Calgary

(apologies. I am only well over a week behind)

Calgary. what can I say about Calgary?

Hmm. Well it was COLD!


(OK that isn't frost on the trees - it is pretty lights)

COLD COLD COLD COLD COLD!



There was snow everywhere, except on the roads and the better trod/cleared paths. This was a total novelty for me. OK, I have been To The Snow back 'ome but this is SNOW in a CITY! Not snow in some place two or three or five hours drive from home.



My thinsulate gloves were almost useless. Brr! But my thrummed mitten and my cashmere mitten were nice and warm. Thinsulate seems to work better in wind and natural fibres when it is calm. Go figure.


Go figure even more when you find a lush garden paradise in the middle of town. Devonian Gardens is an indoor garden with water features and lots of lush green plants (including a few Oz natives) slap bang in the centre of town. It is very popular with the locals who are starved of greenery in winter, even though it smells like a biology lab - that weird smell of mould mixed with autoclaved materials. Very odd. Just like these blokes having a nap in a nice "sunny" spot in the gardens. I love the way they play stacks on each other. Why settle for sitting on a rock when you can sit on aother turtle?


So Calgary. Calgary is definately a city in a hurry. Not so long ago it was a prairie town and now it is galloping. I am not dead sure the services or infrastructure there are coping terribly well with the influx of people. It was a nice change to see asians, etc, not just white people. I sorta feel that it is having some birthing pains as it grows up.


(Nathan had a nice little sojourn with a bunch of suffragettes. Gosh they don't make ladies like that these days - they are giants, I tellsya, much bigger than Nathan and he is pretty tall! They were giants of their time and now are giants in perpetuity.)

Does every city in Canada have one of these space age towers?


It took two goes but I eventually found M1 yarn. It is a nice yarn shop, quite spacious - I am used to Aussie shops which seem to be crammed with yarn, piles of it all over the place, bags threatening to land on your head. Aussie yarn shops are very into keeping yarn in bags - heavens to betsy someone might touch it before they buy it! I bought a particularly Lynne coloured skein of sock yarn.


I had a most excellent walk along the Bow River. Y'see I could see a pedestrian (but not boring) suspension bridge just down from where the road/pedestrian bridge crossed the river. It was getting near sunset and I was blessedly cold but I wanted to walk across the suspension bridge. So I followed the river path.


And I followed it


And followed it

(See the dot in the photo? Click for bigger. Yep, that's a bird swimming in the river looking for fish I guess. I have no idea how that bird's feet don't drop off - yes they have heat exchangers in their legs to keep the blood warm but really, why don't their feet just drop off with frostbite? Also is that a loon?)

And followed it

(At this point I should've realised that the river split in two and that the 500m would be a ways - it even has a pointer stabbing at it!)

and followed it....


Until I had almost walked to the zoo. Then I crossed a boring bridge and turned back up the island that the Bow River splits around about 300m after the road bridge.

It seems that the suspension bridge wasn't half a km away as it seemed to be. I was feeling a bit brrrr cold by this stage as I had not expected to walk so far. Still it was a good walk and the river was very pretty.





And we had our shiny new visas so life was pretty good!

Anyone for a game of frisbee golf?


Or maybe you would prefer a nice picnic with a backdrop of Calgary?

No need to bring the Esky/chullybun/cooler! If you want a coldie, just stick it in the snow for a while and she's apples 8-)

All good things must come to an end, so we moved on to BANFF!

On the road again

O Canada!

If only you were full of Canadians, instead of introduced species - everywhere we've gone so far has had large numbers of feral Aussies and Poms.

When we have wireless connection again, prepare to be assaulted with a gazillion pictures of Banff and Lake Louise, not that we have pics of Lake Louise yet.

BTW, we have new visas. Yay! San Jose, here we come! Via Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Waterloo, Toronto, LAX....

It's been real

Today the packers take away our stuff. We have a home tonight but nowhere to sleep. Our neighbours lent us an air mattress but we won't have bedding, etc.

Tomorrow we leave Colorado for Canada. There we hope to get new visas.

I think I'll long have the impression of unfinished business here. We came almost halfway around the world and expected to be here for two years. I had brought my homebody mind around to it to enjoy the challenge of being far away from Home. We've weathered a few crises, wanting to run Home during each of them. I didn't realise how tough it would be being so far from Home, from support networks, from friends. Then when you start making new friends suddenly you have to move.

