Christmas In Alberta
We drove up to Alberta, Canada, to spend Christmas with our son and his family. We wanted to be there for our oldest grandchild’s birthday party, so we stayed through until January 6. We had such a blessed time! Alberta is so beautiful with all the amazing mountains!
We left our beautiful daughter-in-law and grand-daughters in Alberta and traveled to Grand Forks, British Columbia. We planned to meet up with the owner of the company that will be providing the framing timbers for our retirement house. Our son joined us for this visit.
The later portions of the drive from Calgary to Grand Forks were very snowy. One of the mountain passes that we traveled over was closed down less than 24 hours later due to avalanche danger. We drove in our small SUV, while Brent drove a rental car on this trip. After a long and sometimes slow trip, we finally arrived in Grand Forks, checked into a motel, and enjoyed a pleasant supper at a local establishment.
Logging Site and Sawmill Site Tour
The next day, we went to the home of Ed Carson, owner of Granby Post & Beam Homes. Ed showed us a portion of his house that was built with a similar structure system to what our house will have. We climbed into his pickup truck and went up a beautiful valley to the location of his mill. While the mill was not in operation at that time of the year, it was nice to see where logs would eventually get cut into timbers for our house.
We stopped by the logging landing area around which much of Ed’s more recent logging activity has taken place. In general, the operation focusses on cutting standing dead trees. The best of those trees are milled into house posts and beams and such. Some of the logs that don’t meet the high standards for house timbers may get sold to a lumber mill.
Ed also showed us some examples of types of pine planking that we could use for the interior ceiling of our house.
After a quick lunch, we returned to the United States, and Brent began his journey home to Calgary.
