#CanadianPhotographer

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Working Away

I felt like I was barely home long enough to get the laundry from our anniversary getaway done and I was back on the road, heading to Pincher Creek on Thursday, May 22nd, for the Lightchasers Nature Photography Conferences. McBain has been a title sponsor since it started 4 years ago and this is will be my 3rd year working it.

The plan was for me to meet our Outings and Workshop coordinator, Jileane Harsch, and General Manager, Rene Rodrique, at the Pincher Creek Community Hall to set up our booth to be ready for go time Friday morning. They beat me there and had it pretty much done when I arrived, so we finished up and headed to the Heritage Inn Hotel & Convention Centre to check in to our rooms.

Check in was smooth and after a bit of a rest, we headed out for supper and found The Hut Café (Resto Bar & Patio). We enjoyed a good meal, then went in search of a photo or two before we had to retire for the night. Usually, we go for a drive in search of adventure but Rene and I decided it would be an early night so we walked downtown to see what we could find.

I didn’t feel overly inspired but driving days often go that way. Hopefully, tomorrow will offer up more things that catch my eye.

After a pretty decent sleep and the breakfast buffet at the hotel, it was time to get ready for the masses at the convention.

This year’s set up is the best one I’ve seen so far. The convention centre has plenty of room for attendees and us vendors with room to spare. This bodes well going forward.

The day zoomed by alternating between fantastic presenters and people coming to the booth to shop, lunch, repeat the morning’s order and suddenly, it was 5 o’clock. Time to pack up for the evening, relax for a bit, and then grab some supper. Tonight, the destination is the Twin Butte Country General Store for some fabulous Mexican food. Our Sigma rep, Danny Lee, met us there as he had never tried it. We were not disappointed.

We headed south and east for a change of pace and found some stuff that caught our eyes.

We were starting to lose our nice light as we headed back but manage to make 1 more stop.

I saw a couple of places that would have been nice to stop at but the light wasn’t favourable so perhaps another time.

With Rene, heading into Lethbridge to pick up stock from our store there, Jileane and I were free to avoid yet another hotel breakfast, so we decided to try Seeds. They are supplying the lunches for the convention and yesterday’s was pretty good. Their breakfast was pretty good as well and we headed to the hall to set up for today’s festivities.

It was another hectic day of taking and filling orders and listening to some pretty good presenters and seeing some outstanding photography.

Spookie_Bugz enjoyed it as well.

After a bit of rest time, Rene picked us up some pizza and wings for supper. We enjoyed it outside on a pretty sketchy picnic table at the hotel before joining Fujifilm at their breakout session – Limber Pine Ridge Sunset. I was pretty happy with this outing as I had borrowed a Fujifilm GFX-100SII medium format digital camera and a 45-100 f/4 lens from them and was looking for an opportunity to use it.

100 megapixel camera with a large sensor, I’ll probably hate it.

The downside of doing a sunset shoot on a ridge is it’s all up hill. It looks like a big hill but when you have a camera there’s lots of excuses to stop and take a photo and not look like it’s a rest stop.

Still had a lot of hill to climb, oh look, pretty yellow flowers.

Not at the top yet, but getting closer.

I finally made it to the top of the ridge. There are some pretty nice views to behold from up there.

I liked the character some of the trees had.

I found evidence other photographers were about.

I thought I’d try a couple of photos at opposite ends of my zoom lens.

The light was so nice and I photographed as many different angles as I could.

The light was still nice and as much as sunset probably would have been fantastic, we decided we didn’t want to walk down the hill in the dark so we said our goodbyes and started back down to the car.

I wish I could say that shooting with the Fuji sucked, but the weight wasn’t at all bad and I really, really liked the files. I’d have to sell all my Sony stuff to get one. Hmmmm.

One more long day tomorrow and the conferences will be over.

Jileane and I had breakfast in at the hotel with some of the reps and the boys from The Camera Store as Rene was once again heading to Lethbridge to restock us. Yesterday’s breakfast was way better.

We set up for the day and enjoyed more great speakers between spurts of being really busy.

And suddenly, it was all over and we were packing up. Shane Turgeon and his crew did a phenomenal job with the conferences. It looked like attendees got their monies worth and it sounds like most are planning on attending again next year.

We dropped off our stuff at the hotel and hit DQ for a quick supper before heading down to Waterton Lakes National Park of Canada. We saw a brown phase, black bear not far from the townsite but had no place to stop for a photo so we carried on our way towards Cameron Lake.

We didn’t get very far when Rene like the look of the landscape so we pulled over to see what was what.

I had my Zeiss Batis 135 f/2.8 lens on my camera as I got out to scope out some photos.

As I looked around I decided my 40mm lens is what I wanted to switch to. But, since Rene had locked the car and wandered up the hill and I wasn’t doing any climbing 2 days in a row, I set about to use what I got.

My 40mm is a lot better as a macro lens but I thought I’d try a few flower photos anyway.

I went back to the area Jileane and Rene went to to sit and wait for them. I manage to fit them both into a photo.

Because they were both down in the gully, they didn’t see the wildlife I could. Since I had my biggest lens on, it was a cinch to get a photo. Well. cinch is not exactly correct but I thought it made for a nice environmental portrait of the bighorn ram.

The ram had already laid down when Jileane and Rene came back so I don’t think they saw him.

We headed a bit further up the road to see what else we could find to photograph.

We decided it was time to head back to the hotel for the night so it wouldn’t be too late getting in.

