Finally, the Stampede

Sorry it's taken me ages to get around to posting these.

On Friday, July 4, the Stampede kicked off in Calgary. There's a massive parade downtown and everything basically shuts down, including the roads and bridges into downtown but not including my workplace.

Anyway, after the parade we took the afternoon off and headed down to the grounds to take in the rodeo, which was actually pretty fun.

The admission gates:


Opening ceremony for the rodeo:


Yee-haw!







And this one's for Tim - the rodeo clown:


The Stampede is basically the CNE with cowboys. Midway, exhibits, new-fangled products, junky food (Gregg ate a bag of deep fried oreos and lived to regret it), gambling and drinking. The big place to drink on the grounds is Nashville North, which is a huge tent with (apparently) big name country musicians on stage. We passed it twice - once at about 1:00 p.m.:


This is the corral for the line up. That sign says: It is a 6 hour wait from this point. We passed by and laughed and said to each other naively, who the hell would wait 6 freaking hours to drink in a tent?

Little did we know, here was the scene by about 4:30:

Notice that the line extends far beyond that sign. Crazy.

The Calgarians sure like their Stampede, and I must admit that it's pretty good. All week, there are big party tents set up all over downtown and pancake breakfasts all over town, some free and some private. I actually saw cops, walking the beat and harassing the derelicts (and drinking on the job, as a matter of fact). Gotta love that Alberta Advantage.

So, back to the here and now. I'm busy redoing the guest room this weekend - paint, trim, doors, etc. I'll post a pic when I'm done (and now I've committed to all of you, it WILL be done before our guests arrive next week!). (What guests, you ask? Robyn, Trevor and Amanda are making the trip to go to the Nine Inch Nails concert on Tuesday! Whee!)

And since I just uploaded the contents of my camera, finally, here are a couple of shots of the front of our house (taken a couple of weeks ago). The majority of these plants came up this spring, yay previous owners for planting perennials.

Someone found me...

by googling "Crack Mac's".




Love. It.

Random geeky entry

There have been a few wicked storms lately. Last night, more thunderstorms and more hail. Not mega hail, but about 10 minutes of pea-sized hail in the middle of the storm. As it happens, today I stumbled across this article online about cloud seeders. Are you ready for this?

Apparently, the corridor between Edmonton and Calgary is known as 'Thunder Alley' because major stormclouds form along here and pick up speed along the way - sometimes morphing into tornados or producing golf ball sized hail. These 'cloud seeders' are planes that fly along the perimeter and fire gases into the clouds (!) to break them up, prevent precipitation (or golf ball sized hail) from forming, or otherwise steer them out of the way of civilization.

Is that not the craziest, most sci fi thing you've heard of? (Shut up Kerry, I know you knew all about this and your suspicions of my excessive moronity are confirmed. Don't rub it in.) Also, is this not the craziest job you've heard of? Seriously, I thought 'pilot' was at the bottom of my list of possible careers. The only thing I can't decide is whether 'snowbird pilot' or 'cloud seeding pilot' is worse. Eeks.

In other news, today I was playing with my Site-o-meter and realized that I can track visitors in all sorts of ways... by location, referral page (people are finding me through Google searches!) and so on... I am going back and forth in my mind between "what a cool feature" and "I am a moron for not learning how to use the site-o-meter by now". So, my lurky friends, I know who (some of) you are! Don't worry, I won't out you.

Update on the Calgarians

A lot of my recent posts have been all pics, no substance. So I thought it might be time for another update on the life of the Bradens... hee.

First things first, I have a new step parent. That sounds weird, doesn't it? Don't worry, Michael, I won't start asking you for money. I am happy to say that my mom and Michael finally bit the bullet and tied the knot last Friday in Halifax. What, I wasn't invited, you say? Nah, but neither was anyone else, so I'm not (too) pissed. Since they didn't send me a wedding photo, I'll post the next best thing:


I'm sure they were at least that happy, since it was their wedding day and not mine - congratulations and hope to see you both soon!

