From the Prairies to the Foothills: Brazeau Dam Trip, Part 3

From near Rocky Mountain House to Edmonton

(Oct 2023)

This is a 3-part blog about a day-trip from Edmonton Alberta to the Brazeau Dam site, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It is a bit long, so I broke it up into 3 parts:

To Highway 620, from Edmonton, following the N. Sask River, more or less.

https://dodecahedronbooks.blogspot.com/2023/10/from-prairies-to-foothills-brazeau-dam.html
Highway 620 in the foothills, including a stop at the Brazeau Dam Reservoir.

https://dodecahedronbooks.blogspot.com/2023/11/from-prairies-to-foothills-brazeau-dam.html
From Highway 11 back to Edmonton, through the south-central farmlands.

The numbering of the route subsections picks up from the first blog, starting at 7.

7) Highway 11, to Highway 22 Intersection

At this point, Highway 11 is a nice paved two-lane road with wide shoulders. That isn’t surprising, as two-digit roads generally have wider shoulders than three-digit roads. That said, the three-digit gravel roads on the prairie can be very wide indeed.

There seem to be more tankers, headed west. Perhaps they are picking up oil from producing wells in the foothills that are too small to rate a pipeline.

As it is was nice sunny mid-teens Celsius day, we continued seeing more motorcycles. The time when they can’t be used was fast approaching, so I guess people want to tour while they can. There were also hawks wheeling in the sky – probably a nice day to spot prey.

After a short time, we came to the intersection with Highway 22 and turned north.

8) Highway 22, to Highway 12 Intersection

This is a nice scenic highway, but we wanted to explore some other routes as well, so we would only be taking it for a short time. Once again, we were back to seeing a lot of hay-fields and other agricultural scenes, rather than the forests within the foothills.

We got stuck behind a truck carrying large diameter pipe at this point, which would dog us for quite a while.

It was a short detour on Hwy 22; we turned west when the road intersected Highway 12.

9) Highway 12, to Highway 792 Intersection

Highway 12 is another two-digit road, so fairly wide and well-paved. It had fairly low traffic levels, for a two-digit highway. To begin with, the land was very flat, though there did appear to be hills in the far distance. Most of the farmland seemed to be devoted to grain or hay. Some of the fields had oil-field “rocking horses” pumping away.

We continued following the large diameter pipe truck. I thought Scott was following it a little too close, so I taught him about the rule for estimating a safe distance between you and the vehicle ahead – find a landmark, note when the vehicle passes that, then count until you pass it. At highway speeds it is recommended that you keep that timing differential to at least 3 seconds, even better is about a second for every 15 kph (about 1 second for every 10 mph). At highway speeds that’s about 5 to 7 seconds. That’s not always possible, though on a relatively lightly travelled highway like this one, it is quite doable. Scott couldn’t recall his driver training course teaching that, so it was helpful. He did not know that!

My iPhone battery was getting low, preventing me from using the camera, so I plugged it into the car’s USB port. That turned on the sound system and started playing a song on my iPhone. Scott said that it defaults to doing that. I did not know that! I turned the sound way down anyway. On a road trip, I prefer quiet – just road noise and intermittent conversation. From what I can tell, Scott’s the same.

An oncoming wide-load truck (hauling hay) approached, just as we crossed a fairly narrow little bridge. That required getting quite close to the right-hand guardrail, but Scott handled it well. We had a laugh about it - “what are the odds?...every single time.” Though obviously, that was an exaggeration.

As we continued, the fields of grain, hay and oil pumps were now interspersed with cattle. Some of the cultivated lands were quite pretty now, featuring the pastel greens mixed with earth tones of newly mown hay fields. It became fairly hilly, so the undulations of the landscape enhanced the overall effect. It is unfortunate that my iPhone camera was busy being charged, so a word picture will have to do.

There was a traffic circle near the town of Bentley. A truck that was now behind us turned took a different route at the circle, so we were no longer in danger of being sandwiched between two trucks, which had been a bit of a concern for Scott. That can be quite irksome.

There was an interesting effect in the sky. A shadow could be seen coming off of a cloud, directly opposite of the sun, which was now to the west. On either side of the shadow, were two brighter zones. I suppose that if you were well past the cloud, it would look like the inspirational cloud pictures that you often see, with rays of light streaming through them.

Not long afterwards, we came to the intersection with Highway 792 and turned north.

10) Highway 792 Intersection, to Intersection with Highway 611

Being a three-digit highway, Hwy 792 is back to being fairly narrow. For the first while it was composed of rather old pavement, so the ride wasn’t as smooth as we had become accustomed to. Traffic was quite light, though we continued to see motorcyclists and trucks.

