GobSmacked!!

In the English dictionary this is described as one being utterly astonished...

I think Katie demonstrated just how true that is last night when we had her early birthday. As Linda and I are away for Katie's birthday this year we had our celebration time with Katie last night. A lovely meal out at The Peacock in Ormskirk, our favourite Chinese eatery. The Celebration Banquet was more than appropriate and way more than we needed or could possibly eat!

With the timing of Christmas (a good excuse to show our tree above...) in mind we booked this a couple of months ago, not realising at the time that it clashed with the final of the X-Factor on TV, which we've all been following avidly this year.

Not wishing to miss out on either Katie's meal, or the TV programme, we bravely set the Sky+ box to record the show and turned off our mobile phones, computers and any device which could possibly give the result away before we managed to watch it ourselves as if live.

We arrived home in complete ignorance of the result which we would all be pleased with later on. Meanwhile, we gave Katie her birthday cards and presents from ourselves, Grandma and Grandpa, Auntie Janet and Uncle Eamonn, Auntie Sue and Uncle Jonathan and Hannah and Joe.


Earlier this year Katie had hinted that she would like to update her Sims game for the PC. She told us that she would like Sims2 and upon pushing her a little in later conversations she also named one or two additional games which add-on to this.


What she didn't expect was to end up with the entire series!! Between us all, we have managed to get hold of the whole Sims2 games world and Katie couldn't quite believe her eyes as she opened one after another after another of them!! It's always nice to surprise someone, especially when they think that they know what to expect! :-)


Ssshhhh..... Don't tell Katie... but she still has one or two more to come from her Nanny and Grandad!

Lovely xxx

Oh What A Beautiful Morning...

In West Lancashire!

There aren't many advantages to having to get up at 07:30 on a Sunday morning to take one's eldest daughter to work... but seeing how beautiful the world can be at this time of day is certainly a big one!This morning at -1 degrees and with a thick fog over Burscough I took Sarah to Southport for her pre-Christmas extended working day. I thought that the fog may look nice over the coast and that as the tide was in yesterday... I could expect it to be less barren than usual. I wasn't disappointed. With the moon still in the sky to my right as I looked out to the pier and the sun just creeping over my left shoulder from behind.

The Marine Lake in Southport looked golden and the birds were in full chorus as the sun started to burn away at the early morning mist.

Up at Marshside on the way home the sight was so peaceful, the mist slightly thickening again as I headed away from the coast and back towards Burscough.

Not a bad start to a Sunday after all!

If I could turn back time...

Our last trip out during our summer vacation to Alberta was to Heritage Park in Calgary. here are the Girls stood by the windmill near to the entrance.

Heritage Park is a living museum. The largest of its kind in Canada it reminded me of the fabulous living village museum of Iron Bridge back here in the UK.

Above were some school children enjoying a day out and in full traditional costume enjoying their traditional lunch on the lawn.

This is a truly romantic place and you can't help but feel yourself transported back in time as you stroll along the 1910 village with its dusty roads and vintage cars and horse-drawn carriages, its 1880 wooden walkways and the barriers where you can tie up your horse just like John Wayne did in all those movies. Inside all the buildings are totally authentic from a hospital to an ice-cream parlour and drug store. The guides are dressed up fully as period characters and are so helpful and informative that again it just transports you back to those days...


This is a first class exhibition of what life would have been like one or two century's ago. Below is Katie getting 'dealt with' by the Bank Teller as he produced her certificate of dealing. He was very entertaining...

This is me going back to my roots in the Blacksmiths and Wheelwrights shop. My paternal Great Grandfather was actually a Wheelwright in Shropshire.

Katie introduces Sarah to her new Friend.

Here are two very tired girls on a big day out! We all started to feel jaded in the heat and so we went for a ride on the steam boat. Janet and Katie found some shade whilst we waited for our boarding call.

The trip around the park on the steam paddle boat was very refreshing. It cooled us all down and gave our tired legs a much needed rest.

Everybody say sleep!

The heat started to get to Eamonn and at one time he began to show signs of stress... He'd just finished a 'rap' rhyme and was last seen spinning on his back when I took this one.

We also had a trip on the steam train (anything for a sit down!) around the park which was another occasion to sit back and imagine what it must have been like. Everything is so carefully detailed in Heritage Park, just to make sure that one has the opportunity to indulge in the past and fire up the imagination. It's just like on the old western films that we've all seen. the sights, sounds and everything, along with the added features of smells and touch...

One last treat was a whizz on the Caterpillar. The four girls climbed aboard and took a trip back in time to Southport or Blackpool or Margate 20-40 years ago. As the ride started to speed up the covers came over and the screams started. Eam and I stayed at the side to take pictures... and mind the bags... and stuff!

As the evening came closer and the park started to close we started the debate about where to have dinner that night.