I think everyone probably knows by now, but I'll mention too that Gregg got a new job! He'll be starting following his 5 week holiday, at the end of September. Still government, same building even, but a different department and now he's the boss.

(No, I do not have 5 weeks off in case you were wondering... some of us have to work )

Speaking of work, sort of, I received the excellent news yesterday that I have been approved to go to a conference in St. John's, Newfoundland, at the end of August. We had actually bought tickets to go back to TO for a visit on August 28. My favourite airline gave me no hassle whatsoever and promptly credited me for my flight and rebooked Gregg so we will now go Calgary - St. John's - Toronto - Calgary.

After I return, I will be in Calgary for a week and then heading up to Edmonton for short work trip - Gregg will still be on leave so he'll tag along for the trip. And then, the following week I'm attending a course in Vancouver and we have enough Air Miles for Gregg to come along. (Thank you to our sponsors, Safeway and Crowfoot Liquor Store). So that'll be quite the whirlwind. Gregg was just asking me where should we go for our next trip... I think I just answered that question!

In other news, not so great weather - it's quite cold and rainy and was actually hailing earlier.

Mind you, yesterday was beautiful and I worked from home on our back patio.

We did get out to the Stampede and I will post the pics eventually. Tomorrow is Gregg's work's Stampede Party so maybe there'll be some interesting photo ops...

Rawson Lake in Kananaskis

On Sunday, we went on a hike around Upper Kananaskis Lake to Rawson Lake. It wasn't as high up as Saturday's hike but pretty steep for a great deal of time. Let's just say, I think Kerry wanted to leave me behind after the 47th break.

These are shots of Upper Kananaskis Lake, at the beginning of the trail:



It is so beautiful, and so tempting when it's 32 degrees out. But it is so, so cold. Like wetsuit cold. Below is Sarrail Falls - this was taken on a footbridge that crossed over. It was just like air conditioning... :


After an arduous journey, we reached even ground and found ourselves at Rawson Lake. Very quiet and peaceful - Mount Sarrail is across the lake here:


There was a waterfall right behind me from where I was standing to take the photo above. We walked up close to sit and relax, and noticed that the opening was chock full of rainbow trout, swimming in the current:



Kerry, trying to get a good shot of something...


Kananaskis Country was really great - I'm looking forward to going back.

Next up, Stampede craziness! Rodeos, pancake breakfasts, greasy food, hay bales... I'll try to record as much tomfoolery as I can.

Kananaskis Country, Part One

This is going to be pretty pic heavy so I'll break it into two posts.

We drove out to Kananaskis Country, about an hour door to door from our place to our campsite, and camped for 3 days at Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. On the way back we took 'the scenic route' through Longview (home of world famous beef jerky) and Black Diamond and Okotoks (southwest of Calgary - think ranches, large pickup trucks, rolling hills, lots of cattle and horses).



On Saturday, we hiked up Ptarmigan Cirque trail, off highway 40 (aka Bighorn Highway) which is only open from June 15 - November 30 each year. Once on the highway, we could see why - herds of rocky mountain sheep pretty much live right on the highway.



The start of the trail:


After hiking through that flat area there, we crossed the highway and began heading up the mountain trail. Kerry actually climbed right to the top of the peak second from the left, which appears to be smaller but is actually farther away and taller. Gregg and I stuck to the trail (as best we could with the snow and mud) and stopped climbing at the Cirque (glacial bowl).



This is near the highway, snow already. It was a strange experience hiking through snow in shorts in 30 degree weather:


The snow did give way at times to tended trail and at others to muck and streams. This is a huge alpine meadow area but we were too early to see most of the wildflowers - there were mostly glacial lilies:


Getting closer to the top:


And at the end of the trail - I was freaking exhausted - the mountain air is pretty thin and it's hard to catch your breath.




We hiked up right up to the end of the cirque - there were streams from the melting snow everywhere and then a waterfall. Kerry went on ahead of us and climbed Mt. Rae, the snowy peak you see off in the distance.


And this was the view from the top - the highway isn't visible from here, it's about 700 feet below the point where we're standing:


The next day we hiked to Rawson Lake, which is a post of its own...