I saw some moose and a couple of coyotes on the way back but it’s not like the lens I had would have done the job to photograph them so I never pointed them out. Some other places caught my eye to revisit at some point. Hopefully, I’ll remember some of them.

After we got all our stuff packed into the vehicles and checked out we decided to have breakfast together before we got on the road. I had liked the coffee at The Hut Café and wanted to try their breakfast. We all had a power bowl and it was pretty darn good.

I had decided I would take the scenic route home as I had never been to Lundbreck Falls Provincial Recreation Area in all my visits to the area.

It was a nice stop and I headed up highway 22. There was bridge construction in a few spots so I had a few delays along the way but since I wasn’t in any hurry, it was kind of nice.

As I drove along, I thought it ironic that as a photographer, I often capture images in fractions of a second, but I was really enjoying the scenery slowly changing as I drove.

Since I was on highway 22, I was really close to my happy place – Big Hill Springs Provincial Park. It makes for a convenient pit stop and since the park itself wasn’t very busy, a good excuse to photograph some waterfalls.

Feeling refreshed, it was time to make the final drive home. I got home around 5:20pm. It had been a long day and that had been my choice but it was nice to be home.

Lightchasers was a good experience and even though it make for some long day; not as long as attendees days if they chose to do the breakout sessions, it was a lot of fun. I get to meet new people, see familiar faces and see and hear some fantastic photographers. I’ll be up to go back next year if the powers that be deem it so.

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Until we Return

The arrival of morning of Monday, May 19th, 2025 meant it would be the day we headed home.

Mica Mountain Lodge & log cabins was a fabulous getaway but it really was time to go home. After we had breakfast, cleaned up and got our stuff packed away, I took a few photos of our home away from home for the past few days. It was small, but cozy and I think my laptop screen is bigger than the TV, not that we watched much of that.

We drove up to the house to say goodbye to Elke & Jürgen and for Lynda, the horses, before we hit the highway.

I planned on heading back the same way we came but was hoping highway 93a would be open so I could see if the payphone I knew of had survived the fire. The road was open from the north side but it was closed at the 15km mark so you still couldn’t drive down to Athabasca Falls.

I decided to drive down it a bit to look around.

The phone hadn’t survived.

I needed to dodge an old guy looking for the geocache listed there. I had my camera out and no interest in him but he still insisted on getting in my way.

We turned around and went back up the hill to get some overview photos. I noticed another payphone corpse and stopped to get a photo of it and the surrounding area.

The waterpipe snaking down the hillside was pretty obvious with no trees to hide in so I decided to incorporate it.

We went in search of a few more photos before we had to make the long drive home.

I never took any more photos in the next 5 or so hours it took us to get home. My last image feels a bit like a battlefield after an intense fight. I know fire is an important part of forest renewal, and I’m excited to be able to go back and check on the progress over the next few years. But, it does make me a bit sad seeing it in it’s current state.

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The Road to Jasper

It was another more cloud than sun day on Sunday, May 18th. We were going to check out the Jasper townsite and a bit of the surrounding area today.

Jasper is often our go to destination, but after the wildfire last year, we decided we’d stay somewhere else to keep out of the way. One of the first images we saw come out of the fire scene was the singed sign at Wicked Cup and a totally destroyed building behind it. Wicked Cup was our go to place for tea/coffee and breakfast as it was always good and the service was top notch so there was a level of sadness involved with a visit into Jasper.

I had planned to make a stop or two along the way and the first place I wanted to go was Rearguard Falls. We had stopped there in the fall back in 2023 and I wanted to see it in the spring. The parking lot was jammed full so we continued on our way.

Mount Robson was only partly peeking out of the clouds so we felt there was no point in stopping.

When we got to Overlander Falls, the parking lot was almost empty, so we pulled in there to check it out. Like the hike down to Rearguard Falls, it’s a pretty easy walk. It looks to be a bigger falls than Rearguard is.

We hung around for a bit listening to the roar of the water and were looking at leaving when we saw some kayakers pulling in to check out the route through the falls and rapids.

They obviously agreed on a plan of attack as they were soon heading down the falls.

Having made it safely down, they didn’t take all that long to regroup, shoot the rapids, and continue downriver.

Lynda liked this tree stump and wanted here photo take with it. I’m always happy to take photos of my bride as she never used to like me taking them. It never stopped me, but she didn’t like it.

The downside of walking down to see the falls, is it’s pretty much uphill all the way back to the truck. But, it wasn’t too strenuous a hike and soon we were back on our way into Jasper.

When we got to town, we drove around a bit to see what was gone and what was still standing. I felt a little sad remembering places that used to be, but knowing no one died in the fire helped put it into perspective.

We parked and wandered around a bit to find a new cafe so Lynda could have a good London Fog. We had heard Andromeda Coffee was pretty good, so we decided to check it out. And it was very good. We’ll have to try it again on our next visit.

We checked out more of the streets while on foot and decided to try someplace different for lunch and ended up at Estío Jasper. The place was hopping and we each decided on one of the grilled cheese sandwiches and sat out on the patio to enjoy the weather.

After enjoying our lunch, we decided we’d go over to check out the Pine Bungalows and Jasper Park Lodge areas to see how they had done.

Before we did that though, I got into the crazy lineup at the only gas station standing to top up my fuel. It is beyond ridiculous that in the 9 months since the fire, no re-construction of any building has commenced. Even crazier is the fact a 2nd gas station hasn’t opened, or that the town hasn’t been allowed to put in tanks with a cardlock to at least make it easier for tour buses to fuel up. I would hate to be stuck in the line up once full blown summer season is upon us. It would be entertaining as hell to sit and watch though.

