Thursday, June 23, 2005
Weird Alberta & 10x10
Dr Robson just found this great site which we wanted to share with the world:
Alberta: Unique and Unusual
Coming to Alberta and want to see some stuff you won't see elsewhere? Try Cereal, Alberta. Or look for the World's Largest Mushroom in Vilna. Or Sammy and Samantha Potato in Vauxhall. Bring your UFO in for a landing at St Paul or take a swipe with the world's largest Badminton racquet in St Albert. Or check out Susie, the World's Largest Softball. So much to see and do, hours of endless fun. What a weird place.
Another site you might appreciate is TenByTen. Check it out for your latest news fix of the 100 top words in the world's media. It's a unique interface, and it updates every hour.
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Alberta: Unique and Unusual
Coming to Alberta and want to see some stuff you won't see elsewhere? Try Cereal, Alberta. Or look for the World's Largest Mushroom in Vilna. Or Sammy and Samantha Potato in Vauxhall. Bring your UFO in for a landing at St Paul or take a swipe with the world's largest Badminton racquet in St Albert. Or check out Susie, the World's Largest Softball. So much to see and do, hours of endless fun. What a weird place.
Another site you might appreciate is TenByTen. Check it out for your latest news fix of the 100 top words in the world's media. It's a unique interface, and it updates every hour.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
After the Flood
It's Wednesday morning here, June 22nd, and the City of Calgary has just lifted its State of Emergency, although the water restrictions will still be force until the weekend. The City people are out in force fining people for watering their gardens, washing their cars, etc. We haven't run the dishwasher or the washing machine for 3 days now, but we will have to today as they are pretty full! It's been swelteringly hot for the last couple of days, 28 degrees yesterday and impossibly clear, blue skies. A big thunderstorm went by just south of us last night, with evil, black clouds and cracks of lightning. It was too warm in the night, about 20 degrees and we had the fan on all night. There were also tornados and funnel clouds touching down in the southern part of the province. When I left the house at 06:30 this morning, it was still 18 degrees. We're expecting more thunder tonight and maybe a bit of rain tomorrow. If it comes, it'll push the amount of rain received in June over the 'highest ever recorded'.
The floodwaters have now largely receded, and 80% of the people evacuated from the banks of the Elbow river have now returned home. There's a huge effort at the moment in pumping out flooded basements and trying to stop mould growing in the hot, damp houses. We're awful glad we live up on a hill and have a walk-out as opposed to an underground basement! The City has set up a Disaster Recovery Centre in the South-West to allow people to register for compensation, etc. The Fish Creek Provincial Park in the SW has been closed as 15 of its footbridges are now missing, having been swept away. They say it'll take years to fix the Park, as the course of the river has now altered. The city as a whole has sustained about 200 million dollars of damage in the last week.
Residents of Drumheller (east of here) got good warning that the Red Deer River was going to burst its banks, and spent much of the weekend sand-bagging their homes and building 5-metre dykes along the river as it passes through the centre of town. When it came, the river rose to the top of the dykes but didn't go over, so the town was saved from major flooding.
On a sadder note, police have now called off the search for a teenager who went missing while walking home from the north-west early on Sunday morning. She was crossing a footbridge over the Bow, just south of Bowness Park, and she called a friend on her mobile to say that the water on the bridge was ankle deep (i.e. that the bridge was actually in the river). No-one's heard from her since, and she's been declared missing, presumed drowned. She'll probably turn up downstream somewhere when the river gets back to normal. It's a long way to Hudson Bay.
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The floodwaters have now largely receded, and 80% of the people evacuated from the banks of the Elbow river have now returned home. There's a huge effort at the moment in pumping out flooded basements and trying to stop mould growing in the hot, damp houses. We're awful glad we live up on a hill and have a walk-out as opposed to an underground basement! The City has set up a Disaster Recovery Centre in the South-West to allow people to register for compensation, etc. The Fish Creek Provincial Park in the SW has been closed as 15 of its footbridges are now missing, having been swept away. They say it'll take years to fix the Park, as the course of the river has now altered. The city as a whole has sustained about 200 million dollars of damage in the last week.
Residents of Drumheller (east of here) got good warning that the Red Deer River was going to burst its banks, and spent much of the weekend sand-bagging their homes and building 5-metre dykes along the river as it passes through the centre of town. When it came, the river rose to the top of the dykes but didn't go over, so the town was saved from major flooding.