Once again we'd had a truly magical day out and this was just another fantastic chapter in our wonderful trip to Alberta in the summer of 2008. So many new experiences, so many new sights, sounds, tastes, smells and sensations.. So much new knowledge and so many enhancements and supporting evidence to already ingrained facts from our own childhood. I hope that my musings, ramblings and photographs have been interesting to you. It's such a pleasure to be able to share our adventures and wonderful memories with you.


We all had a truly fabulous time and I can't wait to go back again!

xxx

Buffalo and other things that fly

One can't walk or drive too far in Alberta without seeing another large raptor, either on a telegraph pole, a street light, a fence post (baseball caps permitting) or a hay bale. There are Osprey, Bald Eagle, Golden Eagles and many more hawks and Harriers all over the place. This is one of the ones that we saw the most, a Northern Harrier.

We saw this one along the road towards Head Smashed In when we went out to visit the Buffalo Jump. All along the drive across the prairies towards Fort MacLeod we saw hundreds of these magnificent creatures.

They are stunning birds and I'm sure that they all seemed to know that I was coming along and quite clearly communicated with each other across the miles as every time we approached one and I dared to switch on the camera, the buggers flew off!

Also along the road to Head Smashed In we saw these Red Deer flying across the road and then quite literally flying over the fences at the side of the road. To give you some idea, I would say that these fences are about 5 feet high!

It was great to see and during the space of around 24 seconds we saw 6 animals leap over into the field.

The Buffalo Jump is an exhibition of how the First Nation people used to lure the animals to their death over a cliff so that they could then butcher them for meat and for their hides. Here's Katie feeling sorry for the one that got away.

In days gone by these Buffalo were so abundant that a herd could take literally days to pass you by. Long before guns existed, the tribes used to very cleverly spend weeks planning a route, marking it out with trees and stones, and then dress up like wolves to quite literally scare the massive hoards of beasts over the cliff which was at the end of their Buffalo Drive. The momentum of the crowds of animals running at over 50kmh would carry many of them over the edge of the cliff and they would smash to the ground and die. When the melee had died down, the people below would butcher their prize and have food for the winter and skins and hides to make clothes, shoes and ti pis.

So just behind this lovely picture of Janet and Eamonn is the cliff. At the bottom of the cliff the archaeologists found thousands and thousands of bones and tools that had been used over thousands of years for this gruesome but fascinating practise.

The exhibition itself is really well developed and tells you in no uncertain terms what happened here and how. Not for the faint hearted!

On the day we visited there was an exhibition of First Nations Drumming and Dancing. This was wonderful to see. The colours and the noises were so entrancing and the explanation of each dance and each chant were fascinating.

It was such a hot day, we were all dying of heat exhaustion in our shorts and vests, in the shade, and these people were dancing and chanting dressed up in full tribal traditional dress.

This guy below looked very familiar to me.... and I couldn't think why... He even came over during lunch and asked me to have a look at his computer!

The finale was the dance of the rings. Whilst dancing around and chanting this guy made acrobatic moves with his collection of rings and each turn and flick of his hands and feet (and head!) made another spectacular display as the rings intertwined. At the end of the dance he was wearing 15 rings..

After the exhibition and the dancing display we took a stroll around the bottom of the cliffs at the jump site. We also had a peek into a ti pi.

This is a Hoary Marmot. He was about 15-18 inches long and just soaking up the sun above the dancers.

The only live buffalo we saw were on the way home. This heard being just outside of Head Smashed In. What a fitting end to this superb historical and engaging visit.

In the afternoon we took a trip out to see Frank Slide. I'll let the picture below tell the story...

You can see the mountain behind Linda seems to be missing something. The side of this mountain just collapsed and slid down the hill towards the sleeping folk in the town of Frank. Linda stood next to this boulder to give an idea of scale.

the tranquility of the place is eerie and beautiful. One can only imagine the noise it would have made that night. As far as the eye can see there are rocks and boulders which have just been left as a memorial to those who died.

It's a good Job that this is only a picture show and not a video. You can't imagine the language out of this lot as they emerged from our gentle walk around the mountain at Frank Slide!

:-)

T' Rex and the City

We visited the city of Calgary back in the summer (yes... I'm still writing about it and we're going back in less than 3 weeks!) towards the end of our trip, which was kind of odd having been surrounded by mountains and plains for so long. The buildings seemed somewhat impersonal and cold. The city overall though was really worth seeing. Here we ALL are standing above the 'Stampede Grounds' and the 'Saddle Dome' events arenas with the cityscape in the background.

The city has a lot of sculptures some of which are surprising in where they are placed. There's a huge iron horse made from out of tractor parts which is on a street corner and takes up that much room on the pavement that one has to manoeuvre around it, there's a stone statue of two businessmen greeting each other apropos of nothing else within its own vicinity. The streets at that time of year were teeming with flower baskets.

As it was a Sunday, most places were reasonably quiet. One thing that fascinated me about Calgary were these bridges. They are called Plus 15s. There are around 60 of these bridges covering 10 miles around the city. They are called "+15"' as they are mostly around 15 feet above street level although some are actually +30 and +45. What they are, is the world's most extensive pedestrian walkway system which enables safe passage between buildings and streets without the need to negotiate the traffic, or the weather. They connect hotels, shopping arcades, offices, and they even have their own by-laws to stop such things as people sleeping in them during the winter. Fascinating!