I was in and out of the gas station quicker than expected and soon we were heading over to the Pine Bungalows. We had stayed there back in 2021 and liked it so we wanted to see if it survived the fire unscathed; it had.

We made our way over to the Jasper Park Lodge and there were a lot of burned trees on the way in but it looked to us that any damaged buildings were along the golf course and not in the main lodge area itself. The trees however, were crispy for as far as the eye could see.

We pulled into the Lake Annette parking lot and walked down to the lake.

There were a couple of scraggly looking cow elk hanging out near the lake and I don’t think she was all that happy to have her photo taken. I was a long ways away and had to crop this in to see the expression on her face.

We backtracked a bit and drove up the Maligne Lake Road to the Lookout. The fire made it a whole lot easier to see the valley from the lookout. For many years, you looked through the gaps in the trees to see anything.

Now that we could see through the forest, it was surprising to see how close Maligne Canyon is to the road and parking lot.

It was getting to be time to head back for supper so we didn’t drive very far up the road before we turned around to head to BC.

We hit some rain on and off on the drive and as we got close to the cabin, Lynda pointed out that the 1 cloud in the area looked like rain so we should go to town for supper. I really didn’t want to cook over the fire either so I wasn’t about to argue with her. (It didn’t appear to have rained when we got back.)

We went back to Caribou Grill to have a drink and dessert like we told the waiter we would.

We actually had a meal too but kept it small to make it possible to have dessert.

Lynda had seen an Icetini listed on their online menu but not the printed menu. When she asked about it, they told us it was coming off the menu as Ice Wine has getting more expensive, it soon wouldn’t be worth making, but they could make her one. It consists of ice wine, vodka and frozen grapes. When the bartender brought it over, she explained that was the very last ounce of ice wine in the place. Lynda really enjoyed it and when the waitress asked if she wanted another drink, she said; “No, because you can’t make me another one of these.” It made me smile.

We enjoyed our supper and shared the Caribou Coupé. It was as good as advertised but I didn’t take any photos of it.

We headed back to the cabin for our last night of vacation.

We didn’t even have a fire before bed, just a nice cup of tea.

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Venturing South

Saturday, May 17th, 2025 dawned as another day of mixed sun and cloud. Today is our son’s 25th birthday and hopefully, he isn’t too busy at his job as we are only half way through our getaway.

Today, we are heading south to check out Little Hell’s Gate on the North Thompson River. It is about a third of the way to Kamloops from the cabin. We’ve been to Hell’s Gate on the Fraser River a few times, but this is our first time exploring this area.

After about an hour and a half, we reached the goat path road down to the falls. A couple were leaving as we got there so we had the viewing platform all to ourselves.

While it’s not as impressive as the big Hell’s Gate, but it had a nice roar to the falls. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out the train that was heading up the valley though.

As we were leaving, we met a nice young couple from Germany who are exploring Canada in a van for 6 months. They’ve already visited quite a few countries in their young lives and were excited to spend so much time in Canada.

We headed back north to Blue River to grab lunch at Grizzly Food Shack. I’d seen it rated well in reviews and the menu looked good so we decided to check it out.

Wasp saved us a table while we waited for your food. Lunch was pretty tasty and I would go back again if I’m ever in the area.

We started heading back towards the cabin looking for photo opportunities along the way.

It wasn’t very far to River Safari and Lynda really wanted to check it out. It looked like an interesting excursion, I wasn’t willing to pony up the money they wanted for the tours. I told Lynda to save her pennies and bring me another time.

We continued up the highway towards Thunder River as the map showed a train bridge that is supposedly photogenic. The road on the map to it didn’t exist so we turned into Blue River Black Spruce Provincial Park.

The road that climbed the mountain from there looked interesting, but it was closed so we continued up the highway some more.

The little bridge on the road to Bone Creek Wilderness Retreat looked interesting so we drove down the road.

The view from the bridge was the best one along that road.

We continued up the highway and stopped in Valemount so I could take a photo of the Fire Station. I really liked the mural on the building and wanted to get a shot of it.

I had one more stop planned before we went to the cabin for the night. The Tete Jaune Spawning Grounds Recreation Site was just a minute or so from the cabin so we went to check it out.

We were getting hungry so we headed back to the cabin to buy some firewood so we could cook our flatbread pizzas we had brought. Lynda built the fire and looked after the cooking. I was okay with that as it gave me time to sit on the porch and relax. Holidays can be rough. Lol

The pizza was good, not pizza in Nice good, but it was a lot cozier then Nice.

After our meal and cleanup, I had time to look for some photo to take.

It was starting to get dark so we decided to head inside for a nice cup of tea before bed. Tomorrow we’ll head into Jasper.

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Happy 28th Anniversary

One of the downsides of having a nice cup of tea before bed is having you bladder wake you up early in the morning. Friday, May 16th, 2025 was no different in that respect. What I saw when I got up wasn’t usual though. I saw a whitetail doe nursing a small fawn in the field out in front of our cabin. I only had to go about 10 feet to grab my camera, but even with that, they were gone in the 10 seconds it took me to get the and get back to the window. So, no photos but at least I hadn’t woken Lynda up to show her. 4:00 am was a little too early to be up for the day so back to bed for at least a couple of hours before we go find something to do for our anniversary.

I managed to get some more sleep and got up to face the day at a more reasonable hour. After we cleaned up our breakfast dishes, we made ourselves lunch sandwiches for the road on the Booyah Bagels I had bought yesterday with this in mind. Booyah makes awesome bagels but they only do breakfast sandwiches and as great as those are, I like to have ham or pastrami on a bagel every once in a while.

