2008: Week 30

Another week...another week. It was a routine week for the most part, with few stories to tell. Work is quiet, and the summer weather makes concentration difficult - who wants to be stuck in the lab when it's sunny?

The weekend was spent camping in Banff National Park. We stayed at Castle Mountain (my favourite campground) and managed 3 short hikes. Rather less than what we planned, but whatever... July is peak flower season and I saw some new species and some old favourites.

I also enjoyed seeing the effect of fire on the landscape, and comparing it to the rapid regeneration I've seen after bushfires in Australia. We spent time in 2 fire-ravaged areas, one burnt in 1993 (a controlled burn), and the second in 2003 (wildfire!). The area burnt 5 years ago is still a barren field of sticks - the only green comes from fireweed. In a few weeks the green will turn to bright pink as the fireweed comes into flower. The area burnt 15 years ago has regenerated a little more - there are now small pine trees around 1-2m tall starting to take over. Despite the slow recovery, fire is important to the alpine environment, allowing small leafy plants to flourish and provide food for many of the animals who live here.

Best of the week
- Going out for lunch - 3 days in a row!
- Hiking in July, peak wildflower season
- Looking forward to up-coming adventures (details soon!)

Worst of the week
- The poor health of a friend :(
- 4 years today

Summer Coralroot

IMG_3067, originally uploaded by thegreendragonfly.

Seen in Waterton Lakes National Park, July 2008

Pointedtip Mariposa Lily

IMG_3022, originally uploaded by thegreendragonfly.

Seen at Waterton Lakes National Park, July 2008.

2008: Week 27

The first few days back in Canada were a calm change from my visit home. Tuesday was Canada Day, but I was tired, and Matt needed to work, so the only festivities for us were watching the fireworks from our balcony. On Wednesday I finally returned to work, and of course nothing had changed. Summer at the University is very quiet - I think about half my colleagues are on vacation. Even my boss has disappeared for a month!

On Thursday afternoon I left early, and we headed out of Calgary to Waterton Lakes National Park for the weekend. Waterton is at the very southern corner of Alberta, and the park is continuous with Glacier National Park in Montana and Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park in British Columbia. The weather was a little odd - mostly sunny, but we did experience a brief (and intense) storm which knocked the tent around quite a lot!

Other highlights of the weekend were spotting a grizzly bear, a moose, and plenty of squirrels, chipmunks and deer. The wildflowers were at their peak, so I took lots of pictures, and managed to spot several species I'd never seen before. And finally, on our way home we visited the buffalo paddock, a rather bizarre part of the park where a herd of "wild" bison live in a large fenced-off area. We were able to get up quite close (staying in the car of course!).

Best of the week
- Camping and exploring Waterton Lakes National Park
- Discovering that the tent is much more weather-proof than I thought!
- Coming home to Matt.

Worst of the week
- Back to reality at work.
- Discovering the dog got into my room (and in the garbage) while we were camping.

Weekend pictures ... finallly!

Waiting for a campsite

Mt Rundle by full moon

Cascade Mountain

2008: Week 20

Busy, busy, busy is the best the description for the last week. On Tuesday I flew to Seattle to meet with some collaborators at the Institute for Systems Biology, and to attend a NW user-group meeting for our high throughput microscope. Unfortunately, work has been so crazy that I left with an un-started power point presentation for the talk I was scheduled to give on Thursday. I'm usually not that much of a procrastinator, but this time I was up VERY late the night before putting together my slides. Aaaggghhhh!!!

I flew back to Calgary on Thursday night so that we could get away early on Friday for our first camping trip of the season. After a few dramas with closed campsites, and very long check-in lines we finally had our spot and set up the tent. The rest of the weekend was rather laid-back, with only one hike, on an easy trail. At the top of the trail was an additional loop trail through a canyon, which we decided to try. After a fairly scary walk along the snow-covered creek-side track we came to a bridge, crossed over, and saw ... a bear! Well, Matt saw a bear (he was ahead of me), and we immediately turned around and clambered back over the ice. So there's no photo, but we made it home without an unpleasant incident.

Blogger is having trouble posting photos right now, so I'll post some weekend pictures tomorrow.

Best of the week
- Catching up with giant tropical penguin for coffee and a Gravity Pope fix.
- Getting away from Calgary for a weekend in Banff National Park.
- A long weekend! Happy Birthday Queen Victoria!

Worst of the week
- A magical mystery bus tour of Seattle trying to find a power adapter for my computer (note to self: check all computer equipment before leaving home). Eventually I managed to find the Apple store.
- Busy, busy, busy: stress, stress, stress.

2008: Week 14

This week seemed long. The weather has turned a little colder again, and despite the appearance of tulip shoots in many of the gardens I pass each day, it feels that spring will never arrive. Don't be fooled by the photos though, they were taken at the Sunshine ski resort, high in the Rockies. The ski season will continue until the end of May - hopefully Calgary will be green again by then!