The tower, ("Calgary Tower" renamed from "Husky Tower"), at over 600 feet is visible from all over the city and from up there you can see all over the city. It was built in 1968 and once construction had started, they couldn't stop it as the concrete had to be built up to each level just at the right moment before the lower one had set. Until it was completed, it was always at least partially like a very large blancmange! During the winter Olympics in 1988 they installed a gas burner on the very top and the tower served as the official Olympic Flame. The torch has burned on sevaral occasions since then during public celebrations and the local ice hockey team is named after it, The Calgary Flames.

Up in the deck there is an 11m glass observation platform which stands high up above 9th Street. The angel on your left shoulder tells you that it's perfectly safe and that of course they wouldn't encourage you to stand on it and walk on it if it wasn't so. However... the demon on your right shoulder tells you that you are about to die, the glass will crack and/or fall out, you will plummet to the ground and squash into the tarmac like a jelly and it therefore makes you quite dizzy and it turns your stomach over and over when you first step on to it with much much trepidation, holding onto the sides for dear life itself and almost not daring to look down, just in case you fall!!

This sign didn't help much....

So Eamonn and I decided that we ought to test it out, so we both got on the platform at the same time. I wasn't scared.... honest! What you can't tell from the photograph is that Eam has just composed himself after a mad frenzy of Burpees whilst pointing at me and laughing like a rabid hyena, and that Janet and Linda are having to hold me up, 'cos I actually... I'd just passed out.


We had another day out which would prove to be nothing less, than FASCINATING! Janet and Eamonn took us out..... to The Badlands! No sign of Bruce tho... What you see below is a Sod House. A 'Soddy'.... a small house, or rather a dwelling, made out of turf. These were built out of cuts of grassy turf by the early pioneers as cheap, temporary homes as they built railways and villages. We stumbled upon this example in a somewhat off-beat little village called Beisecker on our trip to Drumheller in the Badlands.


As small as it is, Beiseker has a museum. Dedicated to the CPR railway it is located in the old CPR Train Station at the west end of main street and gives one some idea of the lives of the early settlers of that area. Local volunteers built the Soddy and look after the museum. We were a bit mean really, as one enthusiastic young curator tried to get us to visit the museum, but after helping ourselves to his sod house and the caboose, we carried on to our target for the day...

The Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Now I know that I can be prone to over-enthuse about something that floats my boat, but..., I sincerely mean what I'm about to say in my next sentence...

The Royal Tyrrell Museum, is...., THE BEST EXHIBITION OF ANYTHING... IN THE WORLD!!!


Set right in the heart of the badlands just a little northwest of Drumheller, this museum is unbelievable!

You drive in through Drumheller and it is SO cheezy with its dinosaur themed everything on every corner, that you can be forgiven for being filled with dread. BUT... As you walk through the amazing displays and incredible exhibits, you realise that you are actually privileged to be among a snapshot of millions of years of our Earth's history. So many actual bones and skeletons, captured and restored, preserved and displayed for our education. Below for example is an ACTUAL jaw bone from a Tyrannosaurus Rex and believe me, it is HUGE!

As well a being a superb exhibition facility, this is a working laboratory and throughout you are treated to displays and demonstrations of how they dig up these fragile pieces of our past, and how they preserve and present them. We were there for hours... I could have stayed in there for days!

As well as the internal exhibitions there is a wonderful walk outside through the very places in which the bones are found, still to this day. You can't help but stop and wonder at how so many millions of years ago, these ridiculously massive creatures used to go about their business just like we do now. I urge you , if you are ever lucky enough to have time in Alberta. to visit this place!


After our Jurassic experience we called in at Rosedale to see the suspension bridge over the Red Deer River. Located just outside Drumheller, the 177m bridge was originally built to enable miners from the community of Rosedale to get to work at the Star Mine.

Now it serves as a tourist attraction and there are strict guidelines about using it. No more than 8 people at a time to cross it and absolutely NO BOUNCING on the bridge. Now it's not often that I feel like a big wuss.. but when I saw these two purposefully bouncing towards me... I nearly soiled myself...


Our last visit on this superb historical day out was to see the Hoodoos.


These eerie formations are formed by wind and water. The sedimentary rocks are eroded over thousands of years and the layers that are left exposed form mushroom like statues in the barren landscape. The First Nation people believe that they have spiritual powers and they worry that eventually, when the time and weather takes its toll that there will be nothing left.

It is a fascinating place to be, as near as one can imagine to being on the surface of the moon.

Katie, Eamonn and I climbed up to the top and left the others about half way up as their legs were too short to fit in between the narrow passages.


What a fantastic day out we had in the Badlands.. It summed up for me what the absolute pleasure, and absolute privilege of travelling is and I'm so grateful to have been given this opportunity by our thoughtful and insightful hosts! I think we all learned something!