Saturday, July 03, 2004
here we go again!
Right - here goes again! I spent over an hour last night updating this blog with our activities over the last couple of days, and when I went to post it, it all crashed horribly, losing everything - so here goes again!
We've finally got the house into a shape that we can live with, but we're waiting for sofas to arrive from Ikea. We went to the store, but they had none in stock, so we reserved two (one for upstairs and one for downstairs) and we're waiting for them to call to say that they've come in to the warehouse. In the meantime, we have two new Poang armchairs and footstools (from Ikea - birch frames and rust coloured cushions) downstairs, and the computer chair upstairs. The plan is to have a large sofa (hope they fit in the front door!!) and a Poang armchair in the downstairs, and the same in the upstairs, but Ikea tell us that it could be another two weeks before the sofas are available. I suppose that isn't too bad...
One aspect of the house that makes it feel more like home is the green indoor plants that we got from Sunnyside Greenhouses (great garden centre not far from here). They did lovely plants in glazed pots for CAD$19.99. While the plants aren't quite as large as those in Rhanbuoy, they really help to make this house something like what we're used to...
Here are a few of them...
We also decided that the front door part of the house was looking a little bare, so we went back to the garden centre and bought a couple of glazed pots, some soil and a few summer bedding type of plants. Well, I say summer bedding, but to be honest there wasn't a great deal to choose from. They had their summer bedding plants in a 50% off sale, but I'm not sure whether they had been well picked over before we got there, or whether the choice is limited because of the crazy climate in this part of the world. They had loads of very insipid pink, and white petunias, and loads of nicotiana. I know I've had nicotiana in pots at home before, but they got kind of tall, and I really wanted something that wouldn't go quite as mad. So.... what we ended up with was two large blue glazed pots, with one red flowering geranium in each, surrounded by small white flowering things (Ageratum spp), with blue lobelias stuffed in between (very patriotic!!). They look quite well,
and I think I'll probably go back to the garden centre during the week to pick up a few more bits and pieces to put in pots on the deck at the back of the house. The pots at the front are fine, but we don't see them very often, as we tend to leave the house in the car out of the garage.
Speaking of which, here are a couple of pictures of our new car...
We're really pleased with it, and although it seems to be the smallest car in our street, we think it will be fine. Most of the cars in our street seem to be of the four wheel drive variety, but I don't think we need four wheel drive to commute from our house to work to the shops and back. It'll be kind of strange getting used to having only one car again, but if my work permit comes through, we'll be able to think about getting another set of wheels. Between now and then, I'm going to investigate the bus and train links - they look good on paper, but it remains to be seen whether they work as well in practice.
Having said that the Civic will suit our needs, we got ourselves on to a couple of roads yesterday that the poor wee car just wasn't suited to at all. We decided to head east, towards dinosaur country, rather than following the rest of the population of Calgary, who seemed to be heading west (radio reports suggested that traffic was bumper to bumper on Highway 1 towards Banff). East of Calgary gets billed as being completely flat farmland, and while it is certainly flatter than the Rocky Mountains, its not quite as flat as a pancake.
We set out on the road east (in our new car's proper road test), and found roads that looked as follows:
i.e dead straight...
until we lost our way a little, and ended up on an unpaved road. According to the map, there are loads of these kinds of roads in Alberta - basically, they seem to be rural roads that are made of compacted mud, topped of with a layer of gravel. While they're probably fine if you're driving a four wheel drive vehicle, or if you don't care about your car, they're a little hard to cope with if you've just bought your car two days before. We ended up having to travel about 12 miles on gravel, and it took ages because I refused to drive at speeds of more than 20 miles an hour (not only is the car hard to control at greater speeds on gravel, but it gets a little wearing when you wince every time another stone hits the underside/paintwork of the car!!). Thankfully, we didn't meet any other vehicle in the 12 miles so we weren't at risk of having a big crack in the windscreen. Speaking of which, we've been told to expect to replace a windscreen AT LEAST once a year ... apparently, they don't bother putting salt on the roads here in the winter as it doesn't work at the temperatures they experience. Instead, they spread gravel to help tyres grip the roads, and needless to say, the gravel has a habit of cracking windscreens...
Anyway, we trundled on, and made our way to Drumheller. We stopped at a viewpoint at a place called Horseshoe Canyon...
and, as you can see, the weather wasn't that great. In fact, it was rather grim, with loads of thunderstorms, thunder, lightening, rain, wind etc. We feel a little cheated by this, as everyone has assured us that Alberta is extremely dry (comments such as " My umbrella is so rarely used that its gone rusty..", "I don't even own a raincoat" have been rife), but what can you do....
Anyway, we eventually made it to Drumheller. I think the town used to make its money from coalmining, but since that has gone into decline, the income seems to come from tourists who come to look at dinosaurs, fossils, and the otherwise strange landscapes around the town. Drumheller is home to a fantastic dinosaur museum, Royal Tyrrell Museum, which has loads of dinosaur skeletons etc etc...
