Stony Plain Pioneer Museum

 Just a few minutes drive from our Stony Plain base, a Google map search revealed that Stony Plain has a Pioneer museum and so why wouldn't we visit! We actually visited twice as on our first visit the girls naturally wanted to explore outside and were not interested in the indoor exhibits. 

Not knowing what the museum offered before our first visit we didn't know how long to allow and consequently we were a little short of time.The Town Hall building is currently home to a collection of more than 500 oil and gas lamps with some spectacular specimens on display. Upstairs in the Town Hall is a magnificent model railway layout, built, maintained and developed by a small band of volunteers (more always welcome!) as well as a smaller, portable, layout to take to regional events.

The Pioneer Museum collects items of historical interest from Parkland County and presents the stories of these items to visitors from far and wide and even not so far and wide. Most of the Museum work, such as machinery restoration, building restoration and maintenance, archiving artifacts, guiding tours and hosting events, is done by a large group of volunteers. 

The museum sits on 14 acres at the western edge of Stony Plain. 

 There are a wide range of restored and reconstructed buildings on site such as a schoolhouse, blacksmithy, trapper's cabins etc as well as a large selection of vehicles from the period when the region was being settled and in it's early development. 

Unfortunately I did not take sufficient photographs to do the museum justice, you'll just have to visit yourself! There are lots of buildings to explore as well as some of the larger buildings with hundreds of items on display.

The Pioneer Museum partners with other organisations for some of the major events in the town, such as Farmers' Days, Canada Day, The Blueberry Bluegrass Festival and the Stony Plain Cowboy Gathering.

Goose Lake

 Another weekend another trip but this time north of Edmonton to Goose Lake Campground, a private park about 200km north west of Edmonton.

The weather was not the best but we did set up in the dry but shortly after it started to rain which continued through to Saturday mid-morning though it was not a downpour. Consequently Friday evening was spent in the trailer tent playing games and eating snacks. Saturday morning revealed that we'd had a deer run through our site at about 9pm Friday evening while we were in the trailer. The trail cam still makes it look like it was a two legged deer!

That action was the only worthwhile footage from the trail cam the WHOLE trip so I have to include it.

Breakfast had been planned to be a fry up but we quickly discovered the eggs had gone off 😞. We quickly switched the plan to sausage sandwiches though Lauren went for a starter of a bowl of cereals.

Once the rain had cleared we went for a walk around one of the nearby trails, some of us were happier to go for the walk than others!

Having not gotten lost or eaten by a bear we were soon back at the campsite for lunch.

After lunch I decided to investigate the fishing so set off a couple of hundred metres away to the fishing spot. Since the dock was occupied by others fishing I fished from the lake shoreline. It soon became apparent that there were fish actively feeding and, after catching and releasing two perch, I 'ran' back to the campsite to get reinforcements who might like to fish. We were soon 3 of us fishing (although we only had two rods) and after a quick lesson on casting the two novices soon caught their very first fish. The perch were not of an edible size so they were mostly safely returned to the lake. Mother and daughter both ended the session with a total of four perch each, well done!

Having worked up great excitement we returned to the campsite for some games before supper of Doritos and mince - but not before some S'mores - yum!

 

 

 

All too soon it was time for bad....... 😴😴😴😴😴.

Sunday morning and it was time for a leisurely breakfast before packing up and heading back to Stony Plain. If we'd realised it though we would have headed north on highway 33 instead of south in order to visit the geographic centre of Alberta about 20km up the highway. 

As it was, we had decided to take a short detour into Fort Assiniboine to visit the world's largest cart wheel and pick axe with a mural thrown in for extra measure. 

Having deliberately taken one, short, detour, we retraced our steps to get back to Stony Plain but having been a little confused by some highway signage we missed the turn to Barrhead where we'd planned to fill up with gas. Uh-oh! We'd already experienced that turning around on a single lane carriageway is not recommended so we continued east (instead of west/south) and took a side turning through the township of Freedom. It didn't bring us much freedom though as the gravelled road changed to a muddy, potholed track. However, taking it slowly we finally come onto road 654 which joined highway 33 though south of Barrhead. Although gas was getting lower than we were comfortable with rather than head up to Barrhead we turned south. By the time we came onto highway 43 gas was of course much lower so we turned west for 1km to Gunn where we put enough gas to get up back though for the first time on the trip we didn't fill up as the price was1.379/l which was quite a bit more than we were used to paying. Feeling relieved with sufficient fuel we headed back to Stony Plain where we filled ourselves up with some tasty KFC before headed back to base.