The land is quite flat around here, though there is knob and kettle topography nearby, created by the retreating glaciers thousands of years ago. Gull Lake, which is fairly large by prairie standards, is not far from the highway, to the west, though it was rarely visible. There is a small “summer village” there, of a few hundred people. It is, according to its website, the oldest summer village in Alberta, going back to the turn of the 20^th century. A few of the original cottages remain. The lake has clear water and nice sandy beaches, also not so common on the prairies, so the area has and does draw many visitors.

There were a few Greenhouse-type farms around here, some of which I recognized from the farmers’ markets in Edmonton. There were also some orchards and other vegetable farms, as well as the usual grain operations. So, it is clearly very fertile land around here. Basically, it was just a nice scenic prairie road, under pale blue October skies.

There is a quick jog to the west where the road meets Highway 53, but that is only for a few hundred meters. After that quick jog, the road became rather winding. We passed a small lake (Crestomere Lake) with a lot of ducks and gulls. I suppose the former were migrating, while the latter are full-time residents. After all, they do have a lake nearby named in their honour.

At about this point, we found ourselves following a peculiar looking truck that was moving quite slowly, about 10 to 15 kph below the limit. It reminded one of a Gypsy Wagon, or like something akin to the rig of the Beverly Hillbillies. We assumed it must have been some sort of work-related caravan and yes, indeed, it did turn off to a small oilfield development in a short while.

The pavement was nice and smooth again. The fields were often dominated by cows and horses now, along with hay. I suppose the land wasn’t quite as fertile as it had been around Gull Lake. There were also a few gravel pits, testifying to the effect of the long-ago glaciers, and to the effect of human beings, who need gravel, for industrial purposes.

We then intersected Highway 611, where we took a short jog east, in order to pick up Highway 795.

11) Highway 611, to Intersection with Highway 795

Highway 611 is another short jog to the west, about 15 km or so. It is a nice road, rather hilly for this stretch.

We passed a fellow on the side of the road, with a dog, who was waiting patiently to cross the highway. He waved at me as we passed, very friendly that. His dog was of the “Lassie” type, which is a type of collie, I believe. Who wouldn’t like that?

We noted cattle on the hills, though not so much on the hillsides themselves. Like golfers, they don’t seem to like side-hill lies. That was followed by some llamas or alpacas, with odd colouring. In this case, they were lower-half brown upper-half white. Apparently this isn’t all that unusual – they can come in a huge range of colours (22 natural coat colours). Then came a herd of pure white cattle. There were some nice copses of trees that had turned an attractive shade of yellow. All in all, a rather colourful bit of highway.

We then headed back north on Highway 795.

12) Highway 795, to Intersection with Highway 39

This road was gravel to begin with, and rather rough and “washboardy”. The ditches were barely below the road level, so probably not great drainage. As is often the case, the car “floated” somewhat on the gravel. But it was good for Scott to get in some gravel road time. It was quite dusty when a car passed (approaching or overtaking), though there wasn’t much traffic, so the situation didn’t arise very often.

There were some corn fields around here, which was different. Until recently, you didn’t see much corn being grown in central Alberta. That had been a deep southern Alberta specialty - Taber corn was an autumn institution in Alberta. But with the prevalence of Farmer’s Markets, the market is now much accessible to local farmers.

There were also “stock crossing” signs. I have been delayed in the past, as a farmer took his herd across a road of this nature. You just have to go with the flow, when it happens.

As with many other parts of the route, there were hay bales galore. Some of these were of the cylindrical variety, while others were rectangular. These rectangular bales were stacked together, creating one big rectangular structure. I estimate that each of these were constructed of dozens, if not hundreds, of bales.

And, as usual in Alberta, there were plenty of oil pumpers going in the fields. This isn’t too far from Leduc, so probably this oil is being pumped from the well-known (ha ha) Devonian Formation.

We then reached the point where Hwy 795 crosses Hwy 39. When we got to that intersection, there was a car across the highway that wanted to turn left onto 39, while we wanted to go straight through on 795. Though we had the right-of-way, Scott waited for the other driver to go ahead. That’s a situation with which I am never very comfortable. The rule always seems counter-intuitive to me. The car that has to cross 2 lanes of traffic has the right-of-way of the car that only has to cross only one lane of traffic? That just seems wrong and I tend to be uncertain about how the other driver sees things, so I tend to let them go first, if they seem at all inclined to do so. Perhaps that’s not a good idea. Anyway, in this case, the other driver seemed quite annoyed with us waving her, judging by her expression. So it goes.

