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. ...

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 ...

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: ...

For our one year anniversary on Thursday, Erin gave me an Indian cookbook and some spices in jars. The book is called “An invitation to Indian cooking” by Madhur Jaffrey. According to the cover it is “perhaps the best Indian cookbook available in English.” Erin came up with some recipes that sounded good for us to try: Shrimp pullao Potato patties (aloo-ki-tikiya) Kheer and Naan (We didn’t bake naan just bought it) It took awhile to make everything, the potato pancakes took a while. Everything turned out quite good, the potato patties were quite salty. We think we can use way less salt next time! As part of our cooking we made sure to break in the cookbook by spilling milk on it. Below are some photos of the food and getting ready: ...

So I arrived back in Edmonton on May 22 to end a great trip. All my pictures are now up, still unorganized but I am working on that. I will rotate them and say where they are from. http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands/ And added a new gallery: http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands-2/ Some things we did from my last post: Went to Delft to see the town, delftware and a botanical gardens Visted some of Erin’s relatives in Alphen aan den Rijn Went to Arnhem to see a ballet and to Ooseterbeek to see memorial and graves for Operation Market Garden Went to Keukenhof – very large tulip/flower garden/tourist park Went to The Hague again to see some of the buildings and museums and tours Went to Amsterdam again to walk around, get candy and go to the NEMO Science Centre

We made it to Katwijk aan Zee by taking a train to Leiden and then a bus to the coast. We got our rooms in a nice hotel with an ocean view. We went for a walk along the sea. It has been quite windy here and cooler weather than we had before. The next day we went to The Hague by bus. We were now with Erin’s uncle and his girlfriend. We went to Scheveningen which is a beach/touristy area. We then slowly tried to find our way to Erin’s grandparents old house. After many wrong trains, walking, etc we found it and made our way back much easier. ...

We managed to make it to Utrecht and found our hostel. Streets are always fun to find and when you have a big backpack on it gets even more fun. In Maastricht we did do the canal cruise which we weren’t overly impressed with but did another cave/tunnel tour in a different spot and it was excellent! The guide got to do the tour in English because there was only a couple from Quebec, us and a guy from Malaysia who lived in Australia. The guide did a great job and had a lot to say. ...

Pictures are available here: http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands/ They are unsorted and will be changing as I update them Also see some of them below click link above for all ...

On Sunday we left Amsterdam and took a train ride to Maastricht. It is about a 2.5 hour train ride to the South East of Holland. It is in between Belgium and Germany. It is a very nice city and is very slow paced compared to the fast pace of Amsterdam. During the train ride we were in the wrong half of the train and it was splitting so at one stop we had to quickly run to the right part of the train and just made it in time. ...

On our second last day in Amsterdam we went on an hour long canal cruise that was a good way to see different parts of the city and get a little background on some stuff. There was a recording in Dutch, English and German. In the afternoon we went to the Anne Frank House. It was very well put together and had lots of info and original diary’s but was sad too. ...