Naturally...

Most of the rest of the pictures are of nature, and/or us doing stuff in nature. Also, given that the whole job thing kicked off, I've been slack in posting the rest of my pictures and/or updating from where I left off.

Where's Waldo?

Us at the peak of (I believe) the "Three sisters" peak in Canmore, Alberta. The pictures don't do it justice.

Stupid sheep, can't you read the sign?!?
Near Lake Louise (though not Lake Louise itself). Although Lake Louise itself was quite nice, we decided to hike near the slightly more out-of-the-way places.

Great for cliff jumping - to bad the water was frigid.

Kind of reminded me of Ontario.

It's not what you know, but...

Oz's friend Justin (aka J-burt or DJ hybrid) was kind enough to put us up while we stayed in Calgary. We went to a bar where a scene from the movie "Cool Runnings" was filmed (the one where the get in a bar fight), and did some line dancing there, as well as riding on a mechanical bull. Needless to say that good times. Unfortunately, there is not much photographic evidence of these good times.

Oz's friend Tom (aka Tom) lives in Edmonton, which is a city that had a very nice vibe to it (for those comfortable with the comparison, Edmonton=Ottawa vs Calgary=Toronto). I would consider living in Edmonton if the winters weren't so harsh. Tom took us to this nice place to eat that had some pretty delicious Po' boys. Definitely got my money's and appetite's worth. Tom also had a brother Lucas, who has life figured out. Lucas is a park ranger (!) who actually lives in the park with his sweet wife who researches wildlife, they have a sweet home there, have their own garden with home-made greenhouse, lots of awesome stuff on their bookshelf, and still have a large-screen TV on which to play video games. Also, they have a cat. We stayed at their place near Jasper for a couple of nights while checking out the splendid nature nearby.

Lucas' place. Kitty korner to this (so upset we didn't get a picture) was the garden that included a home-built greenhouse. Lots of sheds nearby to house cool stuff. Literally a 2 minute walk away was:

...that was the pathway to the barn-type area where horses could be kept, with trough areas to feed them with hay and whatnot (I've been told from a reliable source that "hay is for horses", so I can only assume that horses or possibly cows would enjoy that type of atmosphere).

Also, I've forgotten to mention our wildlife count. The following two pictures contribute:

...we also saw (another) black bear, a black bear family, a grizzly bear cub (that we very quickly vacated the area for), elk, mountain goats, a polar bear, an alien (on a sign - great marketing strategy), dinosaurs, pirates, numerous birds, prairie dogs, lemurs, and lots of not-so-sapien-homo-sapiens.

This is a picturesque view of some type of lake that drains somehow at some point in the year. I forget all the details, but it was impressive at the time. Also, the guy we asked to take pictures of us did a great job of getting us in the picture, but managed to somehow not get any of the background in the picture, so this is the one I'm sharing:

Later, we decided to scale one of the peaks, mainly to prove our manliness, and ability to deal with snow:

Fortunately, we were able to fend off the yetis (there were multiple signs warning people not to hike to the summit for fear of bears - I think they just didn't want people there for legal reasons because it was snowy and slippery - that we summited anyhow, but did not take pictures of due to lack of non-clouds) and then awesome other things happened that I couldn't fit into this run-on sentence.

Unfortunately, when we got back to the town of Jasper (where the fantastic accommodations were) we were attacked by a ferocious bear:

...stay tuned to find out whether or not I lived or died.

In other news, I've signed a lease to live near Cook street village. Very excited. Will be moving there likely in early August.

The badlands and beyond

Ok, have been a bit lazy doing the updates as of lately. You'll be happy to know that my new job is going well, though. Had the afternoon off today, hence the update.

Anyhow, I last promised to show you a picture of us getting chased by dinosaurs. I lied. It's only one dinosaur.

You'll be happy to know that we managed to get away, no thanks to Hus who just stood there and took pictures. Our escape route was through the badlands. That little tiny dot in the middle is Hus, whom we stranded there after his lack of help with the dinosaur chase.

Then we lost the car (Sunflower), so I had to go to a high point to take a look.

...there she is. We found her, hooray! Now escaping from the dinosaurs will be so much easier.

We were so scared of the dinosaurs that we drove all the way to...

...which has a giant dinosaur moat surrounding it. This place is so magical, that there's a pirate ship sailing through the middle of the building.

This was actually in Edmonton mall. We also went to the water park for the last 3 hours that it was open. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip. So ... much ... fun. Obviously, we didn't take pictures, to Oz and Hus' delight, as I was the grand master champion of all races we had on the water slides. Oz and Hus both did mention to actually stand up on one of them though, so they get honourable mention for that.

Next up, the rockies...

Will post again, eventually.

In other news, we may have found a sweet apartment to rent. We'll find out in a couple of days if the application goes through.

Miss y'all.

To the edge of the prairies

Prarie Dogs! These little guys would be way cuter to have around than squirrels.

We actually ended up taking a right at this junction, which lead us to...

Whoever comes up with the best caption for this picture wins my love.

This scruffy vegetation was in stark contrast to the prairie landscape, and right on the border to these really neat sand dunes.

That's Hus standing in the middle of the dune, to give you an idea of scale.

Next stop was the badlands, where we got chased by dinosaurs. I have pictures to prove it and everything.

Today was my first day at the new job. Full day of orientation. Got to ride in a seaplane to Vancouver, which was pretty neat. Even got to be the co-pilot on the way back (really small planes, and they'll let you sit there if you ask). Beautiful scenery on the whole ride there and back. Two more days of orientation, then the job starts for real.