We decided to drive west on Old Tete Jaune Road towards McBride. It looked like it would be a lot more scenic than taking the highway.

We had barely started when I spotted this old truck.

I liked the truck but couldn’t get an angle I really liked but thought maybe switching to black and white would help.

I liked it but it still wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I first saw the truck.

Onwards we go.

But not too far.

As we drove, Lynda said; “Bear”.

We turned around to have a look and when we pulled up to the spot, all we saw was the north end of a south bound grizzly bear booking it. So, no bear photos but it was cool to see. Not wanting to stress him/her further, we turned around to continue on our way.

It wasn’t long before we saw so white water so we stopped for a look.

It wasn’t a very spectacular location but the sound of the running water was soothing.

It was a short distance to the Shere Lake Recreation Site and we drove down that road to check it out. Luckily, there was no one around as it’s a 1 lane road through the bush to get down to the lake.

The water level was higher than the buoyancy level of the boardwalk so I never got down to the water’s edge.

We continued to Dunster.

There isn’t much in Dunster to see but one of the local gentleman asked me about my truck and I chatted with him while Lynda checked out the Dunster General Store.

The Dunster Station Museum is right across the road from the store so it was a very short walk to check it out. Unfortunately, it was closed so a couple of exterior photos is all I got.

We got back on the road and headed into McBride.

We cruised into McBride and took all of about 3 minutes to drive around town before we stopped at the Visitor Center in the old train station.

I came with the same warning sign back when Lynda and I started dating.

There is a bistro, art gallery and gift shop and a model railroad among other things in the visitor center. I never went into the bistro as we had brought our own lunch, but I did get a chance to check out the model railroad. It’s been a long time since I was around such stuff. I missed it for a minute or two.

We wandered back outside and found a place to sit and have some lunch before exploring the town.

We drove down main street and parked to walk around town.

The “Sarcasm. Now served daily” sign in the window at Welcome Home Cafe & Gifts hooked me right away and we wandered in to check it out. They had some interesting gifts and I got myself a few sarcasm related stickers. Lynda got a London Fog that she said was quite tasty and I got a really, really good blended raspberry lemonade. I’d go back just for another one of those.

I grabbed a photo of a couple of old cars in a yard before we headed down the highway back towards the cabin.

At one point, I had to slow down for a moose crossing the road. Not sure if my dash cam caught it or not but no photos of him either.

We had brought some flatbread pizzas to cook over the fire but decided neither of us wanted to cook over a fire today.

We headed into Valemount in search of food and decided that Caribou Grill looked pretty good. And we were not disappointed. The food was really good and the service was great. We really liked the look of the Caribou Coupé dessert but we were too full to have any and having ice cream in it, it wouldn’t travel very well, so we decided we had an excuse to come back.

We had a pretty good day to celebrate our anniversary and had and while there was no wildlife in the yard, it was a nice quiet evening to sit and relax and enjoy the peace and quiet.

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Anniversary getaway

I couldn’t afford to take Lynda on an exotic getaway for your 28th anniversary, so I picked someplace closer to home that we’d never stayed at. The cabins at The Mica Mountain Lodge in Tete Jaune Cache, BC, looked to be a nice quiet getaway.

We left Thursday, May 15th and headed west on highway 11. We stopped at Bighorn Service near Crescent Falls to top up the tank as I figured that would be the most inexpensive fuel I’d see for a while. At least it was a nice day for the fellow who locked his keys in the truck and was waiting for someone to come and let him in.

I love spring in the mountains as there are so many different shades of green as the trees are all budding at different rates and grasses are struggling to grow. It was a nice drive up the Icefield Parkway and the trees were looking pretty good for the most part. That is, until you get close to Athabasca Falls, then you start to see the destruction from last summer’s forest fire. The trees were burned on both sides of the highway and river right up to the top of the tree line. There were a few unburned pockets here and there but for the most part, it was total destruction. Highway 93a was closed from the Falls end so my plan to drive up that way were foiled.

There were clouds obscuring the top of Mount Robson, so we didn’t bother to stop like the last time we were in that neck of the woods. We continued on down to Valemount to go try the Valemount Bakery, formerly, The Swiss Bakery. But, like the last time we tried to visit, they were closed, for renovations this time. The owner came out and talked to us, explaining they were building an apartment above the shop so they wouldn’t have to commute so far to work. Maybe, third time will be the charm, so I guess we’ll have to go back again.

It was now time to check in to our cabin so we headed back north to get settled in. We rented the Pine Bungalow and it is a lovely little cabin. We got our stuff inside and sat on the covered porch for a while, just looking at the mountains in the distance.

We sat and had our lasagna we brought for supper before heading up to meet our host, Elke. She was pretty friendly and we chatted with her for a while before heading back to our cabin. She was going to come by and move her horses out of the pasture and up to their place in a bit so I took a couple of photos while we waited on her. My bride was pretty excited to see the horses. Me, not so much, but if it makes her happy…

I went for a quick walk in the trees to see if I could spot the deer we’d seen earlier. And I did, but I didn’t exactly have the proper lens on my camera to get a great photo of her so see if you can spot her in the picture. You can just see her belly if you look about dead center of the frame. She used the trees wisely.

Elke came by and we followed her to the field. The horses were both being brats and wouldn’t come see her when she called them, so she said no cookies for them and she went in to retrieve them. I took a couple of photos while I waited for her.

