A little trip back in time

One of my daughters favorite things is to go to a museum park here in town called Heritage Park. This is a pioneer village setup in the heart of our city with houses from the city and countryside from around the turn of the century. I visited once as a child and remember vividly enjoying the time spent there with Mom and Dad. Since then we have been back with our kids a time or two. The most recent visit was this past fall when Kelsey and I went and spent a very pleasant day wandering through the grounds. The pictures below are from this visit.

First we walked by the horse paddocks.

This is a sod shanty similar to the one some of our ancestors may have started their life on the Canadian prairies in.

All of the horses on the park work for their living we enjoyed seeing this team relaxing in their pasture.

There may or may not be ghosts who live here, this would be one of the spots I would hang out if I was one of them.

I grew up on the prairies, I spent hours exploring old grain elevators and seeing them dot the prairie landscape. These two pictures are one of the exterior of the elevator on the park and one taken from the interior looking down the ramp.

We lived the last few years of my life at home adjacent to a prairie ghost town that had two elevators still there when we moved there. One was partially torn down and the other was operational. The operational one was eventually sold and moved in tact to another location, the partially torn down one was eventually dynamited as a person had died when they started tearing it down and no one else wanted to take on the task.

There is a paddle wheel boat that takes visitors for a brief sail on the Glenmore Reservoir. This was the flag of the time, however I also took it thinking of my Grandma... English to the core and still considers England home decades after coming here following World War II as a war bride with my mother in tow.

We proceeded to go on the wee cruise around the lake. The following was a picture Kelsey took with my phone of a very pretty tree.

Following the boat ride we continued to wander through the park, we stopped briefly for lunch and then completed a very enjoyable afternoon.

I liked watching the staff as they went about their day in the period dress and using period equipment where applicable if possible. Because it was cool most of the fireplaces and wood stoves were burning and the smell of wood smoke was everywhere.

We didn't ride in any of the horse drawn contrivances, however we enjoyed watching them for sure. The picture below was of Mac and Cheese taking a coffee break in the stable next door to the black smith shop pictured below.

There are several interesting restored homes on the park and we enjoyed exploring those.

The one pictured to the side was one of my favorites the floor plan for the largest and most ostentatious one is pictured below. It is supposedly haunted and ghost stories abound... however they weren't in a chatty mood when we were there and so we don't have any such stories to relate.

 

Sometime I would love to write a story purely fictional with these houses and such as the back drop... who knows maybe someday should time permit. I think it would be a lot of fun, however it would also take time and currently that is a commodity I don't have a whole lot of.

This has become a rather long post... oh well it was a really fun afternoon.

The grounds close for the season and then open briefly a limited number of exhibits around Christmas. I have never been down in the wintertime, however this year might be the year to go.

The forgoing is from inside a small stone house... another of my favorites... I have a weakness for stone houses. I found the center piece of the front parlor very interesting.

Kelsey took a picture of the train, I took a picture of Mac and Cheese back at work. Then we called it a day and headed home. We were walking passed some trees when a rustling drew our attention. There looking back at us was every hunters dream...