Meandering Around Millet
It’s been a while since I’ve done a solo car-caching trip down some rural Alberta roads. My meander around Millet, Alberta today was planned weeks ago. High temperatures prompted me to postpone a few weeks ago; this Canadian boy really doesn’t do well in the heat. More recently forest fire smoke and poor air quality caused more delays.
Millet, Alberta#
Today the weather was warm, but not too hot, the air smoke-free and the skies blue. It was time to go meandering.
After making my way south along busy Highway 2, the main corridor between Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary, I exited onto a secondary highway and immediately things got more calm, more simplified. This is just the way I like it.
After visiting another cache in town I started finding a series hidden along the road that leads east out of town. The caches were hidden by a caching buddy of mine so I knew all the caches were there and in good order because he’d visited them recently to replenish log sheets in almost all of them.
These caches were hidden along the side of the road and I was soon reminded how different small town life is from the city. When I stopped to find a geocache, I’d park my car as far off of the road as I was able and put on my four-way flashers. Twice while looking for caches, a local slowed down to make sure I was okay. An “OK” hand signal was all it took to let them know I didn’t need help. There’s an ingrained ethic about helping others in need that demonstrated so much more readily in rural areas. I’ve experienced exactly the same kind of thing along rural roads in Saskatchewan.
In the end, I found all the caches in the series despite a few of them being tough finds. That gave me a satisfied feeling as I turned the car around, pointed it north toward Edmonton and proceeded to drive home.
Gallery#
Some of these images have been post-processed using Topaz Studio 2 to give them a “painterly” look.