Neither horse looked all that happy to being led out of the field, but they were at least, going quietly.

Apparently, the little one is the trouble making ring leader.

Lynda was happy to pet the horses before they went on their way.

I had an idea for a photo I wanted to try with Lynda but I needed it to be a bit darker before I could try it so I grabbed a couple photos of the cabin area.

Finally, it was dark enough to try my idea. It didn’t work out the way I had hoped but it was still fun to try.

It was nice to have an eager participant, too bad what I had in my head and what I got didn’t jive. I’ll have to try a different approach next time. (Spoiler alert; we didn’t do a next time.)

After a bit of reading, it was time for bed. No solid plans are in place for tomorrow but long driving days seem to make me a lot more tired than they used to. I guess we’ll come up with a plan of attack in the morning.

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The hunt for snowy owls

Last Thursday I posted on Facebook that I had no photographic projects planned for the new year and I wasn’t feeling all that creative or interested in finding things to photograph. Within about 20 minutes, a fellow Central Alberta Photographic Society club member, Lori Gillan, messaged me to invite me along on a search for snowy owls on Sunday. I’ve been feeling way to much of “woe is me” lately and while recognizing that going outside is always a good place for me to start as a fight against depression, motivating myself to go outside has been difficult. So, I didn’t hesitate to agree to go.

Lori picked my up at 6:30 am and we drove to Penhold to meet up with Kim Mortimer and our driver, Terry Mah. I had no idea where we were going to go or what the plan was because, as far as I was concerned; “I was with the band.”

We headed east and south in search of owls, or adventure, whichever came first. We had a quick pitstop in Three Hills and Lori talked to a few locals to see if they knew of any owls in the area. She got some tips but none of them panned out for us. Maybe next time.

We thought we’d try our luck in the Beiseker area and we saw this building Lori liked so we stopped for a few shots.

I liked the close up photo of the building but I don’t like the power lines behind it and I’m not going to Photoshop them out. I liked the lines in the field and tried a lower angle to keep them from showing up. The tops of the fence posts still show but they aren’t as obvious at the wide angle end of the Tamron 150-500mm lens that I borrowed for the trip.

We saw another car driving slowly towards us and wondered if it was another photographer. Turned out to be another photographer from the club, Mel Bolin and her husband, Adam, out doing the same thing we were. Mel had spotted a Great Horned owl early in the day and we headed in that general direction to see if we had any luck. We didn’t.

We drove around for about an hour before we saw the cute carcass of a smiling barn with some interesting lighting behind it.

We drove a bit more and came across a cool, abandoned grain elevator.

Prevailing opinion seemed to be that a white elevator in snow was boring and it would be a good place to revisit after a change of season or two. While I didn’t disagree, I didn’t think the current conditions were boring at all. Granted, the flat light wasn’t doing me any favours in capturing details, but sometimes you just have to shoot for the conditions in front of you.

As I stood there trying to decide if I should check out the inside or not, I could see the sun hitting the hill in the background and guessed it would light up the elevator shortly.

Luckily, I was correct.

Details just popped once the sun hit it. I didn’t even have time to try a shot with a polarizer on to see if I could enhance it even more as the clouds moved in again in less than a minute.

Once the sun was gone, I moved closer to peek inside.

The floor looked solid enough go inside and explore, but I decided to err on the side of caution for a change, and not go inside.

I grabbed a few more shots as I headed towards the car.

Lori doesn’t like having shots of her butt being shown, but she keeps walking into the frame. I think she should be okay with this.

We headed out towards Drumheller and as it was lunch time, we decided to stop for a bite. The top rated place open on a Sunday was Happy Belly Grill & Bar. It was good and filling but they do use pressed and not fresh turkey in their clubhouse sandwich. I’m sure it would have been even better if they did, but it was very good and their fries were seasoned nicely.

We headed east to East Coulee to check out the East Coulee School Museum and the cool bus they have rotting away on the lawn. (Or in the snow as is the case currently.)

I took photos of the bus, knowing it would break my friend, Steve Parkin’s heart to see it in such a condition. My heart doesn’t care so it was easy to document it in it’s dilapidated condition.

East Coulee isn’t very big but I did find something else to photograph.

The other cool building wasn’t overly photogenic in the lighting conditions we were experiencing so we decided to drive to Dorothy as Terry had never been there.

Once we got to Dorothy, we were disappointed to see the roof was gone from the grain elevator and it wasn’t very photogenic itself. So, after a quick “spin” around town, we headed back towards Drumheller.

We drove north from Drumheller towards highway 9 and turned east to see what we could see. We didn’t find much so we headed north to go check out the Springwater School Museum. It’s a cool looking stone building that’s never locked. But, it was when we got there. A local came by to see what was going on and he was surprised it was locked up. It looked like someone had gone inside through a missing basement window and then opened a main floor window to get out. The window was too high to reach to close so the local fellow went off to see if he could find someone to open the door so they could close the window.

Selfie

It didn’t look like the visitor had damaged the inside.

We drove around for about an hour before we finally found a snowy owl. We saw a male high up on a power pole. We parked the car and walked slowly towards him to see if we could get a decent photo.

Even with a 500mm lens, he was pretty small in the frame. Luckily I have enough resolution to crop the image as, unsurprisingly, 1 pole away was as close as he let us get.

A really large crop of a male snowy owl.

Unlike Lori, he had no problem showing us his butt as he flew straight away from us.

Another really big crop.

As we spotted the owl, I had noticed how big the moon looked and knew I’d love to get a shot of it while we were there.

