Fall in southern Alberta

I cooked salmon for Marlan in Medicine Hat at noon yesterday and then continued on west to Brooks. Allison and Camiel very kindly came to meet me. They had planned to spend the weekend in the mountains but the forecast went to hell so they headed east instead and we met up at Brooks. We were going to stay at Dinosaur Provincial park but as it turned out pretty well everyone in Alberta must have decided to get out of town for the last weekend of the summer. The Provincial Parks reservation lady claimed that "every" park in southern Alberta was full for the weekend. As it turned out that wasn't true but we didn't know that.

So we headed south and west, wandering our way across the Alberta prairie until we ended up in the Elks park in Lomond. I wouldn't recommend that anybody go more than about 100 yards out of their way to stay in Lomond but it was a perfectly serviceable, more or less level, more or less grassed field to park on with 15 amp power hookups conveniently located a long ways away at the edges of the field.


We had some Alberta beef for supper, preceded by some Safeway skewered prawns that happened to be on sale. This morning Camiel cooked us Dutch pancakes and we made a leisurely departure in late morning. We continued generally west until we crossed #2 highway at Nanton. You might not expect to find an air museum in Nanton but they've got one and it's definitely worth a visit. The museum is the result of a couple of local farmers who rescued a Lancaster bomber in the late 50's and dragged it across country to town. It sat in town and got vandalized for several years until some locals started working to preserve it but it wasn't until town council in 1985 suggested that a group be formed to "take care of the bomber" that the Lancaster Society was formed.

Since then the society has accumulated a collection of vintage airplanes and parts in addition to it's core mission of preserving the town's Lancaster. I didn't see anything that looked like it was airworthy but it looks like the Tiger Moth is headed for the air and they claim to have intentions of flying the Lancaster again. It will be a long time before it flies if it does ever fly again.

I'm not a great big fan of museums but I like little ones like the one in Nanton. It seems more real for the lack of polish. We were able to crawl through a lot of the Lancaster and in so doing could see the active restoration work that is underway, evidenced by tools lying around in critical locations. You don't get that in the Smithsonian.

After we left Nanton we continued west into the Chain Lakes Provincial Park and that's where we discovered that not every provincial campsite in southern Alberta is occupied this weekend. In fact in the farthest corner of the Chain Lakes campground there's probably still 50 or more empty sites. Right now I've got a peach pie in the oven thanks to Allison buying some peaches in Nanton and me buying some pie shells on spec yesterday. We've also got Hutterite corn waiting for supper. Corn and peach pie pretty well covers all the food groups that I have any interest in. And beer.