Road trip 2011, part four

Well, I'm finally back and catching up on the road trip photos. This time, I've uploaded a few taken at my sister's farm.



My younger daughter and I got a chance to spend the night with my sister and her husband. Of course, what country visit would be it be if we didn't get a chance to check out the garden, barnyard and cows? *L* Their farm is alongside a creek, with some pretty gorgeous views. As we were walking along the shore, their heifers saw us and decided to check us out. The first time, the path took as through a small bunch of trees. Before long, we were completely surrounded by cows! They were curious and willing to come close, but not too close! After a while, we continued on our way and they stopped following us. On the way back, however, they all gathered around us again. The dog kept coming in between us and the cows, barking if he felt they were getting too close. In the above picture, it's the dog they're all staring at.

As you can see, they aren't particularly intimidated!

Road Trip 2011, part three

I've added a bunch of photos to my flickr set for this trip. While out, we stayed with my parents on the farm I grew up on. One of my brothers has his own place just up the road, a handy little walk away.

A lot of the farm shots have stories behind them, and will probably get posts of their own. Until then, here some others for you to enjoy.




This is one of several gardens my mother has. The vegetable garden has gotten smaller over the years, though it's still quite large. There are flower gardens, fruit trees and berry bushes as well. This little garden was mostly flowers when I was growing up on the farm. Now it's got more veggies in it - handy to have, closer to the house. With all the rain and cold in MB, the gardens when in a month late and the ground has often been too muddy to tend. It was just starting to dry up a bit during our visit.






There is a new addition near my parents' big garden - a couple of honey bee hives! My late uncle always kept bees, and he loved tending them. After my uncle died, one of his son in laws took over. Now my cousin in law runs Honeybee Meadows and he and his wife sell their honey as a nice little business. I made a point of picking up a big bucket of honey from them to bring home with me! :-) These are their hives, taking advantage of the many seasonal flowers my mother has, though from here, clover is all you can see. The row of trees behind the hives is mostly lilac, though there is a chokecherry tree in there as well (which my dad has used to make wine in the past). I'm sure there are others my mom has added over the years I don't know the names of! *L*






The ditch between my parents' place and my brother's was filled with flowers. Mostly Daisies and Wild Roses, but also Black Eyes Susans, creeping Buttercups, and many more I just don't know the names of.

During one of our walks back, however, we spotted this single Lady's Slipper that suddenly appeared. It wasn't blooming when we walked past the day before. It was hard to get a photo with the breeze, but I think this one worked out all right. We had found two more of a different type of Lady's Slipper in the spruce grove near my parents' house that I just wasn't able to get a good shot of.






It was a beautiful evening when we visited with my brother, so we sat outside to chat - thoroughly covered in bug spray, I might add. It was so nice to sit out there, surrounded by trees and flowers, several cats and the dog, enjoying each other's company. While there, we saw several deer passing through a clearing. They were a bit too fast for me, but I did manage to get a couple of shots.

Gotta love country living!





This is a neighbour's field we pass when driving from my parents' farm to town. When I was a kid, I loved bison, so I was pretty thrilled when people started to keep them. The babies you can just see over the tall grass are so adorable! They're such fascinating animals to look at.

Tasty, too.

Road Trip 2011, part two

I've added a few shots to my flickr set of some of the areas we checked out while in Manitoba. Here are a couple of them.



This is taken from Fraserwood Park, in my home town. You see that building way in the background? When I was a kid, that was my first school. It was a two classroom school, though at the time I went, it was K-3 (it used to be K-6), all in one classroom. The other was used as a gym. Where I'm standing to take this photo was nothing but a marshy area. Now it's a park with a pond, public bathrooms, hand pump, areas large enough for RVs to park, with firepits available.

What you can't see from here is the house we used to live in. There's also a hockey rink and a sports club (which now owns the old school building) and a play structure, basketball court and baseball diamond. My kids were pretty young then, and spent many happy house exploring. One year, we gathered some frog spawn from one of the ditches and raised them in a makeshift tank. Out of the many eggs, only 5 froglets survived, and we released them in this pond.

Also released in this pond was a huge snapping turtle! I have no idea if it's still there. A friend called us up one day, asking for help. She'd seen something odd on the side of the highway, in an area surrounded by farmer's fields. It turned out to be a snapping turtle the size of a steering wheel! With no water in sight, and no idea where it came from, it was brought over to our place and we soon let it go in the pond. I must say, driving the car with that thing in a bin on the seat beside me - a bin it barely fit in! - was rather nerve wracking. Especially when the darn thing almost got out!



This is a Purple Martin tower by the marina in Gimli, Manitoba. They don't hang around long, but when they do, they eat a whole lot of mosquitoes, so a fair number of people build "apartment style" birdhouses to attract them. This tower is the largest such structure I've seen.

Click here to see more photos.

Road Trip 2011, part one

As you may have noticed with some of my previous posts done through my phone, I've been on a road trip. My younger daughter and I drove from Edmonton to Manitoba, visiting various places in the Interlake, not too long ago. We also took oodles of photos. I brought along my old Canon S3, since it also has video capability. Little by little, I'll be adding some to a set on my flickr page and highlighting a few here.

The drive out was quite the adventure. We took the Yellowhead (Hwy 16) out of Edmonton, all the way through to the Trans Canada. We drove through and were surrounded by thunderstorms pretty much the entire Alberta leg of the trip.



When I saw this sun drenched field, with its old cabin, sillouted against a distant thunderstorm, I had to pull over and get a shot out the driver's side window. This particular shot was taken at maximum optical zoom (see my flickr set for a different version). We also found ourselve driving into a spectacular double rainbow. We knew we'd driven under it when it abruptly disappeared.

Our plan had been to find a rest stop and camp out for the night. We weren't in any hurry, so an early night would have been fine. Unfortunately, we discovered there are very few rest stops along the Yellowhead - at least in Manitoba! We ended up stopping at a rest area near Minnedosa in the wee hours of the morning. We broke out the foam mattresses and crashed for the night.



It wasn't until morning that I realized the parking spot I stopped in likely wasn't a parking spot at all! *L*

It was a gorgeous morning, so we had ourselves a breakfast picnic before hitting the road again. Quite a few others were taking advantage of the lovely morning, including a fisherman who set up at the river that's just behind the row of trees you see on the right.


View Larger Map

I don't know the name of the river we were beside. It sure is a squiggly one!

When we left, we saw one more rest area to the East of Minnedosa, and that was it. Not what we were expecting at all!

Border

Heading home by a different route and finally able to use my phone again. I forgot MB was a dead zone for the phone i have.

The rest area on this route is a lot nicer than our usual one.

Double rainbow

Taken east of Foam Lake.

Surrounded

Thunderstorms all around us. Taken east of Clavet, Saskatewan.

On the road

Let's see how this mobile blogging works with a photo attached.

We have been driving for about 2 hours now. This photo is taken from a mall are we stopped at to get gas, on the west edge of Lloydminster. Time to stop for lunch, too.

No matter how often I take this trip, I am always struck by the beauty of our countryside.