I wanted the whole row of bins with the moon in the frame but because I had to shoot them with a much wider angle, the moon was pretty small in the frame. So, I cheated and took a photograph of the moon at 500 mm and used my fairly rudimentary Photoshop skills and put it into the frame shot at 150 mm. I know there are people out there that wouldn’t tell you what they did and let you think it could be done as shown, but I’m not one of those people.

We decided that we’d try to get to Rowley before sunset to see if we could get a nice shot or two so we headed off to see if we could make it.

Technically, we did as we got there just after 4:30 pm and sunset wasn’t until 4:45 pm.

Machinery shadows on the side of the building.

We all ran around like headless chickens in different directions to grab as many photos as we could before the sun was gone.

The colour was fabulous but the light was going away quickly.

I liked how the sun shining in from the other side looked like a light on in the church.

With the sun dipping below the horizon, it was time to head in the direction of home.

We stopped in Trochu for fuel and a pit stop before heading to Penhold to get Lori’s car.

It was smooth sailing all the way and we all got our stuff out and thanked Terry for driving headed home.

I got home at around 7:00 pm. It had been a long day. My feet were cold, my hands were cold and I was tired and glad to be home, but I so enjoyed out outing. I saw my first snowy owl in 4 trips out over 3 years so that was successful. I saw some new places and photographed some new things and now have new places to re-visit in the future.

Thanks again for Lori inviting me along, Terry for driving and Kim for being there as well. I still have no clear plans for photography this year, but I’ll endeavour to get my ass out and about more often.

by

Taking the Scenic Route Home

Thursday, October 31st had arrived and Lynda and I had to go home today. Our whirlwind vacation was coming to an end.

We said “goodbye” to Curtis and thanked him for his hospitality and generosity as he headed out to work and we got ready to go get some breakfast.

We headed off to where we’d had our 1st meal on this trip and the last meal on our last trip; Le Circus.
Lucille had never been there for breakfast, so we sat enjoyed a leisurely breakfast that was quite good.

I took a few photos of the neighbourhood on the way back to the apartment.

I thought it would be easy to guarantee yourself a job for life if you were a brick layer or stone mason.

It didn’t take us all that long to get back to the apartment. We made sure we had all our stuff packed and said goodbye to Casper. He didn’t seem to know if he wanted us to stay or go.

We were going to take the RER back to the airport as it was the most inexpensive option and no slower than a taxi or Uber.
Lucille was worried about my bionic arm and insisted on bringing my suitcase for me. It is literally uphill, most of the way to the RER from the apartment, but she still took it for me.

It wasn’t to long of a wait for our train and when we got on, we saw that more than half the stops between us and the airport were closed for one reason or another and we arrived in well under an hour.

Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle is a huge complex and when we got near our gate in Terminal 2, we saw that it had been changed to a gate in Terminal 1. So we got some extra steps in as it’s about a 20 minute walk from one to the other.

It was time to check in so I took my suitcase back from Lucille and said our goodbyes and wished her luck with next weeks move to Houston, Texas.

After check in and security, we had to hike to a bus to bring us to our gate. It was a longer drive than expected and another long walk to the end of the hallway to our departure gate.

I took 1 final photo in France of a couple of aircraft sitting in the fog as part of my Telephoto Thursday project.

We were again back in the middle seats, in steerage class, near the back of the plane so a whole lot of passengers boarded ahead of us.

We got settled in and listened to all the pre-flight stuff and then waited, and waited some more, before the captain came on the intercom and told us that, between the foggy weather and the airport being really busy, we were delayed in taking off and it would be about an hour’s delay.

About 40 minutes later, they restarted the engines and we got pushed back from the gate and started on our way. They must have done all their checks while we were waiting because we taxied towards the runway and seemed to speed up while making the turn from the taxiway onto the runway and we kept accelerating until we were flying.

It was a fairly uneventful 9ish hour flight back to a -4 degree Celsius Calgary, Alberta.

It took about an hour to get through customs and get our suitcase so we could meet our ride, our son, Adam.

It was foggy like Paris had been when we left but it was dark here so Adam took his time and we made it safely to East Side Mario’s on the south side of Red Deer for a late supper. The food was good but not on the scale as what we’d been having across the pond.

We got home around 9:00 pm after a very long day.

Our vacation was over. Technically, not as we were both off work on Friday before starting back at it on Saturday, but really, it’s over.

Even with our compressed time, I thoroughly enjoyed our holiday. We again saw and did a lot of things and still saw and did so little. I Had a lot of good food again, drank less than last time and didn’t feel like I had missed out.

We visited some familiar places and a bunch of new places and enjoyed them all.

We enjoyed pretty good weather all in all and took advantage of such as much as possible to sit outside for meals.

Maybe it was because I was just on a holiday, but the lifestyle vibes I got sure made it easy to believe that I would enjoy living in Europe.

I don’t know if having to work while living in a place like Paris would change my impressions at all but I’d be willing to try it.

Adieu Paris.
May we meet again.

by

Doing tourist stuff

With Wednesday, October 30th, 2024 being our last full day in Paris, I wanted to do some touristy type stuff. (More touristy than we’d been doing.)

Lynda and I had come across the tail end of weekly neighbourhood markets a few times during our visits but we hadn’t actually been to one. So our day started out by walking Rue de Tolbiac up to Rue de la Glacière to see the one that sets up there on Wednesdays.

While it was a nice market with lots of fresh stuff, there was nothing there calling my name, so we left empty handed.

