My wife and I went to Sylvan Lake, Alberta, on Monday, not that you’d know it from the photos I brought back. That is because I didn’t manage to bring any photos back. We got to Sylvan around lunchtime on Monday and the place was crawling. I grew up a couple of towns over and I never saw anything like that in my youth. Granted, that was four decades back.
We couldn’t find parking within about a kilometer and a half of the lake at all. We couldn’t even find a place to park that would let me get a quick picture of the uber crowded body of water. If I couldn’t paddle board on the lake I could at least get a picture, right? Nope.
We thought of parking downtown and exploring a few of the stores, but the truth is that Sylvan Lake is pretty redneck. There wasn’t much of anything we wanted to look at, especially in 33C heat.
We did stop for lunch at the Original Blondies Restaurant next to Day’s Inn at Sylvan Lake. It was double plus ungood. We ordered the roast beef special and the broccoli in the day veg was putrifying. It was just awful with a fetid taste that lingers in the mouth. Kind of set the tone for the rest of the trip. I do not recommend eating there, ever.
Strathmore, AB, 2024-08-19
Strathmore, AB, 2024-08-19
I had hoped to salvage the day with a trip to Chestermere Lake. If we couldn’t paddle board on Sylvan Lake I could at least go to my old standby west of town. Nope. We stopped there on the way home and the wind was such that people in dinghys were getting blown into the reeds and were trapped there. They couldn’t paddle out again and others with ropes were pulling them out.
Said wind continued into the evening, and that is how I wound up with cloud pictures instead of any lake pictures. There was certainly no time to be had on the water on Monday. It sucked. There was a bright spot in the day… The skies have been empty of clouds and just, well, smoky and boring for a lot of the summer. It is nice to see them come alive because there hasn’t been a lot of it. I didn’t mind grabbing a few images of that.
Photographers — and paddle boarders — have to take what we are given. If we are given anything.
I carried a Canon EOS 7D around all day and got zilch with it. These images are from a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra mobile phone. Bleh.
