to go to Elbow Falls Park.  The Park was badly flooded in 2013 and many of the picnic tables, protected walks, and vistas are too far damaged to be repaired or replaced. It is a very pretty sight, and must have been beautiful before the major flood.

Part of the flood damage included these half buried trees, affording interesting spring boards to climb, walk or sit on.  Here's Colleen offering a steadying arm for Jacob.

Eric was making photos along the waterside and here he is practicing on Colleen.

The water was very cold and had the beautiful colours of glacial or mountain waters.

Next are Nick and Dexter walking the rocks and staying dry.

Of course, Jacob is on the rocks also; I'm not so sure he'll stay dry...

Colleen and Eric bouncing on one of the many half buried trees.

Underneath this hoodie is one flaked-out grandson: the end of a perfect day trip.

Scooter trip

Yesterday Jacob & Eric and I drove up to Olds Ab to visit a new state park.  Jacob then helped me make a little movie of the best portions of the few clips that I made.

I'm pretty rusty at doing videos, and even got reminded that you can't make videos in vertical format...

So here it is, a first effort at making a small movie...  Noise, music, titles and all that stuff will be learned in due course.

Eric is wearing the black helmet, Jacob, the blue one.

I hope this is enjoyable:

Photography 101

What can I say?

Langdon AB

I was welcomed in Okotoks by numerous hugs late Sunday afternoon. Today, Tuesday, Eric, Jacob and I drove up to Langley to test out a new scooter park [well actually it's a skate park {skateboards}].

'Getting air' is important and here are a few shots of Jacob [blue helmet] and Eric [black helmet] 'getting air' at the new to the boys park.  

Enjoy; they did. 

ps: no boys were damaged during these exposures, but they are a little tired...

Rachael Lake to Havre, Montana

It's been a long day, but the miles flew by. The west side of Minnesota is fairly flat agricultural land; South Dakota is flatter, and equally agricultural; Montana starts with rolling hills that get bigger as you head west, and it's agricultural also.

What these states all share is excellent roads with high speed limits: 75, 75, and 70 respectively. The roads and cities had minimal traffic, and there was essentially no construction delays to speak of. Setting the cruise control at 5 over the limit was not excessive, and I just passed the slower cars, and caught up with the next ones near the horizon... The roads were spectacularly straight and the miles just kept going by.

I played a Dianne Mott murder mystery audio book and all was well with the world. Oh yes, I crossed another time zone, now being two hours behind Stittsville, Mountain Time.

There are apparently fires burning in western Montana at the Glacier National Park, so there are smoke advisories for this evening and tomorrow.  There was a general haziness all day, partly due to the very hot and humid weather, and partly due to smoke as I headed further west.  How hot is very hot you ask? Try 36ºC or 98ºF!  Tonight will be in the mid-fifties [F], that's quite a range in one day.

The other notable item is that I faced a very strong headwind most of the way; the kind of steady wind you have to lean into when pumping gas. A basic fill-up has been under $45 [US$] as opposed to the usual $65+ CDN...  On the other hand, motels are pretty much the same prices when converted to CDN; a major change from just a few years ago.  Mind you, there seems to be something going on everywhere I stop to sleep: I manage to get one of the last rooms available: most places seem quite full.  I've read many 'no vacancy' signs...

No pictures today, but a stop in Coaldale Alta should offer some photo-ops with the rescued raptors there: wish me luck.

I should reach Nick & Colleen's by tomorrow afternoon, so the blog may be delayed...

Alexandria MN & Holmes City MN

As promised, here are a few pictures made since arriving at Jan's on Rachel Lake. Here's the welcoming front door.

Here's a closer look at the lovely coleus by the door

To the left of the pictures above is the great workshop building that Rod built years ago. I even helped a little and learned the precision  measuring methods when building with wood: I can only remember that the smallest adjustment was a skwosh...  which was a tad bigger than a sliver...

Next is the view from the back porch:  Rachel Lake.  If you listen very carefully, you might just hear the resident loon.