Lynda wanted to pick up a couple bottles of the Champagne she likes as we can’t find it in Canada. (It’s hard to even find a demi sec Champagne of any brand it seems.) So we walked down Rue de Tolbiac in the opposite direction to Nicolas – the wine store.

Lynda and Lucille were successful in their quests. (I don’t remember what Lucille was looking for.)

We took the scenic route back to the apartment to drop off the wine so we could catch the subway to go down to Place du Trocadero.

Place du Trocadero sits on the right bank of the Seine, northwest of the Eiffel Tower and provides some nice views of the tower. A lot of broadcasters set up there during the 2024 Olympics. The athletes gathered in the garden below for the opening ceremonies. The finish line to the bicycle road races was down on the bridge.

We took the #6 subway from our usual stop at Glacière right to Trocadero.

It’s not very far from the subway stop to Palais de Chaillot – Architectural, naval & ethnographic museums, above fountains & gardens with Eiffel Tower views.

I took the same photo with my 18mm, 40mm and 85mm lenses to see/show the differences.

With the haze/fog hanging in the air, we couldn’t see as far as we should be able to.

Musée national de la Marine de Paris.

The square.

The view from the square. Technically, the panorama from the square.

We wandered around and took in the views for about half an hour before we decided to walk down by the river. We’ve never strolled along the river and thought we’d give it a try.

@Spookie_bugz wanted to pose for me so I took a few photographs to keep him happy.

I liked the look of some of the boats with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

The wind that was blowing up at the Trocadero had felt a bit cool, but down here by the water it was downright cold, so we headed back up to the road.

We came up by Flamme de la Liberté – “Gold-leafed torch & unofficial Diana memorial, built to commemorate American/French friendship.”

We started up Ave George V heading north to Av. des Champs-Élysées.

As we were passing the Four Seasons Hotel George V, I noticed a few shiny cars sitting out front and since I hardly ever see an Aston Martin at home, I took a photo of the one sitting there.

Surprise, surprise, another building I liked the look of.

Since we joined Av. des Champs-Élysées at Louis Vuitton, @spookie_bugz wanted to strike a pose. They are renovation a massive building right next door to look like a metal case and it looks like they will be moving soon.

We walked the 5 or so blocks up to the Arc de Triomphe and I did my best tourist impression getting a couple of photos.

There are 12 roads that come down to the traffic circle that the Arc sits inside of. We only walked to the 1st spoke to Av. de Friedland to go looking in search of some lunch. We stopped when we got to Brasserie Le Balzac. We had eaten lunch there on our trip a couple of years ago and thought we’d try it again. Sadly, it was too cold for the girls (I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it either) to sit outside.

Lynda contemplating what to get. Or maybe she’s wondering how she got here.

We all decided that since it was our last day here, dessert and tea for the girls and a coffee for me, was the appropriate course of action.

Lucille’s choices.

My choices.

We headed back south on Rue Balzac towards Av. des Champs-Élysées with the new Louis Vuitton in the distance.

It was busier than I expected for late October.

We walked southeast along all the shops we couldn’t afford to shop in until we were down at Statue du Général Charles de Gaulle. We were going to meet one of the girls Lucille had been in French class with as she wanted to give Lucille a gift before she left the county.

While we were waiting, I decided to take some photos of the Petit Palais and Grand Palais. I had so wanted to get into the Grand Palais, but it wasn’t open to the general public while renovations were going on.

The Petit Palais as a wide angle panorama.

Lucille’s friend arrived and they chatted for a while.

A doorway at the Grand Palais.

@spookie_bugz wanted a portrait take there.

I took a couple of photos of Hôtel des Invalides across the Pont Alexandre III.

We continued down Av. des Champs-Élysées and through Place de la Concorde.

As we walked through Jardin des Tuileries, Lynda could see La Roue de Paris – the giant ferris wheel we had seen in our trips to this area and she really wanted to go on it. It is a tourist day afterall.

The line up either wasn’t too long, or we just cut without noticing, but it was less than 10 minutes for us to get on. Lucille doesn’t do heights, so she sat on a bench and waited for us. It was a bit challenging taking photos through the plexiglass but you do whatcha you gotta do.

My wide angle shots seem to look okay. I wasn’t sure if they would as I dropped my lens on the sidewalk yesterday. (I sent it for repair when I got back to work.)

It was pretty neat to see some of the areas we’d been to from the higher vantage point.

After 3 trips around, it was time to get out.

It was getting on towards supper time and we wandered north on Rue de Richelieu to meet Curtis at his favorite restaurant – Goiko; a hamburger restaurant that’s only a few blocks from Palais Garnier.

Supper was pretty good and we made our way to the subway station at Opera to take the #7 train down to Tolbiac for the short walk back to the apartment.

We’d covered more ground than yesterday, but more than half of it was on the subway so I only got 23, 516 steps in today.

The 4 of us had a bottle of Champagne and snacks before we went to bed. We wanted to say goodbye to Curtis in the morning so we weren’t staying up too late.

by

A day of quests

Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 started as a cloud day in Paris, France.

I had a couple of things I wanted to do today before we saw where the rest of the day had in store for us.

I wanted to go see a library and I didn’t realize that Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, on the edge of the 13th, wasn’t in a cool old building. But in fact it was a fairly modern looking building. The other thing I wanted to do was to try and find a Harley Davidson tee shirt that would fit my friend, John H Read. He likes to wear them big so I was on a quest to find a 3x or 4x that looked as such and not what he usually finds when he goes looking – maybe they would fit a 140lb person.

