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Flickr is kind of a social network for photographers. People post their photos, and comment on photos belonging to other people. It doesn't take long to make contact with people with similar interests. For example, most of my original contacts owned Golden Retrievers.
After awhile, the personalities of the dogs and their owners emerge and before you know it, you're fast friends with a bunch of people that you've never even met. You celebrate their joys and you grieve their losses.
Some of those friendships have spilled over to Facebook, and I can honestly say that some of my closest friends are people that I don't know other than through the wonders of the internet.
One of my Flickr friends, known to me only as Red Golden, lives near San Francisco with her husband and Golden Retriever, Rico. Red Golden doesn't just post photos, there is always a funny caption and a cute story to go with them. From the photos, stories, and the comments that she's made on my photos, I filled in the gaps of her life. It didn't seem like she had children, she loves her dog and she is well educated and well travelled. (I was right on all counts.)
A random comment on one of her photos indicated that she was visiting her Mom in the Canadian rockies. I contacted her through Flickrmail and discovered that her Mom actually lives in Radium Hot Springs. Well, that's practically in my back yard, so we arranged to meet there. Turns out that her Mom owns a motel in Radium, and Taz and I were invited to stay there even though her Mom has recently retired and closed the motel.
Road trip!!!
We stopped along the way at the off-leash park in Canmore, because it's just too pretty to drive past.
No park fee because Radium is just outside of the park, so we were just passing through.
Thoroughly enjoyed the drive
And the scenery
We pulled into Radium, and the first thing I saw was this beautiful bighorn sheep just standing on the side of the road. I couldn't believe my luck! Of course it didn't take long to figure out that this is a VERY common occurrence.
In the 24 hours that I was in town, I saw probably 30 of these guys!
Anyway, I pulled in to the parking lot of the Columbia Motel, and Yuchun came flying out the door to greet me like a long lost relative!
The Columbia Motel is very basic, but spotlessly clean. I'm sure you've all been in identical motels - maybe in the 60's.
Yuchun is a hoot! She's super friendly, has lots of great stories, and is just plain nice!
We had a nice dinner and Taz was even allowed to come with us because the restaurant had an outdoor seating area. After dinner we took a long walk and met this lopsided guy. I guess he must've lost a battle.
We talked for hours when I got there, we talked all through dinner, we talked all along our 3 hour walk, slept for a few hours, then talked all morning until it was time for me to leave!!
We did the long drive home on Friday morning. It was a tiring couple of days, but totally worth it, we had so much fun!
I've now met 2 of my Flickr friends. Yuchun from California, and Daniel Lopez from Mexico. What's weird is that one of my Flickr/Facebook friends lives in Calgary and we've never met. We have to fix that!
Sorry if the spacing and the picture sizing is off, I'm still learning how to blog
on the iPad.
