Thursday night, we had a big thunderstorm, no hail, which blocked our satellite signal for a while, but washed most of the bugs off the front of the trailer.
Friday morning, we decided to go to Miry Creek Golf Course. We drove past it on Thursday, and it looked like a pretty little golf course. We had to put the truck in 4 wheel drive to get up the small grassy slope to the road beside the campground. The storm had made it quite muddy. On our way east, we stopped at Lancer to get a picture of the largest Chokecherry statue.
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| 2 Seasons of Chokecherries |
Then we stopped at a point of interest above Miry Creek. This was a point on the trail that ran from Winnipeg to Red Deer Forks (the junction of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan near Empress) and on to Edmonton, used by settlers heading west around 1900.
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| Miry Creek GC |
We started along the top of the gravel drive down to Miry Creek to get to the golf course, and decided we didn't want to get stuck trying to get back up the hill. We parked the truck off the road, and wheeled our carts and golf clubs down the hill. We had to stop occasionally to get the mud off our shoes. Fortunately there was a boot scraper at the golf course. We found a hand scraper in the clubhouse that we used to get the last of the mud off the wheels on our carts. On a Friday morning, we were the only people on the course. It was about worth the $5 green fee. We gave up looking for the fee box in and around the club house. At the first tee, we found the fee box. The fairways on the course are far from being a solid lawn. We occasionally had trouble finding our balls in little depressions with no grass. The greens were sand, and the first hole was sticking out a bit above the sand. We decided that they would not do anything to improve our putting, so we skipped that part of the game. The highlight of the game was an eight iron approach shot on the 9th hole that rolled just next to the hole.
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By the time we walked back up the hill around noon, the wind and sun had dried it enough that we didn't get any mud on our shoes or carts on the way up.
We had been unsuccessfully looking for the Wheat sculpture in Sceptre which Joan had read about. After lunch, we found the address and headed over to get some pictures. We had been through the intersection at Railway and Kingsway before, but hadn't looked far enough over our left shoulders to see the sculpture.
Saturday we drove south to the sand hills. On the way we saw one of the many antelopes we have seen in southern Saskatchewan.
We walked around the sandhills for about 2 hours.
On the way back to Sceptre we drove around through Leader (about 20km west of Sceptre). We stopped at the St. John School historic site south of Leader.
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| St Johns schoolroom |
Monday, we headed for Big Valley. There were 2 trailers from Saskatchewan in the campground. They had some little kids that were quite curious about our dog and coyote. After setting up, we went to the village office, and paid for 4 nights.
Tuesday we drove to Okotoks to pick up our passports. Then we stopped at Home Depot at Sue's lunch break to give her the pictures that we are giving to Trev. We stopped in Trochu on the way back, as they have an all season's campground we might want to use some time. When we got back to Big Valley, the two trailers had left, so we were alone in the (5 site) campground.
On Wednesday, after raining the evening before, it was still damp, with some drizzle. In the afternoon we walked around the exhibits at the Big Valley railway site. It was a divisional point, halfway between Vegreville Junction and Calgary on the Canadian Northern Railway, as there were a lot of underground coal mines in the area. There are relics of a roundhouse, locomotive turntable, ash pit, coal dock, and water tank, and various other structures necessary for maintaining steam locomotives.
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| Roundhouse |
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| Locomotive turntable |
The Canadian Northern Railway grew too rapidly and collapsed in 1913. The federal government acquired it in 1917, and then the Grand Trunk Railway in 1920, forming Canadian National Railways.
We completed our exploration of the railway displays on Thursday, since the battery in the camera ran low on Wednesday. The station building has been renovated, and is now used for the
Alberta Prairie Railway Excursions . Adjacent to it is a display highlighting communities and people in Canadian railroad history.
In the afternoon, we put our golf clubs on our carts, and climbed the hill to the golf course above town. It is a challenging 9 hole course with lots of trees and swampy areas. The fairways go up and down hills, and you frequently can't see where your ball lands as it disappears over the crest of a hill. In a few places, the fairway slopes steeply sideways. This course is a good hike.
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| Green through trees in a swamp |
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