P-Day exploring and visiting

We live in Grande Prairie, Alberta Canada. We are a little more than 5 hours north and west of 

Edmonton. Edmonton is in North Alberta. Calgary is in South Alberta. 

It is the prairie and we can see forever.

We live at the edge of Grand Prairie.

Our apartment is on a busy road, but there are subdivisions behind us. This is from the edge. We decided to take a drive, on P-day, to the farthest edge of the Wapiti Ward. It is 141 miles from our house. 

On the way we saw a natural gas sub station.

Tucked away we saw oil well pumps. You will see them in other pictures we will show you.

The forest isn't too thick here. It is made up of deciduous (the leaves fall off) trees and conifers (could be a Christmas tree).

 We saw beautiful flowers.

There is logging going on in lots of parts of the mountains. We never saw one logging truck. They have their own private road, one way, to Grande Prairie, to make it safer for the other motorists.

As we drove farther we could see the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

We also saw a coal fueled power plant.

Across the highway was a mine cut in the side of the mountain, where coal had been taken.

This vein of coal is right next to the highway we were driving on. You could just pick up a big chunk of coal, except it might be illegal.

We had to cross a bridge.

The surface of the bridge is planks of wood.

We took a side trip to the Smoky River.

These huge cliffs are called Sulpher Gates.

Smoky River down stream.

The walk to the lookouts wasn't far.

There were 4 lookouts.

This from the side of the path.

It is hard to tell that this is REALLY far down. Those trees at the edge are REALLY tall.

We don't know what a stealth project would be, but there were 5  roads.

Trying to show the aspen trees. We found this grove on the edge of a lumber cut. The leaves are at the top of the trees. They are taller than quaking aspen in Utah.

They are not trimmed to look like that.

Our destination was Gande Cache. It is a little town tucked in the Rockies. We were half way to Jasper National Park. (Canada). There are a few member families from the ward living here. They make it to Grande Prairie about once a month, never in the winter. It is a long way, over 2 hours, and could be expensive depending on how good of gas mileage the car gets. We talked with one of the sisters for a while. Her husband and two sons have gone to Utah to visit relatives, but she had to work. This is a rough country. There are lots of people who live far from church buildings. They do the best they can. This little group of people get together for Sacrament Meeting on the weeks they don't come to Grand Prairie. I admire them. I'm sure we will meet lots of people in this ward who have same kinds of distance hardships.

Trip home took as long as going. Except we also had some rain. We did see an elk cow and a doe and her fawn. And a few crows.

Until later,

Sister Brown, Mom, Grandma, and Robyn