Edmonton

It's Kerri's birthday today and, on her request, we went on a sticky beak mission to Edmonton.
The "Big Attraction" (and I use the term fairly loosely) is the West Edmonton Mall. There isn't that much else other than work and loads of service industries for the Petro-chem industry. I actually saw the assembly yard where some of the pipe rack modules for the project I'm working on now are being built.
This photo above is taken from the University looking across the river at Parliament house & the Downtown area.

The West Edmonton Mall

The West Edmonton Mall isn't your typical mall. Aside from being huge, it has a whole bunch of attractions/amusements to keep, particularly kids occupied. The following blog entries will fill in the dots.
Kerri was very excited to go & have a look, but by the time we had spent 2 half days in the place we had both decided it was all to much. It's too hard to shop because there are too many shops to be able to make any decisions.
You would think it was every girl's dream, but not for my one. It was cool to have seen it, but the chances of a return visit are very slim. The boring as bat shit, 3 hour drive each way from Calgary is enough to put you off the whole idea period.

The West Edmonton Mall has a real water theme to it. I guess it all helps in a city in the middle of the Alberta Prairie.
Notice the Submarine in the bottom right of shot.

Here we have a Grey Whale made out of solid bronze. You can actually sit in its mouth.

What would a mall be without a Mini Golf Course?
Notice the Victorian style facades on the shop fronts.

There is a semi-impressive array of water slides.

Right next to the water slides is a wave pool & it's all under cover.
The only downside was the heavy aroma of chlorine trapped inside the dome.

No indoor place in Canada is complete without an Ice Rink.
It was funny watching tiny kids with all the right intentions, trying to learn how to skate. The little girls in their pretty little dresses trying to ice dance & the little boys in hockey helmets, pads & gloves. They all kept falling over, but it didn't phase them for a second.

A big section of the mall is an amusement park. It had a bunch of usual rides of sideshow alley at the royal show back in Oz, but mainly geared for the younger population. There were a couple of exceptions including this Roller Coaster. It was pretty full on. It was all made a bit more exciting being inside a building. Consequently everything is very close & gives the sensation of speed a whole new edge.

The Mall even has a seal show! (Look at the centre of shot for the seal's head & neck sticking out of the back of the elevated ship.

We had a bit of a look around Edmonton but didn't find much of interest other than Parliament House. We won't be rushing back to Edmonton.

Snow in Calgary

Last night the temperature plummeted from the mid teens during the afternoon to about 3 degrees by the early evening. A storm front came through about 10pm and dumped about 2-3 inches of snow on the city. Sunrise from the office this morning had a distinctive white tinge to it.

Here's how you work out how much snow has fallen over night. Check the layer of snow on the seat. It looks like someone stuck a piece of polystyrene to the top of it.
By this afternoon, all that snow around the place was gone and there were only small patches left in shady areas. I'm sure we'll see plenty more in the coming months.

News Update

Main story. Immigration finally sent through the last of the paperwork allowing Kerri to start work at the Children's hospital. It's taken close to 5 months for the local authorities finish stuffing around. Needless to say, Kerri's pretty happy and relieved, as am I. Wouldn't it be great if we could back charge them for lost income due the their incompetence? It can only happen in the public sector.

Local News. As of Saturday, I'm now officially licensed to drive like a maniac like the rest of the Albertans. I passed my Alberta test which, from my observations, allows you to drive 30-40kms above the speed limit, as close to the car in front, dodging around traffic as radically as possible.

Sports news. The Rugby World Cup is finally over. (Not that I really care). After the English and the French upset the Wallabies and All Blacks, the Semi finals ended up slightly off the expected. The Spring Boks took care of Argentina as expected, but the upset was the English over the French. Everyone saw that one coming about as much as the previous week. Fortunately, sanity prevailed this week with the Boks cleaning out the English in the final. In the repechage final, the Argies did the French in for the second time in the tournament. Order is now restored to some extent. Bring on the new round of rule changes next year!

The Weather. After a couple of weeks of great autumn weather, sunny in the high teens, things have taken a turn for the cold. It was -5 when we woke up this morning. The forecast is for 2 or 3 more nice days before the temps drop a notch. They're forecasting highs of only +5 and lows of -4. Winter is on its way for good (or bad??) this time. No snow for now (other than that short burst for a couple of hours in September), but it won't be long.

