| We stayed at this RV
park, about 4 miles to the north of Grande Prairie. This gave us our first
experience this trip of dirt/gravel roads. There is some washboarding of the
surface which reduced our speed to about 20mph. I hope we don't find too
much of this. |  |
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From Grande Prairie we headed west towards the British Columbia border. The
road is good but very straight and relatively flat. This is still the
prairie. |
| At Beaver Lodge 30 miles
to the west we found this 15ft high fibreglass beaver. A town in Montana
thinks it has a bigger one - well they would, wouldn't they. |  |
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Just a few miles further on we stopped at the South Peace Centennial Museum.
This is much like others we have visited. This is in the artefacts building. |
| Another diorama in the
same building. I guess you could call this one 'Washday'. |  |
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There is a dentist's chair and an optician's chair. This one is for Jen. |
| Outside is this radar
scanner which used to sit on top of Saskatoon mountain nearby until
1985. It was one of the 44 stations in the Pinetree Line. There were many
American Air Force bases along this route, mostly used when they were
ferrying aircraft to Russia during WWII. |  |
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The railroad north of Edmonton was Northern Alberta Railroads which
was formed in 1929 from four earlier companies. This was owned jointly by CN
and CPR and since 1981 is now wholly owned by CN. |
| This is a log plane which
was put on a log and then pulled by horses to create boards. |  |
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This is a 20 ton 36hp Rumely steam engine dating from 1909, the largest
steam engine in Alberta. |
| A left handed John Deere
No 9 swather type harvester built in 1940. |  |
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There are quite a few tractors in two sheds and a third for harvesters.
Mostly these aren't pristine machines and many look like little more than
junk. One wonders where places like this will be in another generation, or
even ten years' time. |
| The cars are a different
matter. This is a 1938 DeSoto. |  |
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A WWII army tractor unit for hauling artillery |
| This is a classic early
American pickup. I sometimes think half the vehicles on the road both here
and in the States are pickups and yet the type is virtually unknown in
Europe. |  |
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This strange vehicle is a one-off snowplane powered by a propellor. Built in
1935 it covered over 60,000 miles and had five engines. It was mainly used
as an emergency vehicle and once transported 27 people to hospital in one
day. |
| This 1925 Chevy 1 ton
truck is a film star and was used in a 1982 film with Sean Penn and Robert
DeNiro. |  |
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Back on the road we spotted this seaplane - but couldn't find the water. |
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