So far no red deer in Red Deer....

July 4th.   This is the day we celebrate being Canadian.  Over the past 20 days Dana and I have travelled the back roads of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and part of the province to the east of Manitoba and I can affirm to the world that I am so proud to live in Canada.  We have our struggles and our challenges.  Small communities are trying to reinvent themselves in the face of socio-economic changes that threaten their mere existence.  Some will survive but others will not.  It is hard to predict how the changes will effect the broader communities in these provinces.  But I digress....

Yorkton, Sk. seems to be a distant memory, although a bad one.  Last night we tucked ourselves into a very nice motel/hotel in Hanna, Alberta.  The CanAlta motel/hotel chain seems to be a new venture.  A definite upgrade from the accommodations we have been staying in.  Random thought:  We started our adventure ready to tent as much as we could.  Who knew that this time of year on the prairies afternoon thunderstorms were a daily occurrence.  If you want to camp on the prairies this time of year you better have a hard roof over your head.

On top of the nice accommodations in Hanna, Ab., I finally got my steak dinner that I have been craving.  Dana had the Chicken Kiev.  In the end, plates were empty.  Yum-yum.....

I don't have any landscape photos of our Alberta travel.  Oh sure, the landscape is interesting enough, if you like flat earth, a few trees and sky.

So, what have we been up to for the past few days?  Birding!  Yesterday will be a day we will remember for a very long time.  Now, not everyone will "get" this, but we were privileged to see an endangered bird species called Piping Plover.  Some estimate that World wide there are fewer than 10,000 of these birds left.  Yesterday we saw 2 of them.  Add them to our world life list.

Today we travelled gravel back roads in search of birds.  We were rewarded by a flock of Black Terns doing their acrobatic maneuvers over a small wetland.

Tonight we are in Red Deer.  We have been here since 1:30 and so far we have not seen any Deer and certainly no red Deer.  We did however see a couple of  dear friends we met in Arizona.  We had a terrific visit.

Tomorrow we leave Alberta and return to British Columbia.  What adventures lie ahead?  Stay tuned.

Here are a couple of photos of birds we saw and photographed over the past 2 days.  Enjoy....

Black Tern

Black Tern

Piping Plover