Colorado is one of the prettiest places I've seen. The mountains are something special. Any Coloradoans who are not getting out there and seeing the mountains - why the heck are you here? Why not go live in Iowa?

But we must move on. We must go where the job is. I am sure that San Jose will prove very interesting, somewhat more traffic but we don't have a car. It has mountains nearby and the SEA! Oh the sea! Plus SF - DH assures me I will spend many happy hours exploring SF. Plus a multitude of yarn shops - more than I have access to here.

So we'll see you on yet another flip side!

Things I didn't know about America #438

When dinner comes out on a plate in the USA, you only get one veg. That's one veg plus a potato or rice or some form of carb. I only found out this is standard yesterday.

Back 'Ome, dinner appears with two or three veg as standard, or a mix of all sorts of stuff. My dinners usually come with at least three veg, usually in great steaming mounds, or stir fries with all sorts. I don't believe in stinting on the vegies. Vegies are Good For You!

So my dear Thanksgiving hosts, if you thought I seemed to be waiting for something, I was waiting for the other veg to appear. I didn't realise American meals only have one veg. I am used to having vegies of every colour on my plate. I was too polite to ask. :-)

Day two: travelling to Chicago

Ah Denver. Denver that could not feed me. Denver that did not even have an obvious supermarket near the central mall. Don't people live in Denver?

We did buy us each a pair of shoes. I had bought new inner soles for Nathan's shoes and he had worn them for four days before the top lining started rubbing off and giving him blisters. Fabulous! We hadn't even started our holiday!

So he got some nice sensible black lace up shoes and I got some weird non-runner walking shoes after trying on nearly every pair of women's (sensible) shoes in the shop.

Nathan developed a gut wobble and looked quite ill whilst we waited for the train. We waited waited waited. We eventually hopped on the train and discovered the joys of travelling on Amtrak.

The seats are larger than economy on the plane (not really that hard) - the chairs in front are so far away I had difficulty putting my feet on the foot rest unless I snuggled down a bit. Even 6'5" hubster was not cramped for room. They are wider too, but the metal bar in between the seat cushioning is a mongrel. I caught myself a few times on it. It is hard to cuss quietly at 1am when you feel like you've busted your leg. They tilt back and have leg rests that lift up (with a little persuasion) so that you feel like you've got a bit more seat and support. They are sleeper seats, not to be confused with the sleeper compartments that have almost real beds in them.

So we rode to Chicago. With respect, can I ask anyone who lives in Kansas or Iowa what on earth do they do for entertainment outside the cities? Nebraska seemed to have a little liveliness in its scenery but most of the Great Plains are exactly that - plain. I know November is not the best time of year for scenery but flat flat flat! Lots of harrowed black paddocks - the soil is amazing. Black or dark brown. Thousands of kilometres of it. Nothing like most Australian soils - here they are rich, fertile, ready for years of hard work. Plus it was grey allllllll day long and drizzled for some of it - I think we saw the sun for about 2 milliseconds. It was clear in Omaha at 5:30am and when I woke up again we were in Iowa and grey! I waited for the sun to rise for two hours and then realised it already had.

We crossed the Mississippi without even realising that it was not just any other river. Disappointing!

Eventually we saw signs of civilisation. Chicago loomed into view.

For some reason I warmed to Chicago even though it tried to kill me with cold. You would think that a singlet, a tshirt, a polo-neck top and a woollen jumper with a rain slicker over the top would be sufficiently warm (plus a scarf muffling me, a woollen hat, a cashmere mitten and a thrummed mitted) but NO! The wind whistled straight through me. I haven't been so cold for ages. Probably not since my sister and I went skiing and we got caught in a blizzard. We walked from Wholefoods (I can eat most of their roast chickens and I did! Hooray!) to Target in the south bank/side area across a bridge that was horridly cold on a night with a strong wind and a bit of drizzle to top it off. I was half frozen solid.

The Target was two storied and had a REALLY funky shopping trolley/cart lifter. We had to go up and down the escalators to check the thing out. It runs between the escalators - the trolley is pulled by a lever type thing whilst remaining horizontal on special runners. We thought it was the coolest thing out! (Except for outside which was realllly cool!)

