So this post is long overdue, but better late than never. As you may or may not know, Alex and I traveled from Montreal to Edmonton in his Skyline GTR over the course of 5 days in August of 2009. I had to mention the car we drove in just for Alex - it's his baby!
Here are some images from the trip that we picked as our favorites and have great memories attached to them. Even after coming back to Edmonton after our fabulous journey, we continued on with our friends to Calgary, Drumheller, Banff, Jasper, Crows Nest Pass, and lots of places in between.
This is just a sneak peak at where we have visited and we hope to keep exploring Canada and sharing our images with all of you.
Please enjoy!
This first image is where it all started. Our friend Boris took this photo. Boris and Alex flew to Toronto to visit and stay with a good friend Amory before Boris took off for the Ukraine to do some dancing there, and then continued on to Russia - his homeland! Once Boris left Toronto, Alex headed to Montreal where he used to work as a photographer for
Leda and St. Jacques, sadly abandoning his Skyline for an emergency trip back to Etown. Hence, the reason for the trip. RETRIEVE THE SKYLINE! I met Alex a week after his arrival to Montreal to enjoy the ride back.
One of the funniest and best memories we have from our time spent in Toronto was at this cute little doughnut shop. The shop may have been little, but as you see, the doughnuts...well...they're a story of their own. Three days later, we still had some doughnut left! Good when you're on a budget - bad if you're on a diet.
This was the first night of driving away from Toronto. Our first full day on the road. This shot was taken just before hitting up our five star camp site at one of the KOA campgrounds. Mini golf, pool, pool table! Too much for what we needed, but it was the closest one we could find before the sun went completely down. Fortunately for us, we were on the road long enough to catch this beautiful light hitting the powerlines.
After leaving KOA and a half day of driving, we reached this beautiful creek/river/lake called Serpent River. It's located between Sudbury and Thunder Bay. This was the perfect opportunity for Alex to get some fishing time in, and me to explore my photography in a way I haven't really done before. I was taught how to use graduated filters to make blue blue skies and slow shutter speeds to make water look all wooshy and stuff.
Fish weren't biting!
This next one is of a fall Alex and I came across passing Little Pic River. We saw a bunch of cars pulled over to the side of the road and were curious as to what could have been so spectacular that SO many people were stopping. Then we drove around the bend in the road and saw this. For two hours we went our seperate ways and just explored! I went on the trails and Alex went jumping over rocks near the falls. It was cold, and wet, but we didn't care!
This one is at Wolf River where we spent our second night camping. Of course, Alex tried to catch some more fish, but no luck yet again.
This is Lobo. He's like our little traveling gnome, but cuter. Alex was trying to fish, and it was boring for me, so Lobo and I did a photoshoot. It was not boring.
So this is a funny story. One of the days on the road, I thought and mentioned to Alex that our friend Rob, who also graduated from Photo Tech at NAIT, was riding his bicycle across Canada from Edmonton to Halifax this summer. I wondered where he would be along his trip and if he was possibly traveling the same highway as us. Two hours later, guess who we found. What are the chances! And we found him just as we suspected - shirtless with no helmet! Atta boy Rob!
After listening to his stories about his journey, and Alex and I going a little "click happy" we parted ways and drove off as he biked in the opposite direction.
One of my most favorite shots taken the whole trip is this one - taken on the trunk of Alex's car just outside of Kenora. Mayflies are Alex's favorite insect. They live for one year as a larva underwater until they hatch to live as adults for one day. Once the water and air temperatures are right, the mayflies take to dry land, transform into winged adults, mate, and die within a one day span. You may have seen one of their fragile shells sitting on a tree at some point. I never knew an insect could mean so much to someone, but if you ask Alex he'll tell you how symbolic they are, showing how beautiful, fragile and graceful life can be, no matter how long or short lived, like little sale boats floating above the water.
We drove straight through the third night all the way from Wolf River through Thunder Bay, Kenora, Winnipeg, and Regina finally arriving at Alex's cottage in Watrous Saskatchewan. The next few shots were taken once we hit the prairies and even though we were completely exhausted from not sleeping a night, we still stopped to explore.
This one was a total fluke and turned out to be one of the best. Alex said I had better take a shot of the prairies and how beautiful the canola fiels looked, so I just grabbed the camera, swung it over my shoulder and took a shot without even looking through the viewfinder. Hmm - maybe i'll start a new trend with wedding photography?
This last image wasn't actually a part of the trip from Montreal to Edmonton, but it was taken during the summer at Drumheller with our friend Amory. Can you see Alex? He was chest high in the water trying for dear life to catch a fish, and do you think he caught one...
Check back soon to get the answer to that because we have lots more photos to share, and lots more memories.
