road trip

I've always been lousy at editing myself (remember those evil novel summaries we had to do at school?), and the idea of trying to edit our 10-day trip across British Columbia and into Alberta has been daunting, to say the least, especially the photo aspect. It was hard enough editing down to only 107 photos for my Flickr photo set, so here goes nothing.

We headed out on a beautiful day and shared our lunch with the marmots, grey jays and Clark's nutcrackers in Manning Park.

That night we stopped at Christina Lake, where we borrowed a friend's cabin and kayaked, swam and just chilled for two nights.

On our way through the Kootenays to the Columbia Valley we passed through Rossland, a beautiful,

historic gold rush town, only five minutes' drive from Red Mountain (I skied every weekend when I lived there), and the location of my first teaching job. I would still love to live there.

The next three nights we spent at Radium Hot Springs, near Invermere, where the gallery show/demo took place. We saw some interesting things there including a car that swims, deer hanging out in the road and a mountain or two.

Off to Calgary through spectacular Kootenay National Park to spend three nights at the home of my friend, Michelle. The hottest day of our trip we spent exploring part of south-central Alberta, as Greg's great-grandfather, James Wishart, settled the Rosebud Valley. We found the original restored log cabin, their grave in Gleichen, and visited Rosebud itself, a charming village in a beautiful setting. What was most interesting to me was the board illustrating the original Rosebud train station (which no longer exists) as my great-grandfather, Winnipeg architect Ralph Pratt, designed it. Talk about an interesting intersection between our two families.


We also visited the famous Royal Tyrrell Museum of palaeontology in Drumheller, something we've wanted to do for years and year. It actually reached 40C in the Badlands that day!



The next day Adam and I went with Michelle to visit her horse, Champagne, on a hobby farm near High River. Check out these characters! Then there was Daisy, the world's tiniest and cutest pony, and my extra-long legs. They MADE me ride her! Every time I tried to put my weight down she tried to bite my knee. We laughed like idiots for ages.

Home again through the Rockies along Highway 1, we stopped at Sicamous for a night. In Golden we stopped at a fascinating place, Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre, and discovered how really backward British Columbia is in its wildlife stewardship, particularly of bears and wolves.

Ten days and 3000 km later I can confidently say that it was a fantastic experience.




As for editing, this is the best I could do. There's so much more here.