This is post 2 of 3 from the August long weekend.

On the Saturday we went to the Calgary Zoo. It was a nice day, hot but not too hot.

Lucky for us maybe but not for Jaclyn she had to work that day. We got to hear her do a talk about the elephants, touch some elephant poo that was covered and hold part of a tusk. Tusks weigh a lot!

Jaclyn also showed Erin and I around the butterflies and the caterpillar tree.

We then got to follow Jaclyn as she set up for a bat presentation. She gave a little talk and would answer people’s questions while showing Sundar. She was a nice big fruit bat.

It was a nice day at the zoo we got to see some neat things. A tiger was running, a tiger sleeping with his feet up in the air and looking very happy. The male lion was roaring and moved around a little bit. Grizzly and black bears were moving around and taking a bath.

See part 1 photos below. Click on one of the photos to see them all Continue reading Calgary Zoo →

This is post 1 of 3 from the August long weekend.

Friday after working half the day and lunch, Erin and I drove down to Strathmore. We got to see the same storm twice. Once when we were driving through Airdie. The rain was very big and close to hailing. It was very dark. Just as we got to Strathmore it started to storm again. We hid in the shelter of the grandstand while it rained. The temperature dropped a lot. It cleared up pretty quickly and we dried our seats off and had good weather for the rest of it. It was a little cool in the grandstand.

The rodeo went well. The announcers talk non stop and there was lots of events I hadn’t seen before. Like teams try to catch a wild horse, put a saddle on it and ride it. Kids had to do something with a pony. The animals didn’t always want to go back out of the ring providing laughs for everyone.

The chuckwagons were very exciting as always. There were some very close races and just general chaos as they go around the barrels.

See below for photos.
For most of the photos, I fixed them up a bit and there is a cropped and non cropped version of them.
Continue reading Strathmore Heritage Days →

So after many years I finally went camping in a tent again. On Friday we went to Elk Island. The weather was pretty good but as expected the mosquitoes were vicious. Friday night was mostly spent building a fire and making sure that it stayed lit. The wood was a little damp so it took a long time to get going. When it finally got going it was time for bed and waiting for it to go out.

The next day we went on a nice hike. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting though. It was basically paved all the way. It was still fun and pretty and a good way to break in my hiking boots some. There were a ton of dragonflies. Swarms of them everywhere, I guess they were getting their fill of mosquitoes. They did not seem as bad on the hike. For lunch we had lunch in a nice picnic area. It was about 1km from the parking lot and very nice. We were the only ones there.

After hiking we came back to Edmonton, cleaned up, made a quinoa salad and were off to a small work bbq. It was quite good, lots of good food, wine and company.

See pictures of the trip below
Continue reading Camping! →

This past weekend I went with Erin’s family to there cabin in Cadomin.
On the Friday, Erin and I went on a hike that was about 10 km or so long. It was called Prospect Creek Trail. It was quite nice but a little more work then I thought. Sometimes we had to go through brush or up some big ledges to continue on the trail.

Saturday we celebrated Erin’s birthday by going geocaching with her family. We went to 3 different sites and found 2 of them. The one at Mountain Park was probably mined away. We also went to one at the Cardinal divide that Erin and her dad found before and they let us find it. The third and final one was at Grave Flats lookout which needed a 4wd vehicle to go up the road and then a small hike and some searching in trees to find the geocache. There were spectacular views at the top. It is quite high.

To make things interesting on the way back as a passenger in the front, a rock or something hit the rav4 as a semi was coming towards us. It made a big crack in the windshield and sprayed some glass on me. Thankfully everything was ok and we were able to continue on with me now in the backseat.

The weather was pretty good. Not too hot and not too cold. Though on our hike in Prospect Creek it was snowing a little bit when the sun was out. It was the nicest I had seen it in Cadomin. On Saturday we were able to sit out by the fire and it wasn’t too windy!

I have been using lightroom to edit my pictures some and get some more of the details out of the pictures.

Click the link to see the photos of the trip: Continue reading July Long Weekend →