I have been enjoying two books this week - A Lineage of Grace and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. The first was a Birthday gift from a very dear friend - well chosen and well timed once again - and I'm enjoying it very much. The second is Anne Rice's follow up to a novel she wrote after her returning to the Christian faith of her youth. I admire her integrity in writing about what is significant to her, even though it is a quite a change from her earlier work! She spends some time exploring what it meant in a practical sense for Jesus to find places of solitude - very relevant given my never-quiet household.

Best of the week
- A new recipe for Cranberry and Zucchini muffins - I'll take a picture next time and post the recipe on eatdrinkcook.
- A lovely day skiing at Sunshine.
- Ottawa [just] scraped in to the NHL playoffs.

Worst of the week
- Lab work on Saturday and Sunday because my cells decided that Friday was the perfect day to be ready for an experiment.
- More strange interactions at work - do I somehow attract weird behaviour?

Me, skiing at Sunshine

Mountains

I managed to capture a photographic glimpse of the mountain view I enjoy on the way to work most days (click on the picture for a bigger version). Calgary is around 100km from the base of the Rockies, which should give you some perspective on how large they actually are.

New photos

Lake Minnewanka, originally uploaded by thegreendragonfly.

I've posted some new photos from 2 recent trips to Flickr. Firstly our short visit to Ottawa and Ithaca at the end of May, and a camping trip last weekend to Tunnel Mountain.

Summer Camping

Our campsite, originally uploaded by thegreendragonfly.

Last weekend was the Victoria Day long weekend here in Canada, which is the "official" start of summer. It's also the weekend where most of the campgrounds in Banff National Park open for the season. We found out on Friday morning that our Saturday French class was canceled for the long weekend, so we both left work early, ran around like crazy people for a few hours, and then headed up to the mountains to camp.

We had a wonderful weekend at the Two Jack campground just outside Banff, even though it was cold and wet most of the weekend. Having somehow gained a reputation for being a princess when it comes to camping, I managed to prove myself after surviving freezing temperatures (it actually snowed the last night), intermittant rain, and plenty of mud.

Highlights of the weekend included watching a huge bird scoop a trout out of a lake and eat it, climbing the base of Cascade Mountain to get a view of Lake Minnewanka, lots of wildlife, and the Ottawa Senators beating Buffalo on Saturday to secure their spot in the Stanley Cup Final.

Pictures are posted on Flickr.

Escape the city

Southern Alberta has finally defrosted enough to contemplate leaving the city limits and exploring the surrounding areas. On Sunday we drove roughly 200km SW through Okotoks and the Turner valley, down the Cowboy Trail, and through Crowsnest Pass into the neighbouring province British Columbia (photos are here). A beautiful area - the contrast between the prairie landscape and the Rocky Mountains is amazing! And being Spring, there were lots of baby animals around - horses, cows, and deer. Crowsnest Pass has many relics of unsuccessful coal mining operations in the area, including the Frank Slide, a disturbing mass of boulders that slid off the face of Turtle Mountain in 1903. The "rock avalanche" extends at least a mile from the base of the mountain . It wiped out part of the town of Frank and a large stretch of railway in its 100 second journey.

Heading back into Calgary we decided to drive along Macleod Trail instead of taking the highway. Close to 100 blocks of strip malls, an unpleasant contrast to the prairie wilderness just a few kilometres away.

Banff, Stampede, and Home

Getting a little out of date here. Sorry.

Thursday Matt and I drove out to Banff National Park, a little over an hour outside of Calgary. I had really hoped to see an elk, but it wasn't to be. Still, there was no shortage of impressive sights - Lake Louise gleaming turquoise against the craggy mountains and distant glacier, Moraine Lake more blue than I thought possible, the Crowfoot glacier (one of the toes has receded since it was named), and Peyto Lake and its source glacier viewed from the highest pass in the park.

Friday we joined the cowboys and girls at the Stampede for mini donuts (think of a bigger version of the Berry Donut Van serving bags of miniature hot fresh cinnamon donuts - yum!) and chuckwagon races. Alas, I couldn't find a cowboy hat I liked enough to fork out $30. The races were followed by a kitschy patriotic show featuring the "Young Canadians of the Calgary Stampede". It was pretty cool, although a little bizarre to hear Canadians being so overtly patriotic. They usually tend towards more subtle maple leaves on their backpacks or hockey jerseys. The bars afterwards were crazy, but we finally managed to find a beer at the Unicorn Pub. It's still a mystery how a pub founded in 1979 could be Calgary's original pub. It's a young city, but really...

Saturday was a sleep in followed by some pretty good Mexican for lunch, then off to the airport. Quite some tears later I was on the WestJet plane (kind of the Canadian version of Virgin, lots of fun) back to Ottawa. It's a little strange to think that the three and a half day drive could be reversed with a three and a half hour plane ride. Matt's lovely parents picked me up, fed me coffee and alcohol, then let me sleep in on Sunday AND fed me bacon and eggs for breakfast! What legends!

Of course all good things eventually end, and after breakfast I headed back to Ithaca. A very uneventful drive, which may or may not have been punctuated by a trip to the Carousel Mall in Syracuse. And finally I arrived back to Ithaca, to a steamy 30C apartment, some very wilted plants, and the fun of unpacking. Oh, and work tomorrow. Hooray....