A quick jaunt to Stony Plain

We went out for a Saturday drive with Col's Granny today to visit a friend of hers out near Devon. She lived in a beautiful new house nestled in the woods with some pretty fantastic timber rafters and a real feeling of a homestead farmhouse. She also had two gorgeous Weimaraners although we only got to see the one that wasn't ferocious protective around his owner... On the way home we decided to go for a cruise through the countryside to get a feel for the Prairies and because it was just a great day for a drive really.


The prairies...

This shot really doesn't do it justice and hopefully one day I'll get the perfect combination of the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) train vanishing in the distance, the ultra clear blue sky and the bright bold yellow of the canola fields just popping out at you. These trains are immensely long. And I'm talking about sitting at the level crossing for up to 10 minutes waiting for these puppies to finally disappear. I thought some of the coal trains back in Oz were long, but these suckers just go on and on and on and on.

Speaking of trains, Stony Plain is reasonably famous on the tourist route for its murals, which are painted on a lot of the buildings depicting early homesteading life in Alberta. This one was particularly cool and shows what sort of an ornery cuss you had to be back then to run an Alberta township.


The mural...

What it was all about...