Saturday, July 02, 2005
Beam me up to Vulcan!
Despite a weather forecast saying it would rain all weekend long, Saturday turned out to be a better day than expected and we decided to head off on the first of our summer road trips to see what Alberta has to offer. Last summer we went east to Drumheller, north to Airdrie and south to Okotoks and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and we're always going west to Banff/Canmore/K-Country, so we decided to strike out south-east to the little prairie communities of Nanton and Vulcan. We had been through Nanton before when we took Highway 2 further south, and wanted to go back to take a look at its antique shops and aviation museum. We had also heard a lot about Vulcan, a little farming community 40 kms east of Nanton, as the town had capitalised on its name and had "gone a bit Star Trek". It was home to an annual Galaxyfest convention for Canadian Trekkies in early June, and had also had some 'Spock Days' as part of the Alberta's 100-anniversary celebration, so we thought it was worth a look.
It took us almost an hour to take the Jeep from the north-western city limits in Tuscany to the southern limits of town, which just shows you what a big city Calgary is. We passed the site of the new South hospital, which is being built to be opened in 2009 or so. It's right on the edge of the city, with rolling farmlands beyond, lots of room for expansion. We passed through High River (where all the flooding was last week) and made it to Nanton in about 40 minutes out of Calgary.
Nanton is another tiny town, really just a few streets that the highway goes through. Every second shop seems to be an antiques shop, though, and the town's main claim to fame is its big Lancaster bomber museum. It's located in a hangar, with one big Lancaster and a number of smaller craft, along with tons of Canadian WWII memorabilia, bits of planes and bombs, pictures and letters from airmen and a small art gallery.
Lancaster from the tail
You can go right under the Lancaster and stand in the bomb bay, and then go inside (wearing a hard-hat) to see what it was like to be a crewman.
In the Bomb Bay
The inside reminded me of the USS Pampanito, the US submarine which is docked in San Francisco harbour, really cramped conditions, easy to bang your head on the ceiling all the time - it was really just a large flying metal bread-box stuffed with men and a really big bomb slung underneath. You can climb up to the cockpit, also get into the 'fish-bowl' in the middle of the plane and climb right back to the back where the tail-gunner lived. Wow!
Inside the Lancaster
Posing with Sugar
The Fish Bowl
Up at the Nose
There's also a small gallery of logos painted on the sides of WWII Canadian planes:
Outside there are a couple of WWII aircraft on display too:
And so to Vulcan!
Okay - this is where P takes over the story. For those of you who know us well, you might have assumed that it was Mr White who thought we should trek to Vulcan, but no ... somebody at work had told me that it was worth seeing, and so off we went. Vulcan itself turns out to be a very very small town on the western edge of the true prairies, with not a lot to offer to the casual visitor except a lot of grain elevators and some buildings sporting a slightly run down star trek theme. I can just imagine the talk around the town council table one night when somebody suggested that they could capitalise on the name, and develop a wee bit of a Star Trek theme- "that would bring people off the highway, eh?"; "oh fer sure...".... Having said all that, it is tacky enough to be quite entertaining...!
A sightseeing alien lands in V ulcan... but there are lots of signs to tell him where he is (just in case his starship was confused on the way in...)
Round by the grain elevators, it got a bit mosquito-ish - strangely enough I didn't get chomped but poor J got 4 or 5 huge bites on his arms, which swelled up rather dramatically later on...
The offending mossie site...
Mind you, I suppose we could have called into the pharmacy for some medication - spot the theme on the wall - all of the Star Trek doctors must have found gainful employment in the town...
A Vulcan in Federation uniform surveys the prairie landscape...
The 'famous' starship Enterprise - landed in Vulcan, mysteriously shrunk and mounted on a pedestal to draw in passing traffic...
Hmmm... hard to know what to say about this one... except that Mr White wasn't available to stick his head through one of the holes to have his picture taken. He was busy trying to buy petrol from a petrol station that appeared only to cater to farmers... first of all, he had to find a pump that did normal petrol (not 'dyed petrol', or 'dyed diesel', or 'regular diesel') and then he couldn't get the pump that he did find to actually dispense any fuel. Turns out, he needed to have a 'farmers' association' card to insert into the pump...