Ours to discover no longer

Going backwards in time, despite our flux capacitor being on the fritz. We still had to go 88 miles per hour, though.

So sad to be leaving the province that they named a town after our general mood.

Our next prominent stop was Winnipeg, which was actually quite a nice town, that I would consider living in, if it wasn't in Manitoba. The parliament building looked like it could be the set for the next James Bond film, as the passageways were quite large, and it was very open-concept-y in general. Pictures won't do it justice, so I'll let your imagination do the work.

Here's an area that was pretty neat. The whole area is built in a depression in the ground, and circling the area that we're pictured jumping on are these metallic posts ("above" my head in the picture). If you read the inscription in front of the posts, there is a description of which stars line up with which posts at what part of the year. The metallic posts even have double circles that, if you stand in the exact centre of the structure, will line up with where the star should be. Very neat stuff. Unfortunately, we went there during the day, and it was cloudy.

This picture is meant to show our lucky timing. There was a flood (obviously still going on, but abated) in the Winnipeg area before our arrival, and some quite bad flooding in the prairies after our arrival in BC.

A labyrinth is not a maze. This is information that could have come to our attention in the brochure before we drove 30 minutes and got ourselves excited about it.

Please note how the lifeguards are dressed, particularly the one behind the other one in the corner. We went swimming anyhow. This is at grand beach, one of the top 10 beaches in North America. Very beautiful, and extremely vast. I can see how it would be pretty stellar on a hot sunny day. The beach stretches out for quite a ways before it drops off (we never figured out how far because we got cold and turned around).

We also made a crucial error at this juncture. We neglected to go to Gimli, a short 20-30 minutes away at this point, to pose with the world's biggest viking (statue). Personally, I would have gone with a giant dwarf, but that's just me.

Next stop: prairies! There was a lot of this...

Next entry won't be for a few days as I'm off surfing for a bit.

Days 3 and 4

Us getting ready to take flight next to the Wawa goose.

The Shania Twain museum was a bit of a bust given that none of us are particularly big fans. More interesting was the mine museum (in the same building and divided by the Shania Twain museum only by a gift shop), where you get to dress up as a miner, and go into the mine. Not sure why or how this is affiliated with Shania Twain other than geography, but unfortunately, we didn't have time to do the tour.

Next up, we took a bit of a detour to check out lake Superior provincial park, which is among some of the nicest Northern Ontario scenery I have ever seen. This was easily one of the highlights of the trip, with us taking several hikes, one of which was essentially up through the middle of a rocky river, having to take detours around the more treacherous parts. Swimming in a few of the calmer pools was also quite refreshing. Also checked out some pictographs from many yesteryears ago. Spent a night there in a beautiful campground with a vast, expansive rock-beach, of which there is a picture on the left here. Still getting used to this whole insert-your-photo-here formatting...

Spent hours "seeing things" in the clouds.

Where's waldo?-->

Just below is Oz and Hus relaxing at one of the many waterfalls we saw along our epic hike.

Above is Kakabeka falls, just west of Thunder Bay; this is where we spent the night. For some reason, at the time we thought this made more sense than checking out the Sleeping Giant. Funnily enough, with all the people we know in Thunder Bay, none of them happened to be available at the exact moment we were passing through on less than 24 hours notice. Anyhow, the park ranger dude we met in Kakabeka falls was one of the nicest people we met along the entire trip; we debated through the rest of the trip (usually whenever we met another nice park employee) as to whether this type of person is attracted to that type of job, or whether that type of job produces such a laid back, genuinely nice person. We also got really lucky with camping, and only got rained on once or twice throughout the whole trip.

That's it for today. Might be going to Tofino for a few days to go surfing, so might not be posting for a bit. Stay tuned for time travelling and the set of the next James Bond movie.

Days 1 and 2

So the trip starts outside of Bancroft, where my family had rented a cottage to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday. Good times were had by all, too innumberable to recount. Went swimming with Jackson, tried to swim across a lake, retrieved two fishing lures from the lake, enjoyed good company around the fire, learned some new card games, laughed at JC freaking out in a canoe, etc etc etc. I learned a new sport from PD called "beersby" which combines both frisbee and beer. If you know me well at all, you can understand why this is now my new favourite sport on earth. We also did some gunnel-bobbing; everyone won:

Oz and Hus came to stay a night, then we departed on our cross country trip. First stop of note: the big nickel.

...oh yeah, Oz and his brother brought pirate patches from a pirate-themed adventure they had (whole other story he can fill you in on), and we thought it would be funny to take pictures in front of all the "world's biggest" things that we passed with them on.

Hus then had an idea to take a detour to Canada's (the world's?) southern-most polar bear reserve in Cochrane. This is a place where retired polar bears from zoos, and/or "problem bears" are housed. The main selling feature of this day-long detour was that for an extra $5 you get to go swimming with the bear. It's going to be that kind of trip.

Unfortunately for us, there was a glass barrier between us and the bear, which prevented us from petting and/or attempting to riding the furry tractor. Also funny was the fact that there were more employees at this reserve (6) than there were tourists (3 - us). Was still pretty neat to be able to watch the bear walk and swim about. Interesting fact about polar bears: they are one of the few animals on earth know to actively hunt humans.

...well, that's it for now. Stay tuned for news of the Shania Twain museum, the giant Wawa goose, and the rest of our passage through ON.