Saturday, January 31, 2026

Off the Beaten Path

Sue's prompt for the day was Off the Beaten Path. Since we already had to go up the highway, we eschewed the actual highway and opted for the back roads. It wasn't a long journey in either case, for rural roads are plentiful as soon as we are outside of this town,

Are soon as we swung onto Drummond, we spotted a snowmobile trail leading who knows where. Sue hopped out to get a picture while a stayed in the car on the road to the right  

As it turns out, she didn't use that one for her post, but I think it is a good one to share here.

While I was parked, a snowplow approached (you can see some snow blowing around in the distance, above). I was beside myself with anticipation for showing you all a rural Canadian snowplow in operation. I shot a sequence through the car window, but I liked the two closest photos the best.


How great! Sue got a photo, and so did I. We continued along that road to where the trail crosses Drummond. This is the same trail that we walk in town, the one with the bridge. It is part of the OVRT (Ottawa Valley Recreational Trail).

The 296km Ottawa Valley Recreational Trail is a multi-use corridor stretching from near Smiths Falls to just shy of Mattawa, passing through Lanark County, Renfrew County and Papineau-Cameron Township.

Below, we both are out of the car and photographing each other as well as other things. I think I neglected to mention that it was another bitterly cold day (the old zero, haha), especially on our naked photo hands.


the plow is approaching in the distance

Sue's photo looks south along the trail. Our town, Carleton Place, would be a little farther along. For her post, Sue picked a photo similar to this one, but she chose a landscape (horizontal) orientation while I preferred her portrait (vertical) orientation.


Meanwhile the plow had turned around. Since I already had plow photos from our first stop, I opted for a short video clip this time. (I can't tell how this will display until I hit Publish, so I am not sure exactly what you see, but the video should be there somewhere. lol)





15 comments:

  1. The clouds in all of these shots are pretty amazing too! I've done some fun shots of snowplows also. Never filmed them like that though!

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  2. Such beautiful winter landscape. There must be whiteout conditions there when it’s blowing snow.

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  3. That road looks like ours - still snow covered but plowed.

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  4. Great to see you braved the cold and captured not only pretty rural scenes of the roads, but the great skies too. Snow plow is good too, and I haven't tried putting any videos onto YouTube in years...might think about it again.

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  5. That's pretty good care for your rural roads. Our big suburban plows are named yearly by school kids, and some painted on the blade: like Taylor Drift, Sir PlowsALot, Cntrl-Salt-Delete. We can watch them on a city map as they do their work. It's fun watching the little minions on the streets with their names attached if we hover over the plow. We have 100 plows just in Olathe, KS, a KC suburb, with a third out at a time. Be careful out there! Glad your cameras aren't freezing up. Linda in Kansas

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  6. The clouds are magnificent.

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  7. I though the snowmobile was the road you were driving on at first. I actually went out for about an hour long walk yesterday but the hands sure got cold when trying to take pics.

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  8. I can never get enough sky! These shots are lovely.

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  9. It is gorgeous. Since I don't see snow plows, it was fun to see the video. That's as satisfying as a good vacuum line in carpet!

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  10. Sue got some great photos and the video is reminds me of my snow days.

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  11. Beautiful snow ❄️ and clouds ⛅️

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  12. Those snowplows are pretty much the only snowplows that operate in my neck of the woods. The only difference I can tell between them and their Canadian cousins is that one driver probably has the word "eh" in their vocabulary.

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  13. That plow goes fast! As cold as it is there, your snow is light and fluffy. Our snow is usually heavy and wet. (I know, snow is always wet) Beautiful photos and I love the sky in several of them!

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  14. So delightfully Canadian. Also, I hope that snowplow has a name.

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