Even more - Summer Travels 2020!

 The grass at home needed cutting, so after visiting and hiking in Pincher Creek, Hailey and I headed home for a few days.

There's lots of wildlife around there as well.  This Killdeer decided to try and lure me away with the old 'broken wing' act!

 

My camara under the front step showed that we had some company one night.

 

 

Also, on the home surveillance front:  Not exactly wildlife, but this calf evidently escaped from one of the local ranchers.

 

 And, Hailey was out in the grass, trying to track down something to play with.

 

I guess this little feathered friend was trying to remind me to fill all the bird feeders!

 

 

 

Ms Hailey still gets around pretty well, despite being one leg short.

Five days at home was enough to get caught up, so it was time to hit the road again - this time west to BC.

 

 

My boondocking spot on the lake south of Revelstoke was vacant, but the lake water was still high from the spring melt, so there was essentially no exposed beach, and water was right up into the trees.

 

 

This provided great cover for the minnows and young fish to hide and feed.

 

 

Luckily, my inflatable kayak allowed me to get out on the water for a better perspective.

Slowly learning some work-arounds and how to avoid some of the pitfalls of the Blogger editor.  Check back again for the rest of this trip, and many more.

More summer 2020 Travels

 Well, here we go again!  Another attempt to post something - in spite of Blogger :-(  (More in the rant at the end!)

Don't be alarmed about 2 posts in 2 days, after about 4 months of no posts!  Just trying to get caught up a bit.

I gave up on the last post as we were travelling westward across the bottom of Alberta.  

Found this guy on the side of the road in rattlesnake country, but there was no sign of a rattle.

 

I I think these are shelters for leaf-cutter bees or something, but I thought it just as likely could have been a Covid-era Alberta campground!

 

One night we camped beside a bridge on a gravel road headed for the US border.  While that might normally have been a noisy, dusty spot to be, with the border effectively closed, it was very scenic, peaceful, and quiet.  Well, except for the mosquitos!

 

Next day, we came into Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park from the south side. The park has some fairly spectacular scenery, and lots of history, from the petroglyphs, to the more recent Northwest Mounted Police post on a coulee leading to the US to control the illicit liquor trade during prohibition.

We found a spot to take a cooling dip in the river, evn though it was only about knee deep.

Found this gravel pit with two of these very fancy gates!  Not sure if there used to be a ranch here or something, but I found it strange to find two 'useless' gates to a gravel pit.  Ideas?

Next stop was in Pincher Creek, where a couple days were spent visiting with friends, and some hiking and boating.

 

 

 

Some of the hiking was in Waterton Lakes National Park - where some facilities have been re-built after devastating fires there a couple of years ago.  Another hike was from Castle Ski area

Rant: Ok, so I have found one improvement in Blogger recently.  For years, there were serious glitches in some of the setup sections of my Blogger.  In spite of clear error messages and countless contacts with 'helpful' blogger 'experts', the problem was never diagnosed or solved.  There were incorrect settings that I just could not access or change!  Well, pleased to announce that with the most recent version of blogger editor - those problems have magically disappeared!  On the other hand, the road blocks continue.  To import photos into blogger from your computer is a two step process.  You select a group of photos, and supposedly they appear in your draft blog.  But not today!  Blogger happily burns through my valuable bandwidth loading 25 photos, but the very last one just refuses to load!  Well, that would be no big issue if all the rest were still there, but no, the only option is to 'cancel', so the bandwidth is wasted, but NONE of the photos are loaded.  For the next attempt, another random photo refuses to load, and the previous problem pic loads just fine.  Don't get me started on all the formatting issues - none of which were a problem with Open Live Writer.  I know that we should be 'thankful' that Google Blogger provides a 'free' blogging platform, but rest assured - if they weren't making money on the advertisements, it would not exist.  I just wish they would spend a little of their ample revenue fixing the problems and making it a bit more user friendly. <end rant>

Summer Travels - 2020

 After the snow melted around home we started on the summer camping season!

Hailey assisting with the blog post!

But before that, there was a major ice jam blocking the river in front of my place.  I was on higher ground, but a few of the neighbours were getting a bit worried!

 

 

 Luckily, it all broke loose on it's own and the ice and log jam floated off downstream.

The first couple were just short trips up to Abraham Lake, a few hours to the north west of here.  Another recently retired park warden joined me for the first of such trips, and we did some hiking in the area, and poked into the north end of Banff National Park - where we both used to work.

Then, I was back to the very same spot a week later, joined by Don and Donna from 'Driving Miss Donna'.  They were also the last folks we camped with down in southern California - before most of the Canadians made a dash for the border as Covid concerns grew.  Once again we did some touring and hiking in the area.

 Usually a fairly quiet boondocking area, it was unusally busy because at that time most of the national and provincial park campgrounds were still closed.  So, all the folks that would normally be there decided to try roughing it without services.  I hope this boondocking thing doesn't get too popular!

As luck would have it, Hailey began to chew some of the fur off her back soon after arriving home.  So, it was off to Calgary to see her 'dermatologist'!  Quite a few hundred dollars later we made our escape to the east, first visiting the Drumheller area - where I have also been doing some recreational real estate snooping.

Red Deer river

   

 

 

 

 

 

We continued our south-eastern trek across the province,  with a stop at a little county park north of Jenner - also on the Red Deer river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rattlesnake Lake, near Medicine Hat

 

 

 

 

 

Found this spot on the banks of the South Saskatchewan river.

From there, we headed south through the Alberta side of the Cypress Hills Interprovincial park, and down to near the US border, before turning back west again.

 

Well, I pretty much give up.  Working with the Blogger editor is like banging your head against the wall.  On the bright side, I finally figured out how to get most of the photos to appear upright at least!  But the rest of the formatting is pretty much a crap shoot.  Things highlighting and moving on their own, no rhyme or reason.  Not at all happy with this post, but just kicking it out there, so there's less to do for the next one.