Weekend prairie adventure ...

The long straight road into the prairies

 

 This past weekend, C and I headed east into the prairies for a cultural experience at the Rosebud Theatre.  The drive there was beautiful - flat, flat paddocks of green brown and yellow (canola) interspersed with some rolling hills and small, rocky escarpments.  The only evidence of water was in 'prairie potholes' that were mainly dried up.

Lonely cow

Sunken barn

 The small hamlet of Rosebud is delightful.  The community is so small that there isn't even a petrol station and the newspapers aren't delivered until halfway through the day.  After arriving and settling into the lovely Rosebud Country Inn, we set off on foot to explore the area.  Exploring the town didn't take too long as it is so small, however we enjoyed reading the numerous signs around the township that explained the history of each site.  From reading each sign, it seems that the town boomed in the 1920s and 1930s (they even had a railway station!) and then fell in a heap in the 1970s when the school was shut down and the population dropped to under 12 people.  Since then, Rosebud has been revived as an arts community, with the development of the Rosebud School of the Arts which offers a four year training course for young actors.  Which is why we were there in the first place, to see the theatre.

Colourful prairie

View from a hill in Rosebud

The Rosebud Theatre is well known in Alberta for its annual showcasing of a play based on the stories of WO Mitchell.  This year, the play was 'Jake and the Kid' which WO Mitchell originally wrote in the 1950s as a series of radio plays.  The stories are set in the 1940s in a small town in Saskatchewan,  They tell the story of life on the prairies through the eyes of the Kid and Jake, the hired hand.  From watching the play and listening to the script, you can almost imagine that you are on the Saskatchewan prairies.  It is easy to tell that WO Mitchell wrote the text as he has such a distinctive, delightful way with words. 

 

Horses on the hill in Rosebud

Happy cow, unhappy donkey ... I didn't even realise I'd captured this until I uploaded the pictures!

A trip to the Rosebud Theatre includes dinner before the play.  As soon as we walked into the dining room, it was obviously that we were the youngest people attending the theatre that night.  It seems that the Rosebud Theatre experience is something that most people undertake when they are well over 60.  Between dinner and the show, we wandered the main street, browsing the gift shops.  The sense of community was evident when I bought a stack of greeting cards - all made by local artists.  In fact, the girl who sold them to me had created most of the ones I bought.  The sense of community was further established when, at breakfast the next day, the actor who played the Kid was also the dishwasher at the B and B!

The hamlet of Rosebud

Theatre location - the Rosebud Opera House!

I left Rosebud reluctantly, with C making a promise that we would return again this year.  Our next stop was Lake Newell where we spent Saturday night with some friends at their cabin.  Lake Newell is a huge lake that provides irrigation water for the surrounding farms.  It is fed from the Bow River which flows through Calgary.  Although the day began with grey clouds and wind, by mid afternoon we were lakeside, roasting in the sun.  Time at a lake is all about the water, the company, the eating and the drinking.  And, indulge in all of those things, we did.  We went for a tour of the lake on a speedboat, with our host pointing out the ice shacks that are dragged onto the ice each winter to allow ice fishing for perch, pike and the occasional trout.  We also circled Pelican Island, where, as the name suggests, huge numbers of pelicans (and other birds) reside.  The highlight of the weekend was, for many of our group (9 adults, 3 kids), tubing.  Tubing has changed since I was a kid, when we simply clung onto a large inner tube and got whizzed around the lake.  Nowdays, tubes are more sophisticated and this weekend, we were introduced to 'Super Mable', a huge air mattress type contraption, complete with hand holds.  'Mable', as the tube is affectionately known, takes up to 3 people on trips around the lake.  After watching all day on Saturday, I finally plucked up the courage to have a go.  And, I failed miserably.  I hated every single minute on 'Mable.'  I was incredibly disappointed with myself but had a much better time when I was in the boat, playing out my role as chief photographer of the weekend.

Rosebud Country Inn - fabulous B and B

Typical Alberta - Oil rig

You may remember a famous prairie novel that I have written about before is 'Who Has Seen the Wind' by WO Mitchell?  Well, I can officially say that I have seen the wind!  On Saturday night, as we sat around the campfire, we watched a thunder and lightening show in the distance.  Before going to bed, we safely predicted that the storm was not headed our way.  However, just after C and I climbed into our tent, the wind began.  It got so fierce that one wall of the tent was covering the whole lower half of our bodies.  I am happy to admit that I was pretty scared and decided to sleep in the cabin for the night.  As C gathered our sleeping bags and took them into the cabin, the tent pegs ripped out of the ground and I was left as the sole weight holding the tent down.  It was quite an ordeal, my first experience of a prairie wind!

 

More haybales

Birds circling Pelican Island in Lake Newell

Our weekend prairie adventure is one that I won't forget in a hurry and I am already planning a trip back this year - back to Rosebud to see 'Queen Milli of Galt' (not a WO Mitchell play) and then to explore the history of the dinosaurs in the Albertan prairies.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with a praire joke ... Two Americans are driving around the prairies, totally lost.  They finally stop and ask someone, "Can you please tell us where we are?"  The response is "Saskatoon, Saskatchewan".  The Americans look at each other and say "They don't speak English here."

Sun set over Lake Newell

Sunset water skiing

Sun is nearly gone

That smile on my face didn't last long ... Anna + tubing = unhappiness

C is on his way off the tube