Jan and I went into Alexandria today and visited the Minnesota Maritime Museum where they had a art print display of the photographer Jim Brandenburg [of National Geographic fame].  The artist set himself of making a single picture each day for 90 consecutive days. I was stunned by what he could do around his Minnesota home at a single picture per day. That's definitely a challenge I could not do since I much prefer the ability to choose from many  attempts...

Of course, maritime museums will showcase neat boats: many here were from the plastic 50's, like this little round lightweight with a forty horse motor.  I think it claimed a top speed of over 40 mph!
I also think this is the boat you steered by leaning into the turn, since the motor itself was mounted to run straight forward.  It probably was as loud as today's sea-lice...  [Seadoos]

Boat trailers looked a lot different before the war: wooden spokes no less.

The Packard motor company had a deal to supply motors to GarWood, a famous pre-war fast boat maker.  Four of these V12 Packard motors were used in one of GarWood's speed record holders [110+ mph I think]. The background boat is a non racing GarWood 24' 'runabout'...

On the way to the lake, we stopped Holmes City to make this pictures of the Holmes City Seed Mill, boasting a steel roof with interesting tar based repairs...

I'm not sure just when the 'crack of dawn' will occur tomorrow, which happens to be Jan's birthday, but I'll be heading west to Okotoks, ASAP; so there may be few pictures for the next few days.

Actually, since I forgot the chargers for my camera batteries, there may be far fewer pictures than expected unless Joan can send the chargers to Nick's...  Hopefully, more to follow.

Marquette Michigan to Rachel Lake Minnesota

After an 8am start, I arrived at Jan's at 4pm, my predicted time.  It turns out that my prediction was off by and hour: I had forgotten to account for the time change to Central Time.  It all turned out for the best anyway since the trip took exactly an hour longer due to traffic slowdowns, the usual turnip truck, bridge replacements, and other such delights that await the unsuspecting traveller...  But I digress.

Audio books are a great way to make time pass quickly; it's not a huge distraction, but it does make things like monitoring the gas gauge more important...  Today was an Ivanovich day, light hearted, detective mystery just beyond a possible chick-flick. Joan and I have heard other books in this series and enjoyed each one, this one being much the same, and equally enjoyable. When radio is chancy at best, these books take about 5 or 6 hours to enjoy, just a pleasant way to spend the day.

So I arrived at Jan's door a few minutes after I was expected [4pm] and owned up to my one hour error in the prediction that was compensated by the one hour delays in travel.  We quickly sat down with a beer and brought each other up to date about what's up. Friends who can take up from where we left off a year ago are special: time becomes meaningless and precious at the same time...

For readers that know Jan: she sends her warm greetings.  Jan and hers are all well and getting older, but then I guess we all are.

My watch is now set to local time, my body, not so much, so I'll cut this short and get some sleep.  I'm hoping for pictures tomorrow...

Stittsville to Marquette Michigan

Well, I'm back on the road again, on the way to Okotoks to visit Nick and his wonderful family.

The crack of dawn was around nine this morning, under grey skies and cool weather.  Karmen said I should be at Long Sault shortly after 7pm.  The traffic and construction was such that I arrived there just before six: way too early to call it a day; so I moved on.

The line-up at the USA border was almost an hour long!  Boo! Traffic after that was sparse to say the least and people kept passing me at 60 in 55 highway limits, so I crept up to about 63 / 65 but didn't have the nerve to match their 70+...

I ended up stopping in Marquette Michigan, on lake Superior after passing smaller villages with lots of 'no vacancy' signs.  I was starting to worry about the possibility that food places might be closed after 9pm, but I lucked in at Hudson's grill & bar that served an excellent mushroom hamburg with sinful fries.

I was hoping for lots of motel choices and ended up at a Settle Inn motel that still had a few rooms at $90. [reduced from $130 I'm told....] There seems to be a Harley Davidson rally and the whole area has a shortage of rooms, thus, no decent prices...

Gas is running about $2.99/gal which is still cheaper than the $1.175/L that I paid in Wahnapitae On, or better yet, the $1.299 I saw at the Soo.

Sorry, no pictures so far; everything was just a blur... <grin grin>