Here are a few of the exhibits at the museum:
The town of Drumheller itself has got in on the act - here is one of the town's many contributions to the telling of the dinosaur story...
It took about 2 hours to drive to Drumheller (via the town of Standard),
and another 2 hours to drive home. When you look on the map of Canada, we went a very short distance, but the whole experience taught us that this is a VERY BIG COUNTRY, and that it isn't designed for dandering about in a totally unprepared fashion. While we were tootling about on our gravel road, it occurred to us that we had nobody who we could call if we go into diffs. Well, that's not strictly true - we could certainly call our respective families, but its not like they would be in a position to come and rescue us if the car decided it wasn't going any further. Having had this thought, we joined the Alberta Motor Association this morning - they do roadside rescue, towing, locksmithing, etc etc, so we're now a little more comfortable about heading out of town!!
So that was about it for yesterday... while we had a lovely day, we have formulated several rules that must be applied if driving outside the Calgary city limits:
1. Plan your day - where are you going, and how are you going to get there?
2. Take some food and drink with you - its a big country!
3. Never pass a tarmac road even if its going only vaguely where you want to go!
4. Get up early and don't try to do other jobs on the way...
So, on to today...no mega excursions... just a jaunt to Calgary's Heritage Park, which is in the southwest of the city. This is a little like the Folk Museum at Cultra, and is very well done. We signed up for annual passes, so anyone who visits us will be taken there for a dose of Calgary history. When we arrived, the sun was splitting the trees and the trains were running on time...
But by the time we were half way round the park, the thunderstorms were back... we dived into a replica pub (which sold only root beer, ginger beer and beef jerky) and sat for 20 mins waiting for the rain to abate. Unfortunately, it didn't ease off much, and as the barman wasn't great crack, we headed off to a replica general store (a bit like the Nilsson's store in Little House on the Prairie). We hung around in there for a while, and then I succumbed to purchasing a "raincoat" for CAD$1.60 (I have no shame!!). Mr White decided that he would rather get wet.... I can't imagine why!!
Came home and then drove up to the supermarket, where we bought a mega pack of Rice Krispies (hurrah for a huge larder)...
plus steak, mushrooms, corn and bread for the tea.
Tomorrow, its back to the farmers' market for fresh fruit, veg, meat and dim sum!!
P
PS - forgot to say - we encountered a hare in the back garden on Thursday...
We've finally got the house into a shape that we can live with, but we're waiting for sofas to arrive from Ikea. We went to the store, but they had none in stock, so we reserved two (one for upstairs and one for downstairs) and we're waiting for them to call to say that they've come in to the warehouse. In the meantime, we have two new Poang armchairs and footstools (from Ikea - birch frames and rust coloured cushions) downstairs, and the computer chair upstairs. The plan is to have a large sofa (hope they fit in the front door!!) and a Poang armchair in the downstairs, and the same in the upstairs, but Ikea tell us that it could be another two weeks before the sofas are available. I suppose that isn't too bad...
One aspect of the house that makes it feel more like home is the green indoor plants that we got from Sunnyside Greenhouses (great garden centre not far from here). They did lovely plants in glazed pots for CAD$19.99. While the plants aren't quite as large as those in Rhanbuoy, they really help to make this house something like what we're used to...
Here are a few of them...
We also decided that the front door part of the house was looking a little bare, so we went back to the garden centre and bought a couple of glazed pots, some soil and a few summer bedding type of plants. Well, I say summer bedding, but to be honest there wasn't a great deal to choose from. They had their summer bedding plants in a 50% off sale, but I'm not sure whether they had been well picked over before we got there, or whether the choice is limited because of the crazy climate in this part of the world. They had loads of very insipid pink, and white petunias, and loads of nicotiana. I know I've had nicotiana in pots at home before, but they got kind of tall, and I really wanted something that wouldn't go quite as mad. So.... what we ended up with was two large blue glazed pots, with one red flowering geranium in each, surrounded by small white flowering things (Ageratum spp), with blue lobelias stuffed in between (very patriotic!!). They look quite well,
and I think I'll probably go back to the garden centre during the week to pick up a few more bits and pieces to put in pots on the deck at the back of the house. The pots at the front are fine, but we don't see them very often, as we tend to leave the house in the car out of the garage.
Speaking of which, here are a couple of pictures of our new car...
We're really pleased with it, and although it seems to be the smallest car in our street, we think it will be fine. Most of the cars in our street seem to be of the four wheel drive variety, but I don't think we need four wheel drive to commute from our house to work to the shops and back. It'll be kind of strange getting used to having only one car again, but if my work permit comes through, we'll be able to think about getting another set of wheels. Between now and then, I'm going to investigate the bus and train links - they look good on paper, but it remains to be seen whether they work as well in practice.
