What a beautiful weekend! Warm, sunny weather, with gentle winds. I think it got pretty close to +30 yesterday, and not far off that today. There were actually a lot of people on the beach both days, and lots of people with pretty ruddy complexions.

The Prairie Region of Photographic Arts held its annual Outing here at the Park, from Friday evening to noon today. It is a photo club to which local clubs of the Prairie Provinces, and their members, belong. There were over fifty here, from as far away as Calgary and Edmonton, straining accommodations to the limit. There were photographers all over the place, burning up film at an alarming rate. Though most are seniors, the age range would be from the thirties to the nineties.

Doreen found a striped coral root plant  over near Almi Campground and told the macro workshop (which was meeting at our place) about it. I think most of the attending photographers took a crack at it, yet it looks as fresh and healthy today as Friday. The grass around it is pretty well trampled, though. Photographing it entails lying prone in the roadside grass. When Doreen, and Rose Steadman, went over to photograph it this afternoon, they insisted I come along with them. Anyone driving by as they were laying on their stomachs taking pictures would be sure they had met with a horrible accident.

I led two workshops on Environmental Portraiture yesterday. We were working in the shelter of the trees in the picnic area, and was it hot! I lost most of my class halfway through the morning class, so cut the afternoon one short. Sometime in the afternoon, the wind swung around to the north, blowing a heavy pall of smoke  over the Park. I couldn't smell it, but it pretty well obscured the north shore of the lake. It did make for some fascinating light, though.

For supper, a bunch of us from the Parkland Club took our bag lunches and went out on the pontoon boat for an hour or so. Delightful and cool! And the birds and animals didn't disappoint us, either. A couple had long telephoto lenses,  and got some nice photos of grebes, loons, and beavers. That was so much fun that we took another bunch out again this morning, and again this afternoon. That is soooo restful!

We spotted a loon's nest in some reeds; there was a loon on it, but it appeared dead - its wings were spread out and its head hanging over the side of the nest, almost in the water. Then we saw the loon's spouse, swimming ahead of us and letting us get quite close, to lure us away from the nest. We motored by the nest again later, and again the loon on the nest was stretched out flat. As soon as we went by, its head came up. At another point, a grebe surfaced right in front of us and went flapping off in a big arc as if it was badly injured. We assumed it had a mate close by.

Last Monday, we got a thunderstorm and a little rain - likely less than a quarter inch - but Porcupine Plain got an inch and a half in just over an hour. We drove to town in the early evening, and couldn't believe there was actually water laying in the fields., something we haven't seen in a long, long time. I talked to Marg at Hudson Bay; they were having a violent thunderstorm at the time, and Marg thought there was a good inch of water in a glass that had been left outside. I gather there has been lots of rain at Hudson Bay.

On Wednesday, we got some more - about 4/10ths in our gauge. We broke down and bought a new one; the old one was impossible to read unless there was half an inch or so.

We were in Prince Albert on Friday - just dashed in and out again - and were surprised to see the river running quite high under the Muskoday Bridge. I remember hearing in a news broadcast that some water was to be drained from Diefenbaker Lake to make room for a sudden flush from Alberta. It's nice to see some indication that there is water left in the world. Pity they can't divert a bit of it our way.