Now that we had crossed 39, the road became rather winding again. That made it difficult to overtake and pass cars, though someone behind us did just that. There was a slow pickup truck ahead of us, which forced the issue somewhat. But Scott decided not to pass, since we would be turning off to head east again very soon.

But before that, we came across a sign for Calmar Stables and Ranch. I didn’t see any horses, but the property was obviously set up for training racehorses. I had never heard of it, but a later internet search showed that it had had a son of Seattle Slew (triple crown winner) “enter stud” there, so that’s pretty legit. Plus, they had some winners at Woodbine and a Canadian Derby winner in Edmonton. The latter has a pretty good purse, so, yeah, a pretty serious horse-racing operation.

There were also a few dairy farms, which I suppose tend to be closer to cities. I had a friend in high school whose uncle ran a mid-sized dairy operation. We visited it once – it was interesting and almost clinical, with the spotless milking machines and other sanitation measures. I am a fan of keeping milk local, even if it costs a bit more.

We then went by a barn that looked like it had been hit by a missile, as the roof was half off and ready to fall down. I imagine it was a bad windstorm and maybe some lightning, that had clobbered it, though.

Once we got to Calmar, we switched off driving again and headed east on Highway 39 (it was the second time we intersected it, as follows a slightly odd route).

13) Highway 39, to Intersection with Highway 2, then to Edmonton

This is basically the stretch drive, heading for home. It is a rather busy route that connects with the main highway in Alberta, Highway 2, in Leduc, which then leads to Edmonton. That’s why we switched off drivers, as the last bit is pretty hectic for a driver still learning.

Once we hit the city, we did the now traditional “Peter’s Drive-in” run and reported back to my wife and his mother, supplied with burgers and fries.

Overall, it was a good trip and one I would heartily recommend to anybody who likes a route with relatively low traffic, good sight-lines and a lot of varied scenery, from prairies to foothills.

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On the Road with Bronco Billy

Sit back and go on a ten day trucking trip in a big rig, through western North America, from Alberta to Texas, and back again. Explore the countryside, learn some trucking lingo, and observe the shifting cultural norms across this great continent.

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What follows is an account of a ten day journey through western North America during a working trip, delivering lumber from Edmonton Alberta to Dallas Texas, and returning with oilfield equipment. The writer had the opportunity to accompany a friend who is a professional truck driver, which he eagerly accepted. He works as a statistician for the University of Alberta, and is therefore is generally confined to desk, chair, and computer. The chance to see the world from the cab of a truck, and be immersed in the truck driving culture was intriguing. In early May 1997 they hit the road.

Some time has passed since this journal was written and many things have changed since the late 1990’s. That renders the journey as not just a geographical one, but also a historical account, which I think only increases its interest.

We were fortunate to have an eventful trip - a mechanical breakdown, a near miss from a tornado, and a large-scale flood were among these events. But even without these turns of fate, the drama of the landscape, the close-up view of the trucking lifestyle, and the opportunity to observe the cultural habits of a wide swath of western North America would have been sufficient to fill up an interesting journal.

The travelogue is about 20,000 words, about 60 to 90 minutes of reading, at typical reading speeds.

Driving North - On the Road to Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories: A Driving Journal

Have you ever wondered about a road trip to the far north, north of the Sixtieth Parallel? Well, here is your chance to read about three road trips, through the Peace River country and the northern Rockies, all the way to the shores of Great Slave Lake, just south of the Arctic Circle.

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The highways in northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories give one the opportunity to drive pretty far north, without a lot of elaborate preparations and extreme expense. Starting from Edmonton, one can drive as far north as Yellowknife, NWT, without leaving the hardtop, so an average vehicle can do the trip. There are a reasonable number of fair sized towns along the way, so accommodations are not much of a problem, either. The same goes for food, gasoline and other essentials.

One can also link up with the Alaska Highway, and the Dempster Highway, and make it all the way to the Arctic Ocean. But that’s another story.

Trip number 1 involved driving north through Alberta, visiting several areas of interest along the way, then into the Northwest Territories, to Hay River on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake. The return trip featured a drive through the north-central foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Trip number 2 was a combined air and car trip. We went to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories by airplane, then rented a car to explore much of the area of the north shore of Great Slave Lake.

Trip number 3 was a return to Hay River, with a different travelling companion. This allowed one to retrace steps, compare and contrast, and focus on some areas that we had not had time to explore in depth on trip number 1.

Dodecahedron Books

Wednesday, 15 November 2023