Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: mailbox

Towards the end of 2014, I had been longing to get out to look for Snowy Owls, especially to the E and NE of the city. I finally got out, after my youngest daughter asked if I wanted to go looking for Snowies on our Christmas get-together on 20 December 2014. She had never seen a Snowy Owl, so I was really, really hoping that we'd find one! As it turned out, we saw 10 definite individuals, plus two others that we weren't quite sure about - one certainly looked like a very distant Snowy and the other was possibly a repeat of an owl we had seen earlier in more or less the same area. Part way through the day, a car came from the opposite direction - it was friends, Cathy and Terry! For the rest of our trip, we followed behind them, thoroughly enjoying every new find. Late afternoon, we went home different ways and my daughter and I saw our last two owls. She was so thrilled to see all these breathtaking birds - actually, she was quite happy and content after seeing the very first, distant one. Three of the owls gave us close or reasonably close views, the rest were very distant. Of course, whenever I/we go for a drive, barns are always photographed. Couldn't resist this very fancy barn mailbox. I had seen a couple of other, plainer designs before, but this one was quite beautiful. After all the wonderful owl sightings, we returned to Calgary and went back to my daughter's place to exchange Christmas gifts. I reckon the Snowy Owls were the "best" gifts she received that day!

I knew that if I was going to make myself drive north of the city, I had better do it straight away, before more snow arrived. So, on 28 October 2014, I plucked up courage and drove "to parts unknown". Actually, part of the drive was along familiar roads but the rest was exploring. I had intended leaving home around 9:00 am, but it ended up being 11:00 am. I had only been driving maybe 40 minutes before I pulled over for the first thing. I couldn't take my eyes off one particular cloud - actually more like a stack of clouds. A car turned off along the gravel road shortly after me, and the young guy with a camera commented about the beautiful lenticular cloud. That is exactly what I had thought it might be, so I was really pleased. We don't get to see them very often. Continuing my drive north, I managed to get as far as the town of Didsbury before I knew I just had to turn around and head for home, coming back via Water Valley and Grand Valley Rd/Horse Creek Rd. Saw quite a few Magpies, three or four Crows and one Gray Jay, lol. Other than that - oh, and one Hawk perched high up on a power pole along a busy road - I saw no wildlife at all. That was fine, though, as this trip was more about looking for barns. During the seven hours that I was out on the road, I did manage to find several barns that caught my eye. The very last thing I photographed was this beautiful red barn mailbox.

Yesterday afternoon, 23 October 2014, 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 was 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 1909). 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, ha, it was the private owner of the elevators!!! I read on the Internet just now 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. 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 : ) On my way back to the highway, I thought I’d check another backroad. I sure had to laugh at myself. When I decided to turn around and retrace my “steps”, I pulled off into a tiny area of gravel. Glancing in my rear-view mirror, I gasped, as this beautiful “barn” mail box was right in view. No idea how on earth I managed to not see it when I was driving towards it. Yet another thing I couldn’t resist stopping to get a few shots of. I roughly removed the person's name from the side of the box. Yesterday 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 the ones that had been banded. They were wild birds, but I still hoped to one day see a completely wild one (no nesting box). Yesterday’s owl was beautiful – crummy light, with a mix of harsh sunlight and dark shadows, but I did find one to post today. I noticed a snowflake icon on our weather forecast for Monday : (