I thought it was a good sign that a Harley Davidson motorcycle was parked at the gas station when we got onto Rue Tolbiac. We were going to follow it east all the way to the library.

We were about 1/2 way there when we came to École supérieure de journalisme de Paris. Of course I had to take a photo of the place as John likes to tell me he’s a real photographer as he has an arts degree in photography and I’m just a journalist.

Maybe it’s the tourist in me, but I’m pretty sure there is an interesting building, if not more, on every block.

While it wasn’t an interesting old building, Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, is set up to look like 4 open books marking the edges of the building about the esplanade (fancy name for a promenade).

You have to climb up to the promenade to go down into the library and Lynda was still smiling as we hadn’t walked that far yet today.

I wasn’t sure what to go see inside so I paid the $5€ fee each for us to get in. Apparently there are free access areas and I’m sure that’s all we were in, but I really didn’t mind ponying up to get in.

The book towers are connected by hallways that resemble a box and we’d made a circuit and looked at a few things when we decided to move on to our next stop.

These girls were practicing their dancing when we went in and since they were still at it when we were leaving, I had to grab a photo of them

We crossed over the curvy and very cool Passerelle Simone-de-Beauvoir heading over towards Bercy.

As we walked through Parc de Bercy, we decided we should find some lunch, so we headed in the direction of Accor Arena. We knew we could find food over there as we’d been to a concert in there a couple of years ago.

We decided to try Terrasse Bercy as they had a large and uncrowded patio.

We all settled on French onion soup (it was much better than the soup I had in Strasbourg) and a water with some lemon syrup. I ordered a medium, not realizing that was 500ml. (That’s like a months worth of water for me.) I probably should have stuck with a small like the girls did, but it was pretty good, for water.

With lunch done, we pushed on to complete our quest and were soon walking past Gare de Lyon. It really didn’t look like much until we got to the front side.

Onward and upwards.

Soon we were at Place de la Bastille. The description of which is; “The July Column rises above this iconic square’s bars & cafes, former site of the Bastille prison.

My bride decided to have a rest as I took photos, so I took her photo as well.

I was pretty sure I would be able to find a shirt for John, even if Harley Davidson didn’t have any. On our way up road we passed by BMW, KTM, Triumph and Royal Enfield.

Lucille and Lynda walked up the block to Éclat -coffee thé, which bills itself as having the best chai latte in all of Paris.

I found what I was looking for and took a couple photos of the motorcycles outside. The fellow in the shop told me they had just consolidated there merchandise and bikes to 1 location just a week ago and the day after they did that, someone came and smashed all their windows. New windows arrive tomorrow.

Éclat -coffee thé was a cute little shop with some charm and friendly staff and Lynda bought me an espresso. It was good but not the best I’ve ever had. The girls told me their chai lattes were very, very good though.

The girls were warmed up so we continued on our walk with no particular destination.

As we walked along I saw a camera store – Photo Ciné du Cirque – Panajou. I stopped in but they were out of business cards, so I left them one of mine. They had a used shop just a few doors down, so I left them a card as well.

Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione is actually a round building and not a wide angle panorama.

We found ourselves up at République – subway station.

We started making our way back in the general direction of the apartment.

We walked for quite a way and came to The Centre Pompidou. It is a very interesting looking cultural center.

It wasn’t very far to Hôtel de Ville – city hall, and some construction has started since the Olympics were in town.

Between the fencing and the courtyard being ripped up, I couldn’t get any good close up photo so we crossed the bridge to go over to Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.

Notre-Dame was still closed and wasn’t scheduled to re-open to the public for just over a month yet. I’ve never been inside as it was closed during both times I’ve visited Paris. I would have loved to have seen the inside. But, at least this time we could get closer to it as the fences were closer than last time. And, it was a lot more visible.

We again started for the apartment so we could meet up with Curtis before supper.

So far today, we’d done 15 kilometers and we are going out for supper a bit later.

Our plan for supper was to go to Le Relais de l’Entrecôte for steak and frites. It is a fabulous French restaurant that opens for lunch from 12-3 pm and closes, re-opening at 6:30 pm until 11:00 pm for supper. They don’t take reservations, so you go line up and hope you can get in at the desired time. We left the apartment around 5:30 pm to walk over. We knew the way as Le Relais de l’Entrecôte is just down the block from La Rotonde. We arrived to a short line up and it wasn’t a problem to get in for the 1st seating.

Once the doors open, you get hustled in and are seated very quickly. The waitresses zoom around taking orders fast and furiously.

Not only don’t they take reservations, they don’t have a menu. Well, technically, they do but not for an entrée. They have a decent drink menu and a fantastic dessert menu but all they serve for a meal is steak and fries. You have a choice of medium or well done steak. Of course the correct choice is medium.

You get a starter salad. It’s a simple salad but the dressing was pretty good.

The presentation is plain but it was a good steak and the sauce is pretty good.

You actually get 2 servings of steak and fries for the 29€ price. (Most of us got a bit extra as Lynda can’t eat that much, so she shared.)

So many of the desserts looked good and we tried 3 of them. Lucille and Lynda shared one. They were all sooooooooo good.

168€ for 4 of us didn’t sound that bad to me. It was a very good meal with great service and atmosphere. Of course, with our super weak Canadian dollar, I think it was about $500. Lol.

The line-up was fairly long when we left around 8:00 pm to head back to the apartment. We walked back a slightly different way to mix it up a little.

I took this photo for no real reason but when I put it in black and white, it became my favourite night image so far.

My Fitbit showed just shy of 31 thousand steps and just under 26 kilometers walked today. That’s a better than average day.