Sheep River, Okotoks

For those of you who have followed this blog for a considerable period, you might recall this post about a walk that we took along the Sheep River in the middle of winter, in early January 2008...
Walk Along Sheep River - January 2008

A rather different scene presented itself on a visit there today, a glorious day in early autumn with a clear blue sky and temperatures up in the high 70's.We just love this time of year - it is so pretty.

J&E.

Monster Trucks - The Stills

We went along to the Stampede Grandstand today to watch the Monster Trucks (and more). We had never been along to such an event before and it turned out to be good fun. Noisy as hell, as you might expect - but that will become more apparent in the follow up post to this (which we'll put up whenever we get a chance to process the video footage that we took). Anyway, enjoy...This guy was from Lethbridge, Alberta...Deerfoot Trail on a Monday morning???It wasn't all trucks. Incredible skills were displayed by these guys, this being just one sequence of many that we took...J&E.

Changing Seasons at Heritage Park

Jan's Mum and Dad are back with us at present. They only went home on May 2nd so this place can't be all that bad, eh! It's lovely to have them back and to anyone moving over from the UK, we can say that it is a real help to the settling process to have a family/friend visit or two booked in for the months ahead, not necessarily right at the off (you need to get yourselves sorted first) but a way down the line. In our experience, in those times when homesickness kicks in (and it is entirely normal to miss something big or small, or someone, at some point) then knowing it is x number of weeks until a family member of friend is going to come bouncing excitedly out of the airport, is a real boost. Of course, we know that financial, health or other constraints may prevent this for the families and friends of some people that move over but where that is not so, we would certainly recommend it.

Moving on, with Jan's mum and dad here, we took them along to one of our favourite spots in Calgary, which as regular readers will know, is Heritage Park. From two different vantage points in Heritage Point, first, looking towards the Prince House and second, looking west across the Glenmore Reservoir, it is fascinating to watch the contrasts that come with the changing seasons. In these sequences, the first picture is taken in the middle of winter in December 07, the second in the height of summer in August 08 and the third, just 5 weeks later, on a very autumnal September 27th, 08.Here's one or two more pics from today's visit...we don't believe we have covered too much of this before...For those of you who know us from British Expats, maybe we feel a new avatar coming on!You break left, I'll break right, that'll throw 'em!...Fabulous, fabulous place.

J&E.

Banff - Lower Bankhead

On our past visits to Banff, we have driven the quite lovely Minnewanka Loop past the lake of that name and Eamonn's favourite, Two Jack Lake. The loop also takes you past the site of the former coal mining town, Bankhead, and we have always promised ourselves that on a future visit, we'd have a proper investigation of the remnants of the place. We finally did this on the way back from Kelowna (see next post down). As well as some pictures of the town as it is now, we took some shots of the supporting informational plaques...so we'll let the pictures tell their own story. To read some of the plaques, you may have to click on the pictures to enlarge them.J&E