Our last activity before leaving the thriving hub of Vulcan, was to find a fridge magnet that was in keeping with the tone of the place....and here it is! Think somebody drew a wee picture, coloured it in, colour photocopied a few, stuck them on to magnetic coated cardboard, and cut them out...brilliant! There can't be too many of these on fridges around the world...
It took us almost an hour to take the Jeep from the north-western city limits in Tuscany to the southern limits of town, which just shows you what a big city Calgary is. We passed the site of the new South hospital, which is being built to be opened in 2009 or so. It's right on the edge of the city, with rolling farmlands beyond, lots of room for expansion. We passed through High River (where all the flooding was last week) and made it to Nanton in about 40 minutes out of Calgary.
Nanton is another tiny town, really just a few streets that the highway goes through. Every second shop seems to be an antiques shop, though, and the town's main claim to fame is its big Lancaster bomber museum. It's located in a hangar, with one big Lancaster and a number of smaller craft, along with tons of Canadian WWII memorabilia, bits of planes and bombs, pictures and letters from airmen and a small art gallery.
Lancaster from the tail
You can go right under the Lancaster and stand in the bomb bay, and then go inside (wearing a hard-hat) to see what it was like to be a crewman.
In the Bomb Bay
The inside reminded me of the USS Pampanito, the US submarine which is docked in San Francisco harbour, really cramped conditions, easy to bang your head on the ceiling all the time - it was really just a large flying metal bread-box stuffed with men and a really big bomb slung underneath. You can climb up to the cockpit, also get into the 'fish-bowl' in the middle of the plane and climb right back to the back where the tail-gunner lived. Wow!
Inside the Lancaster
Posing with Sugar
The Fish Bowl
Up at the Nose
There's also a small gallery of logos painted on the sides of WWII Canadian planes:
Outside there are a couple of WWII aircraft on display too:
And so to Vulcan!
Okay - this is where P takes over the story. For those of you who know us well, you might have assumed that it was Mr White who thought we should trek to Vulcan, but no ... somebody at work had told me that it was worth seeing, and so off we went. Vulcan itself turns out to be a very very small town on the western edge of the true prairies, with not a lot to offer to the casual visitor except a lot of grain elevators and some buildings sporting a slightly run down star trek theme. I can just imagine the talk around the town council table one night when somebody suggested that they could capitalise on the name, and develop a wee bit of a Star Trek theme- "that would bring people off the highway, eh?"; "oh fer sure...".... Having said all that, it is tacky enough to be quite entertaining...!
A sightseeing alien lands in V ulcan... but there are lots of signs to tell him where he is (just in case his starship was confused on the way in...)
Round by the grain elevators, it got a bit mosquito-ish - strangely enough I didn't get chomped but poor J got 4 or 5 huge bites on his arms, which swelled up rather dramatically later on...
The offending mossie site...
Mind you, I suppose we could have called into the pharmacy for some medication - spot the theme on the wall - all of the Star Trek doctors must have found gainful employment in the town...
A Vulcan in Federation uniform surveys the prairie landscape...
The 'famous' starship Enterprise - landed in Vulcan, mysteriously shrunk and mounted on a pedestal to draw in passing traffic...
Hmmm... hard to know what to say about this one... except that Mr White wasn't available to stick his head through one of the holes to have his picture taken. He was busy trying to buy petrol from a petrol station that appeared only to cater to farmers... first of all, he had to find a pump that did normal petrol (not 'dyed petrol', or 'dyed diesel', or 'regular diesel') and then he couldn't get the pump that he did find to actually dispense any fuel. Turns out, he needed to have a 'farmers' association' card to insert into the pump...
Our last activity before leaving the thriving hub of Vulcan, was to find a fridge magnet that was in keeping with the tone of the place....and here it is! Think somebody drew a wee picture, coloured it in, colour photocopied a few, stuck them on to magnetic coated cardboard, and cut them out...brilliant! There can't be too many of these on fridges around the world...
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