Having said that the Civic will suit our needs, we got ourselves on to a couple of roads yesterday that the poor wee car just wasn't suited to at all. We decided to head east, towards dinosaur country, rather than following the rest of the population of Calgary, who seemed to be heading west (radio reports suggested that traffic was bumper to bumper on Highway 1 towards Banff). East of Calgary gets billed as being completely flat farmland, and while it is certainly flatter than the Rocky Mountains, its not quite as flat as a pancake.
We set out on the road east (in our new car's proper road test), and found roads that looked as follows:
i.e dead straight...
until we lost our way a little, and ended up on an unpaved road. According to the map, there are loads of these kinds of roads in Alberta - basically, they seem to be rural roads that are made of compacted mud, topped of with a layer of gravel. While they're probably fine if you're driving a four wheel drive vehicle, or if you don't care about your car, they're a little hard to cope with if you've just bought your car two days before. We ended up having to travel about 12 miles on gravel, and it took ages because I refused to drive at speeds of more than 20 miles an hour (not only is the car hard to control at greater speeds on gravel, but it gets a little wearing when you wince every time another stone hits the underside/paintwork of the car!!). Thankfully, we didn't meet any other vehicle in the 12 miles so we weren't at risk of having a big crack in the windscreen. Speaking of which, we've been told to expect to replace a windscreen AT LEAST once a year ... apparently, they don't bother putting salt on the roads here in the winter as it doesn't work at the temperatures they experience. Instead, they spread gravel to help tyres grip the roads, and needless to say, the gravel has a habit of cracking windscreens...
Anyway, we trundled on, and made our way to Drumheller. We stopped at a viewpoint at a place called Horseshoe Canyon...
and, as you can see, the weather wasn't that great. In fact, it was rather grim, with loads of thunderstorms, thunder, lightening, rain, wind etc. We feel a little cheated by this, as everyone has assured us that Alberta is extremely dry (comments such as " My umbrella is so rarely used that its gone rusty..", "I don't even own a raincoat" have been rife), but what can you do....
Anyway, we eventually made it to Drumheller. I think the town used to make its money from coalmining, but since that has gone into decline, the income seems to come from tourists who come to look at dinosaurs, fossils, and the otherwise strange landscapes around the town. Drumheller is home to a fantastic dinosaur museum, Royal Tyrrell Museum, which has loads of dinosaur skeletons etc etc...
Here are a few of the exhibits at the museum:
The town of Drumheller itself has got in on the act - here is one of the town's many contributions to the telling of the dinosaur story...
It took about 2 hours to drive to Drumheller (via the town of Standard),
and another 2 hours to drive home. When you look on the map of Canada, we went a very short distance, but the whole experience taught us that this is a VERY BIG COUNTRY, and that it isn't designed for dandering about in a totally unprepared fashion. While we were tootling about on our gravel road, it occurred to us that we had nobody who we could call if we go into diffs. Well, that's not strictly true - we could certainly call our respective families, but its not like they would be in a position to come and rescue us if the car decided it wasn't going any further. Having had this thought, we joined the Alberta Motor Association this morning - they do roadside rescue, towing, locksmithing, etc etc, so we're now a little more comfortable about heading out of town!!
So that was about it for yesterday... while we had a lovely day, we have formulated several rules that must be applied if driving outside the Calgary city limits:
1. Plan your day - where are you going, and how are you going to get there?
2. Take some food and drink with you - its a big country!
3. Never pass a tarmac road even if its going only vaguely where you want to go!
4. Get up early and don't try to do other jobs on the way...
So, on to today...no mega excursions... just a jaunt to Calgary's Heritage Park, which is in the southwest of the city. This is a little like the Folk Museum at Cultra, and is very well done. We signed up for annual passes, so anyone who visits us will be taken there for a dose of Calgary history. When we arrived, the sun was splitting the trees and the trains were running on time...
But by the time we were half way round the park, the thunderstorms were back... we dived into a replica pub (which sold only root beer, ginger beer and beef jerky) and sat for 20 mins waiting for the rain to abate. Unfortunately, it didn't ease off much, and as the barman wasn't great crack, we headed off to a replica general store (a bit like the Nilsson's store in Little House on the Prairie). We hung around in there for a while, and then I succumbed to purchasing a "raincoat" for CAD$1.60 (I have no shame!!). Mr White decided that he would rather get wet.... I can't imagine why!!
Came home and then drove up to the supermarket, where we bought a mega pack of Rice Krispies (hurrah for a huge larder)...
plus steak, mushrooms, corn and bread for the tea.
Tomorrow, its back to the farmers' market for fresh fruit, veg, meat and dim sum!!
P
PS - forgot to say - we encountered a hare in the back garden on Thursday...
Comments:
Post a Comment