Spray Lakes

This morning, we woke up to -5 C. It was our plan to head out to Kananaskis to do one of the many day hikes in the area. It seemed like a good idea with a sunny day and +10C forecast. It all looked good until we started into the mountains behind Canmore. It was overcast, cold and looked like it wasn't going to get much better. We pushed on along beside Spray Lakes (below). It's a great little scenic drive along a well graded gravel road. (The new car was great, by the way).

You will have seen many shots in previous blog site entries of lakes with mirror reflections of mountains. This one fits the description, but with a difference. It didn't come out too bad.

Thanks to the high altitude of the Spray lakes trail, the cold is so much more severe and it showed its face today. The overcast weather turned to snow and the smaller lakes along the trail had started to freeze over. This one is called Mud Lake, and has a nice thin crust of ice across most of the surface and a light dusting of snow from the last day or so.
You may be able to see the white streaks of snow in the photo. It's somewhat different to last weekend's fantastic weather.

Here's a different lake that was just starting to freeze over. Looks cold doesn't it?!

All along the road to the Kananaskis Lakes, the signs of winter were obvious. Freeze burnt grasses dusted in snow, white mountain peaks and waterways beginning to choke with ice build up.

Spillway Lake

In the Rockies, even the man-made waterways are capable of a nice photo. This one is the river that runs away from the foot of the Lower Kananaskis lake dam. Unfortunately the overcast conditions prevented the photo showing up the fantastic greens in the river.

We did have a look at Upper Kananaskis Lake but the icey winds and flurries drove us back into the car rapidly.

We make a couple of failed detours into the higher altitudes on the way back where the fresh snow was coating the vegetation. Winter had definitely arrived.

The gloomy skies coupled with the shortened daylight drove us out of the mountains pretty early. Although not a particularly good day for photography, it was an interesting outing to see winter regaining its grip on the mountains. No doubt Calgary's turn will come soon enough.

Dinosaur Provincial Park

Yesterday Kerri and I decided that it was too nice a day to hang around Calgary. Now that we have wheels, we have so much freedom and we were able to just jump in the car and go.
The destination of choice this time was Dinosaur Provincial Park about 2-1/2 hours drive East of Calgary. You basically head out across the prairies along Hwy 1 for a couple of hours then turn left at Brooks. Suddenly (like Drumhellar) the featureless prairie gives way to the canyon pictured. This one is way bigger than Drumhellar, but most of it is closed to the public so that people don't go stealing fossils.
Dinosaur Provincial Park is one of the richest fossil beds in the world. The evidence is in the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumhellar. It's also known as the Badlands.

We headed straight to the Dinosaur Provincial Park visitor centre expecting to grab some maps for all the walking trails in the park. We turned into the car park and were pleasantly surprised to find a family of mule deer. I'm fairly sure they're the smallest type of deer in this part of the world. They weren't at all worried about our presence.

Another tick for the wildlife spotting list.

Drumhellar and Dinosaur Provincial Park are not as spectacular as the Rockies, but are very interesting all the same. The rocks are very soft and susceptible to erosion. Between the rain, the winter snow and the wind, the effect on the landscape is quite dramatic. This photo is somewhat typical for a particular layer of sediment in the Badlands and is a bit like the moon.

This is a fairly typical formation in the Badlands. You can see how the layers of sediment have been laid down over millions of years, only to be washed away in a relatively short time. You can see a couple of red layers. Apparently those are as a result of volcano activity at one point.

After the dreadful disappointment of "Piss Weak World" at Drumhellar, we found some proper Hoodoos in the Badlands. Not only were they not trampled by tourists, but they were bigger and dotted around the park.

The Badlands aren't just about the rock formations and dinosaur bones. The Red Deer River runs right through the middle and is actually responsible for cutting the canyon. As for everywhere around the world, water means life and this river is no exception. These trees grow very slowly and with the cold and windy winter on the prairies, they end up all twisted and creepy looking.