On a sadder note, police have now called off the search for a teenager who went missing while walking home from the north-west early on Sunday morning. She was crossing a footbridge over the Bow, just south of Bowness Park, and she called a friend on her mobile to say that the water on the bridge was ankle deep (i.e. that the bridge was actually in the river). No-one's heard from her since, and she's been declared missing, presumed drowned. She'll probably turn up downstream somewhere when the river gets back to normal. It's a long way to Hudson Bay.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Bow Floods
On Saturday night, the Mayor of Calgary of Calgary went on TV to warn all citizens to stay away from all riverbanks in the city, as the Bow and Elbow rivers were about to flood. Of course, to all males in the city, that was an invitation to go and have a look at something exciting, and Simon and I headed off into Bowness Park like an intrepid ITN news crew in a war zone to get some footage... (Paula and Sandy were much more sensible). This is what happened:
The Park was closed to traffic, but we parked nearby and walked down to the lagoon. There were quite a few nutcases who had brought their small kids down in oilskins and welly-boots to see that all the fuss was about.
The lagoon normally looks like this:
now it looked like this:
Normally there is a big stretch of ground on the left of the picture which has a bandstand and picnic tables / huts between the lagoon and the river, but this area was all underwater now and there was no division between the lagoon and the Bow. We had wanted to hire a canoe to go on the lagoon, but we could easily have rowed out on to the river from here...
'This Park is CLOSED'
The river had swollen a lot, and the normal banks were underwater:
The water was brown and filled with debris and bits of trees:
There were new rapids and the breakwaters where we had sat a fortnight ago were deep underwater:
Rapids
Gone
The river was spilling over onto the park along most of the bank and a lot of trees were underwater:
The little train which runs around the park was also out of service:
Many of the picnic huts and biffies were also flooded:
Then
Now
I think I can hang on until I go home...
While there were lots of people around the lagoon, the outer parts of the park were hard to reach as the water was quite deep in places and it was hard to navigate as most of the normal paths were underwater. It was only possible to get around by walking on the raised edges of the paths:
There were very few people around in the most flooded parts of the park, and it was a bit spooky being so close to the river with no-one else around.
Our roving ITN camera-man
The river was coming over most rapidly in the upper, northern reaches of the park close to the Stoney Trail bridge, and Simon eventually went ahead of me, rolling up his trousers to get as far into the flooded areas as he could:
It was lovely weather for ducks, of course, and we did spot one swimming with the current like he had an outboard engine attached. But when he turned around against the current, he had a harder time...
We eventually turned round after about an hour of taking stills and video, and escaped with our lives. Now if I can just figure out how to put video on the blog...
Reporting for ITN,
J (& cameraman Simon White)
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The Park was closed to traffic, but we parked nearby and walked down to the lagoon. There were quite a few nutcases who had brought their small kids down in oilskins and welly-boots to see that all the fuss was about.
The lagoon normally looks like this:
now it looked like this:
Normally there is a big stretch of ground on the left of the picture which has a bandstand and picnic tables / huts between the lagoon and the river, but this area was all underwater now and there was no division between the lagoon and the Bow. We had wanted to hire a canoe to go on the lagoon, but we could easily have rowed out on to the river from here...
'This Park is CLOSED'
The river had swollen a lot, and the normal banks were underwater:
The water was brown and filled with debris and bits of trees:
There were new rapids and the breakwaters where we had sat a fortnight ago were deep underwater:
Rapids
Gone
The river was spilling over onto the park along most of the bank and a lot of trees were underwater:
The little train which runs around the park was also out of service:
Many of the picnic huts and biffies were also flooded:
Then
Now
I think I can hang on until I go home...
While there were lots of people around the lagoon, the outer parts of the park were hard to reach as the water was quite deep in places and it was hard to navigate as most of the normal paths were underwater. It was only possible to get around by walking on the raised edges of the paths:
There were very few people around in the most flooded parts of the park, and it was a bit spooky being so close to the river with no-one else around.
Our roving ITN camera-man
The river was coming over most rapidly in the upper, northern reaches of the park close to the Stoney Trail bridge, and Simon eventually went ahead of me, rolling up his trousers to get as far into the flooded areas as he could:
It was lovely weather for ducks, of course, and we did spot one swimming with the current like he had an outboard engine attached. But when he turned around against the current, he had a harder time...
We eventually turned round after about an hour of taking stills and video, and escaped with our lives. Now if I can just figure out how to put video on the blog...
Reporting for ITN,
J (& cameraman Simon White)
Happy Midsummer (Plus More Holiday Pics!)
Happy Midsummer & Summer Solstice! We have now been away for exactly a year! It doesn't seem that long at all but we have been through a lot in the last 12 months, what with freezing in the snow, boiling in the summer and now flooding in the spring.
We were just tidying up our iPhoto library and we came across a few more photos from the last fortnight. Enjoy!
Sebastian, Ben and Hannah
Wet Sunday in Cochrane
Father & Son in the Rockies
Sebastian on Sulphur Mountain
Sleeping Bag
Sisters-in-Law (sort of)
Brothers together
"I heard your favourite colour was... PINK!"
Helping to make the bed
Big Sky on Thursday
Time for some Pops
Sunday morning Brunch (look at all the Guinness we drank!)
