Tuesday, January 22, 2008

High River

As with other days recently, today (Tuesday) started with overcast skies. However, by mid-day, the cloud had burned off and the temperatures had picked up to +5°C, so off we went for a trip out in the car to see if we could give Janet's new camera a further little "road-test".

We stopped at a shop to grab some lunch for the road and drove off to High River, a small town about 20km south of Okotoks. Here's the town website.


The following map, courtesy of Google Maps (isn't it amazing - the technology we have at our fingertips nowadays!), shows you our home in Okotoks and the places we visited today. We took the 2A down to High River (35 minutes) and the faster Highway 2 for the journey back (25 minutes). On the journey there, we passed through High River and when we got to its southern edge, we started driving west. The road took a sharp turn and on we went out into the woodland and then into open farmland.
Soon we stopped up by the side of the road and had our lunch as we looked across the fields towards the mountains.

We then headed back but stopped to take a shot of a very inquisitive horse we had noticed as we drove by earlier!
Not 50 yards further on, we had to stop again for these fellows!
And then, seconds later, as we turned the sharp corner mentioned above, we both noticed a large bird off to the left of the car, up in the trees above a riverbank.
We couldn't get the shot we wanted, but when we zoomed in on one of the shots when we got back home to our computer, we concluded that we had seen our first American Bald Eagle...something of a treat!
So, we were well rewarded for taking the time out to see our surroundings.

J&E