Old grain elevators & railway cars

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, to all those who celebrate! Remember that kids will be out this evening, so please drive carefully!

A week ago, I finally did a drive south of the city and found an old barn that I really wanted to see, plus a few others. The photos of this barn that I had found on the Internet were obviously taken by trespassing, or possibly before the No Trespassing sign had been placed there, as I could only get a view of the back of the barn from the road, lol! On this drive, or rather when looking at Google Earth the previous evening, I discovered that as well as having no sense of direction, I also have no sense of distance!

Then I went in search of two grain elevators joined together by a long, low building. The most northerly one is one of the oldest in Alberta (built in 1905 I think, certainly before 1910). I had pulled over and parked, taken a few shots right into the sun unfortunately and was just checking them back in the car. I was conscious of a man in a bright orange sweater approaching close to my car. When he stopped by my car, I opened the door – he seemed a bit puzzled as to what I was doing there, so I explained that I was photographing the elevators. Ha, it was the private owner of the elevators! Later, I read on the Internet that he has a furniture manufacturing company in the long, low building that joins the two elevators together. I asked him if there was a better place to photograph them, and he said to take the previous little road. Much better! Some nice old train cars parked near them, too. Maybe I was parked on private ground when the owner was talking with me.

DeWinton is on the CP line which run south of Calgary to Aldersyde. DeWinton originally had three elevators, but one was torn down in 1936 and rebuilt in High River. The remaining two were owned by UGG, then by Diamond Fertilzer and Catl-Lac Feeds Ltd., and are now privately owned.

vanishingsentinels.blogspot.ca/2006/02/dewinton-alberta.html

www.bigdoer.com/3101/exploring-history/dewinton-de-winton...

After the elevators, I explored a few other roads further south and ended up not far from the Saskatoon Farm. Called in and had quiche again : )

This day had started well, too. I found an e-mail from friend, Sandy, saying that they had just seen a Barred Owl in one of the local parks. Thanks to Sandy, I got over there just before noon and bumped into a few of my friends who had just finished a walk. Two of them said they would come with me and look for it again – and we found it!! This was the first 100% wild Barred Owl I’d ever seen. I had seen a family of them near Edmonton, when we went to see ones that had been banded. They were wild birds, but I still hoped to one day see a completely wild one (no nesting box). The owl was beautiful, but the light was really poor, with a mix of harsh sunlight and dark shadows. I've posted another photo of it this morning.