Constable Chelsey Robinson Park

Having had time to recover from the drive we were by now getting out and about a little more and with the heatwave continuing where better to head to next than a spot where we might be able to cool off in the water.

So we headed south to the Constable Chelsey Robinson park on the North Saskatchewan River where we had a good time. The park is in quite a valley and there was a fair breeze blowing which helped cool us a little. The water was not too cold at all, however the current a little way from shore was EXTREMELY strong so we didn't venture too deep but I'd like to have known how the folks on the island in the middle of the river made it out there!

Edmonton High Level Streetcar

 Since seeing the Edmonton High Level Streetcar promoted by Michael Portillo on British TV it's been on my radar as something to visit when the opportunity arose and what better opportunity than being in the Edmonton area for a few weeks. The streetcars (of which there are 3 or 4)

For a few dollars we purchased our return tickets and patiently waited for the streetcar to emerge from it's garage as we we there for the first journey of the day.

This streetcar was actually imported from Melbourne, Australia when the streetcar system there was no longer required (or was upgraded?)

Then the car was reversed alongside the platform to allow us fare paying passengers to board.

With a good complement of passengers we finally set off for the journey from the Strathcona district, across the river to the Jasper terminus, a distance of about 3km.

Along the way are various stops where, if you are so inclined you can get off to explore and re-board a later streetcar.

 

The streetcar passes over the high level bridge from which you can get great views of Downtown Edmonton (note Alberta Legislature on the left hand side of picture, just above the treeline) and the surrounding area.

 

 

 

After reaching the Jasper terminus we walked back a little way to the Alberta legislature gardens for more sightseeing of the legislature, the gardens and get a different view of the high level bridge. You might notice that in this shot of the legislature from 'the ground' you cannot see the green clad scaffolding just below the cupola that is visible in the picture of downtown (and that's a good thing!).

After exploring we headed back up to the streetcar stop nearest the legislature just in time to catch it back to the Strathcona terminus.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Arriving back in Strathcona we spotted an interesting looking building opposite the streetcar barn which turned out to be the Connaught armoury as well as some modern day murals.

Then it was back to our car and head back to base.

Drumheller

 A weekend meant that it was time for us all to go on a camping trip and this weekend our destination would be McLaren Dam Campground near Drumheller. 

The campground proved to be a little tricky to find, at least for some of us, and, having missed the turning for it from a very rural road we had some fun turning around with the trailer in tow. 

We finally made it to the campground to find it was very quiet - it was only our group there. There were no staff at the campground as it seems to be run by local volunteers/a local community and much of what goes on is be an honesty system. By now we are getting better at knowing our jobs to get set up.

View from our sites.....

Pelicans on the lake, there was quite a large flock of them but I couldn't get a decent enough shot of them.....

One or two motorhomes turned up onsite before the evening was out but it was soon time to turn in for the night.

Having had a decent nights rest the next day we headed down to Drumheller, the dinosaur capital of the world.The approach to Drumheller was quite unique as, even from a couple of kilometres away, there was no sign of the town in the distance. However we quite suddenly descended into a large valley in which the town is situated.

Our first stop was at the Royal Tyrrell Musuem that hosts a large selection of dinosaur skeletons, bones and associated fossils. It was an interesting couple of hours though I have to say I cannot agree with their science 'proving' that the dinosaurs lived 70 million or so years ago and that the Earth is a billion years or more old.

After some lunch in the town of Drumheller we arranged to visit the Atlas Coal Mine before which we visited the Hoodoos! Each hoodoo is a sandstone pillar, around 5 to 7 metres tall, resting on a thick base of shale that is capped by a large stone. Hoodoos are very fragile and can erode completely if their capstone is dislodged. The protected Hoodoos site is a guaranteed spot to see Hoodoos but smaller versions of these sandstone giants can be found all over the Drumheller Badlands.

After some ices we headed down the road to the Atlas Coal mine for our final sightseeing trip of the day. The mine was another interesting visit and included a visit to part of the actual mine entrance although there are plans to open a much longer section of the (horizontal) mine entrance as well as various elevators, artifacts and visit to the showers! We were not warned but there was quite a lots of steps to tackle, it was quite a climb inside the elevator tunnel as well as on the cliff face to the mine entrance, several people in the group had to turn back as they were not able to do the climb, maybe we all should have been told about that before the tickets were purchased!