This cottonwood was the most normal looking one in the park. The rest of them weren't as straight as this one. Most of the trees around Calgary are yellow like this one, or have already dropped their leaves.
It was a belter of a day and the sky was as blue as I've seen in the 4 months we've been here. It makes for a really nice contrast against the yellow leaves, don't you think?

This tree is more typical of the weather beaten cottonwood trees in the valley. The winds in winter rip through the valley and with no protection from mountains or forests, the cottonwoods end up all mangled and broken. They survive but end up looking like the one pictured. This one is alive, but has lost all its leaves in preparation for winter.

Pictured above is the Red Deer river that runs through the Badlands. The photo tells this story. It was a surprisingly pretty place in an otherwise harsh landscape.

After the visit to the Badlands, we took a detour to the south of the Trans-Canada. The route took us past a huge reservoir/lake near brooks that I assume has something to do with irrigation. After that we headed West across seemingly never ending wheat fields. We crossed and followed the Bow river briefly, then more wheat fields.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a pair of lakes appeared in the middle of the featureless prairie. Lake McGregor (above) and Little Bow Lake (below) are apparently quite popular with the water skiing fraternity around here.

New Wheels

After much contemplation and money saving, I was finally ready to buy a car over here.
Originally I had more or less decided to hire cars occasionally when we wanted to skip town for the weekend. Unfortunately it restricted us too much and I decided that being able to just jump in the car and get away from the city was too important.
Last weekend we spent half a day looking around the car yards. Turns out the first car yard we looked in had the one. It's a 1999 Subaru Outback with all the options including heated leather seats (they'll come in handy after snowboarding). 92,000 kms (very low) and in great nick. $10,600 CAD (incl GST). A bargain considering what else is out there including private sales. Getting one that old with such low k's just doesn't happen. And it's clean as!
The AWD will be a great in the ice and snow, and the wagon will be great for carrying snowboards. It's a really nice car to drive as well.
The only kicker is the insurance. The insurance companies think that anyone outside Alberta can't drive & treat you as a new driver. They should give me a discount! $2100 p.a. ! I also had a quote for $3750.

Orphans Thanks Giving and Rugby

Today our good friend James (mad Pom in shot) had us orphans (including Shane, Kirsty, Dale, Kerri and me) around for the afternoon for a bit of a thanks giving dinner and rugby watching afternoon. James's friend Shannon (a local) appeared just after the Australia v England game.
Friday, we had all decided that paying $20 cover charge to go to a pub at 7am to watch the rugby live was a bit cheeky so we decided that watching at somebody's house on Sunday was in order. James suggested his place and he would cook up a turkey dinner. DONE! All we had to do was avoid finding out the results of the Aussie and Kiwi rugby games so we could watch them a day and a half later. Shouldn't have been too hard being that most North Americans haven't even heard of rugby. Unfortunately both Kerri and I had spoken to folks back home and before we had a chance to say "Don't tell me the result", it was too late. They know who they are and thanks very much!
Anyway, Kerri and I managed to keep it too ourselves, but it took the fun out of it a bit. James was the only Pom there and was the only one happy about the result. We chased him out of his own house and up the street. He didn't seem to worried. Look at the smile on his head.
Despite the rugby results, we had a time and many thanks to James for his hospitality and for cooking up a storm. Great job mate!
You're a wasted talent in the piping design game.

New Snowboard

I picked up my new Snowboard today!

It was the final and biggest piece of the snowboarding kit to be added to my collection. I wondered into the local snow shop last weekend, apparently on the right day. I managed to pick up the board & bindings for less than half the price I've seen them for up to now.

For those who know their snowboard gear, the bindings are the "Flow" brand. (Flow Bindings.) The basic difference from the conventional design is that the boot lock in happens from the back of the boot rather than the top. Apparently saves time at the top of the hill. TBA.

I'm pretty sure I have everything now. If I've missed anything, it won't be anything too significant. The photo is annotated to show all the different components. Some of them, like the boots, pants & wrist guards, I already had from back home, but most of the big ticket stuff I have accumulated over the last few months.

I'm good to go!

So, where's the ski lifts?
The lift discount cards and passes go on sale in the next couple of weeks and the lifts open November 8.