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We were just tidying up our iPhoto library and we came across a few more photos from the last fortnight. Enjoy!
Sebastian, Ben and Hannah
Wet Sunday in Cochrane
Father & Son in the Rockies
Sebastian on Sulphur Mountain
Sleeping Bag
Sisters-in-Law (sort of)
Brothers together
"I heard your favourite colour was... PINK!"
Helping to make the bed
Big Sky on Thursday
Time for some Pops
Sunday morning Brunch (look at all the Guinness we drank!)
Monday, June 20, 2005
Fire on the Elbow (2 Grizzlies and a Wolf)
Last Tuesday, in the brief spell of nice weather between two big rainstorms, Dr Robson and I took the head-staggers and took a sudden day off. The house was quiet as our visitors were in Banff, so we decided to head off up the Elbow River and see how K-Country was getting on with all the flooding.
We headed out on Highway 1, then turned south on Highway 22, skirted Bragg Creek (evacuated only a few days before due to the Elbow River flooding) and headed west on highway 66 to the end of the Elbow. The road was open, as it's officially summer here now that May 15 has passed and the gates have been unlocked:
Then - early April
Now - mid-June
We stopped off at the Elbow Falls for lunch - the river was much higher than we had ever seen it before, really a raging torrent of muddy water, and had come over the banks, flooding many of the riverside picnic areas and washing many of the paths away:
Collapsed path
There were also rapids where none had been before:
Rapids
The Elbow comes to a narrow point at Elbow Falls, and splits into two streams which come together at the top of the Falls before plunging down. It's normally a small waterfall, but now you could hear it roaring from half a mile away. When we went in the summer, they looked like this:
Elbow in the summer
Now they looked like this:
The Raging Eblow
Boling torrent at Elbow Falls
Although there was a guy who was perched just above them on a rock, sitting motionless as the river raged. It was a bit of a Zen moment.
Zen man and the River
The river was in full flow - it's really hard to imagine where so much water comes from all at once! And it keeps on coming, hour after hour, thundering over the Falls. This weekend, the flow rates in the Bow River were up from their normal level of 100 cubic metres per second to 2,000 cubic metres per second and the Elbow didn't look too far behind!
It was lunchtime, so we decided to find a dry firepit and get the sausages on! It' illegal to burn any of the wood (live or dead) you can find in the Rockies, so we bought some firewood in Tuscany so we could get a fire going.
Lucky enough, Dr Robbo is an experienced pyromaniac, having had to cook over an open fire for years as a Girl Guide, so we soon had a fire started with newspaper and matches:
First fire
Unfortunately, the paper burned up before the wood had taken light properly, and our fire just smouldered a bit.
The Firestarter
We gathered up some kindling and shavings of dead wood from the ground, and combined with a small candle, these did the trick. Soon we had a good blaze going and it was time to break out the sossies:
Going well now
Sossies on the fire
Lunch is ready
We'd also brought some hot water with us so we could have a cup of tea by the fire:
There were a few other people who had come along to have their lunch beside the river, and they all remarked on the fire. I thought they might have been after a spare sausage or two, but there were none left!
After a couple of hours the fire was burning well and giving off a good heat, but it was time to head off a bit further up the road. It's very bad form to leave a fire burning or even smouldering out here (don't want to start a forest fire!), so we had to douse it with several thermos-fulls of water from the flooded picnic area beside us before we left.
Fire's Out
We drove right to the end of Highway 66, out as far as the Harold Chapman Bridge, but we didn't stop for too long, as we were the only souls in the area and there was a very clear grizzly warning posted. We has also seen an RCMP bear-spotter team down the road scanning the hills for signs of grizzlies, so we didn't hang about!
Watch out, there's a bear about!
There was also a flood warning sign up, as the bridge led across the river to a fishing area (which is why the bears like it there, I suppose):
Beware the Flood
Trout, Char, Grayling, etc.
Not wishing to encounter a grizzly on our own (someone did last week in Canmore, and is now pushing up daisies), we headed back down the highway to Forget-Me-Not Pond, which is quite beautiful, and again not another sinner to be seen (but no bear alert here, so we should be OK, right?):
Where is this?
Um, I forgot...
Like the new sunglasses?
Stepping Logs
We finished up our jaunt by stopping off at a Beaver Lodge:
A beaver lives here
Gnawed by beavers
On the road back, we stopped where the RCMP spotters had been just to see if we could see what they were looking for. I didn't see anything at first, but then Eagle Scout Robson saw what they were after, a cream-coffee coloured big shaggy thing with a hump on its back, lumbering about on the hillside above us. It noticed us and turned to take a look at us looking at it, but soon lost interest and shambled away over the crest. We took a few photos, but all we got was a small brown blob on a green background:
The bear on the hill
Close up of the bear (he's the brown blob below the line)
At roughly the same time, Simon and Sandy were up at Lake Louise, taking video of another, more impressive grizzly:
Big Bear
Before we got home again, EagleEyes Robson spotted another wild creature, a wolf at the treeline:
Mr Wolf
All I can say is that I picked the right woman to marry - what more could a man ask for? Able to start a fire in the wilderness, and adept at spotting dangerous animals from 100 paces? Dr Robson, frontierswoman, I salute you!
