Alberta Road Trip

It’s 480 km from Canmore to Writing-on Stone Provincial Park, a journey of 5 hours and of course the same for the return trip. The drive presented numerous good photographic opportunities in the course of my travels to the park last week.

Today’s subject is the sights I photographed going to and returning from the park, presented in no particular order. The first scene features four abandoned farm buildings I found along Highway 501 between Milk River and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. The countryside is very typical of the landscape of the southern Alberta prairies.

This barn is also located along Highway 501 but closer to the Town of Milk River. It’s old, vacant and dilapidated but a great subject with strong character. It certainly looks like a barn but closer inspection of the building’s opposite side revealed windows and a door, suggesting that it may have served as a home at one time. This is one of my favourite pictures from the trip and as you’ll see next, the subject of another photo.

I returned to the barn, with my companions Harv and Kevin on the second night of our stay in the area. For awhile, we wondered if we could find it again in the utter darkness that prevails in that remote corner of southern Alberta. We took advantage of that darkness to shoot the Milky Way using the barn as both a foreground subject and a barrier to headlights on some combines, harvesting grain in the distance. (Those lights are not readily apparent to the naked eye but they most certainly become prominent in a long exposure photograph.) You can see the bright light emanating from the left side of the barn, a combination of the glow from the bottom end of the galaxy and those pesky combines.

On our return to Canmore, we exited Highway 3 to photograph the Lethbridge High Level Bridge, spanning the Old Man River. This impressive bridge rises 307 feet (93.6 metres) above the valley floor and spans a distance of one mile and seven feet (1.6 km). Completed in 1909 it is the longest, highest bridge of its type in the world.

As we continued our journey home, we made some stops along Highway 541 soon after turning west at Longview. This is ranch country and this scene shows one of the many ranches in the area. If you look closely at the upper right hand corner, those black spots are cattle.

The last leg of our journey traversed Kananaskis Country, where fortune smiled upon us and we spotted this grizzly bear chowing down on berries in the brush along Highway 40. My friend Barry Stewart tells me that this bear, tagged as #2160 was formerly known as Bear #139. That earlier tag got ripped out of her right ear and has been replaced with this newer one on her left ear. Normally, male bears are tagged on the left ear; females on the right. (In case you were fooled into thinking this is a male bear.) Berries are a particular favourite of the grizzlies and play an important role in helping them store energy for their winter hibernation.

Before concluding this post, I’m including one more scene from Writing-on Stone. I overlooked this one in my first scan for pictures to be included in the prior blog. I like it enough to add it in here. It’s never too late.

That wraps up this brief series of posts on the subject of my recent trip to southern Alberta.