Later in June, we met up with Karen and Dominique in Three Hills. From there we visited Dry Island Buffalo Jump, the village of Rowley or maybe Rumsey, with it's moose, Horseshoe Canyon, Drumheller's Tyrell Museum, and back via the Bleriot Ferry.
Our next stop of interest in June was Caroline. We stayed in the campground at the golf course. It only has a few sites, but had the facilities we needed. We found the golf course challenging. Once you got off the fairway into the rough, it wasn't easy to find the ball. We went out to Burnstick Lake, looking for hiking, but didn't find much there. Our Alberta Topo GPS map showed hiking on some snowmobile trails but we couldn't locate them. Near Burnstick, we went to Birch Lake, a little lake up in the hills north of Burnstick. We were surprised at the number of fishermen on the lake. Several were bringing down their boats after we got down to the lake.
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| Birch Lake |
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| Family of geese |
From Caroline, we made a few trips out into the foothills. We did a hike at Seven Mile Provincial Rec Area on the Forestry Trunk Road. The highlight was a grouse.
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| Grouse |
Towards the end of June, we went to Claresholm, where we saw the Canada Day celebration next to the campground. We did a nice hike at Porcupine Ridge west of Claresholm, just above the valley that highway 22 runs through. We had a nice chat with a lady who is a honey inspector. Lots of nice late spring flowers.
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Late in July we headed back to Edmonton via Camrose. After visiting with friends and family in Edmonton, we went to Breton. George joined us there for a couple of days. We did a trip to the Coyote Lake Nature Sanctuary which was donated by Eric and Doris Hopkins. We started off on the 'wrong' based on faulty information on a hiking trail. We did find our way to the main walking area of the park, but our time was limited.
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| Coyote Lake |
The day after George left, we returned there to do one of the longer walks around the northwest side of the lake. We saw a couple of sandhill cranes. We just pointed and shot, and got a picture before they flew off.
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| Sandhill crane |
Another day, we returned and walked the northeast loop, where we came to a nice cabin with a gazebo in front of it.
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| Gazebo |
Then we spent a week in Drayton Valley, walking around town. On one of our walks, we came across an elderly, nearly blind fellow whose scooter had broken down. After trying to see if we could get at the battery, we pushed him over to the nearby A&W where he could get hold of someone to come and get him and his scooter. We did a hike in the Willey West area on the east side of the North Saskatchewan. We were able to get an interesting picture of a grouse in a tree.
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Then we returned to Rimbey for a few days. We went back to Eckville one day to golf.
From Rimbey, we returned to Vulcan in late August, where we have been since.
We didn't appreciate the cold weather in early October. One cold morning we decided to run the furnace for a while to get the temperature up faster than our space heaters could manage, only to find out that the regulator on the propane tanks wasn't working. Fortunately we were able to get one at the RV shop, and install it so we were able to run the furnace overnight, and keep the area under the floor where the water lines run from freezing. Our space heaters don't get any heat there. A couple of days later one of the space heaters started overheating, as the fan quite working in it, so we had to replace it.
We have been enjoying the warmer weather for the last week, as we prepare for our trip first to Regina, then south to Texas, where we will leave our trailer for a month while we drive across to Washington, through the Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Park. After seeing the sites in Washington, particularly the Smithsonian Museum, we will head down the east coast, return back to Texas to pick up the trailer, and head for Arizona.