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We headed out on Highway 1, then turned south on Highway 22, skirted Bragg Creek (evacuated only a few days before due to the Elbow River flooding) and headed west on highway 66 to the end of the Elbow. The road was open, as it's officially summer here now that May 15 has passed and the gates have been unlocked:
Then - early April
Now - mid-June
We stopped off at the Elbow Falls for lunch - the river was much higher than we had ever seen it before, really a raging torrent of muddy water, and had come over the banks, flooding many of the riverside picnic areas and washing many of the paths away:
Collapsed path
There were also rapids where none had been before:
Rapids
The Elbow comes to a narrow point at Elbow Falls, and splits into two streams which come together at the top of the Falls before plunging down. It's normally a small waterfall, but now you could hear it roaring from half a mile away. When we went in the summer, they looked like this:
Elbow in the summer
Now they looked like this:
The Raging Eblow
Boling torrent at Elbow Falls
Although there was a guy who was perched just above them on a rock, sitting motionless as the river raged. It was a bit of a Zen moment.
Zen man and the River
The river was in full flow - it's really hard to imagine where so much water comes from all at once! And it keeps on coming, hour after hour, thundering over the Falls. This weekend, the flow rates in the Bow River were up from their normal level of 100 cubic metres per second to 2,000 cubic metres per second and the Elbow didn't look too far behind!
It was lunchtime, so we decided to find a dry firepit and get the sausages on! It' illegal to burn any of the wood (live or dead) you can find in the Rockies, so we bought some firewood in Tuscany so we could get a fire going.
Lucky enough, Dr Robbo is an experienced pyromaniac, having had to cook over an open fire for years as a Girl Guide, so we soon had a fire started with newspaper and matches:
First fire
Unfortunately, the paper burned up before the wood had taken light properly, and our fire just smouldered a bit.
The Firestarter
We gathered up some kindling and shavings of dead wood from the ground, and combined with a small candle, these did the trick. Soon we had a good blaze going and it was time to break out the sossies:
Going well now
Sossies on the fire
Lunch is ready
We'd also brought some hot water with us so we could have a cup of tea by the fire:
There were a few other people who had come along to have their lunch beside the river, and they all remarked on the fire. I thought they might have been after a spare sausage or two, but there were none left!
After a couple of hours the fire was burning well and giving off a good heat, but it was time to head off a bit further up the road. It's very bad form to leave a fire burning or even smouldering out here (don't want to start a forest fire!), so we had to douse it with several thermos-fulls of water from the flooded picnic area beside us before we left.
Fire's Out
We drove right to the end of Highway 66, out as far as the Harold Chapman Bridge, but we didn't stop for too long, as we were the only souls in the area and there was a very clear grizzly warning posted. We has also seen an RCMP bear-spotter team down the road scanning the hills for signs of grizzlies, so we didn't hang about!
Watch out, there's a bear about!
There was also a flood warning sign up, as the bridge led across the river to a fishing area (which is why the bears like it there, I suppose):
Beware the Flood
Trout, Char, Grayling, etc.
Not wishing to encounter a grizzly on our own (someone did last week in Canmore, and is now pushing up daisies), we headed back down the highway to Forget-Me-Not Pond, which is quite beautiful, and again not another sinner to be seen (but no bear alert here, so we should be OK, right?):
Where is this?
Um, I forgot...
Like the new sunglasses?
Stepping Logs
We finished up our jaunt by stopping off at a Beaver Lodge:
A beaver lives here
Gnawed by beavers
On the road back, we stopped where the RCMP spotters had been just to see if we could see what they were looking for. I didn't see anything at first, but then Eagle Scout Robson saw what they were after, a cream-coffee coloured big shaggy thing with a hump on its back, lumbering about on the hillside above us. It noticed us and turned to take a look at us looking at it, but soon lost interest and shambled away over the crest. We took a few photos, but all we got was a small brown blob on a green background:
The bear on the hill
Close up of the bear (he's the brown blob below the line)
At roughly the same time, Simon and Sandy were up at Lake Louise, taking video of another, more impressive grizzly:
Big Bear
Before we got home again, EagleEyes Robson spotted another wild creature, a wolf at the treeline:
Mr Wolf
All I can say is that I picked the right woman to marry - what more could a man ask for? Able to start a fire in the wilderness, and adept at spotting dangerous animals from 100 paces? Dr Robson, frontierswoman, I salute you!