We stayed at the Holiday Inn. My towel was not oh so fluffy, dangnabbit, and they didn't have any ashtrays to eat soup out of (bonus points to those who can pick the reference and will comment on it!), but they do have shampoo/etc that is scented with peppermint and something a little spicy/masculine but not offensive. Hooray! I took those little sample bottles cos I could use them! That is only the second time ever!

Day One: Denver

Ah Denver. We had never really done Denver much - we usually travelled through rather than stopping to look.

So we had six hours or so to burn.

So we walked down 16th Avenue, which is a mall. Malls are meant for walking along. They are vehicle-less areas. So WTF is that bus doing? There are free buses that go up and down the mall. Nice idea. They are supposed to not pollute much as they are some sort of hybrid system. There was at least one Starbucks on each block. We could not believe it. Then again Starbucks is apparently about the atmosphere not the coffee. Americans seem to like drip coffee and coffee that has been in a pump thermos for hours. Australians tend to like espresso in its many forms, or at least Melburnians do. There's a fair difference between them. We found a 1950s/rock style cafe to eat lunch at (lunch for Nathan - burgers and me won't get along).

We walked and walked and walked until we got to the other end of the mall. Then we looked at the Capitol Building:

It looks a lot like other capitol buildings though maybe not as white. Plus there was the council?county?parliament? building facing the capitol building. Very grand. I have pics but really they are not that grand. The light was from behind the building and it is not well lit.

I was more entranced by this:

yep. Steam coming out of the ground. Doesn't happen in Australia. Happens all over the USA it seems, especially in the colder areas. I remember seeing steam coming out of the road in NYC in August. I can only imagine there are steam pipes running all over the place.

There were a lot of benches in this area. We walked through at about hmm, 3pm. There were a LOT of people staking out the benches. Most of the people were men and had a lot of bags and were pretty darn shabby looking. All bar about 5 benches out of say 100 were already claimed. I wonder if the local residents see the poverty of these homeless people? I found it rather disturbing cos there was nothing I could do for them. Maybe I found it disturbing because we are about to be homeless. We won't have an address for a month.

So it is sorta ironic that one of the next pics I took was of this wall:


What is a city but its people?

Sunset, Nebraska

At last we come to the end of the trip pics for Nebraska. Having bored you all witless, any remaining readers can switch off at the sight of sunset over the prairie.










Oddly, no matter how fast I drove (75mph is fast by Oz legal standards), I could not keep up with sunset! It got away from me on the I80. So did the clouds. They were going south at least as fast as I was on the highway (65mph). Those were clouds in a hurry!

Next time I go to Nebraska, I hope to go to Omaha and meet persons who know who they are ;-) Of course if our upcoming train trip goes ahead, we have to pass through Omaha on the way out and on the way back. The train stops in Omaha at 10:30pm on the way west (back) and at Ridiculous Hour (6:14am) on the way east. Ouch!

On top of the world (a trip to Nebraska, part 3)

Heh, that isn't the sort of title one expects for Nebraska, is it?

The ranger at Scotts Bluff kindly let me go up the top - you can drive right up to the top on a made road through tunnels and all - even though it was pretty much closing time. I guess he figured someone who was from Australia and had driven specifically to go to a woollen mill (his mum knits so when he was posted there she was delighted) ought to see the local sights.

My goodness what a lot of sights. I'll let them speak for themselves.





(Saddle Rock)











As I scuttled around the various short walks on the top of the Bluff oohing and aaahing at the sights I noticed LOTS of bunnies that are almost perfectly coloured to blend into the landscape

and even more trains! Our camera doesn't have a big zoom (heck it is a 4megapixel beast that has now taken 10,000 pics in exactly 11 months) so I don't have pics to share of the trains cos they are like dirty lines with bright dots for lights at the front. It turns out that Scotts Bluff (the town) is on the main east west line so that would be why there were trains about 5 miles (if that) apart on it going in either direction. I was mighty impressed by the number of trains I could see. I would've seen more if I had dropped a quarter or two into the viewing binoculars.

I noticed some sunsetty colours appearing


and thought I had best drive back down the bluff so's I could check out the stuff outside the gates, like the Oregon Trail itself. Alas, not much to see of the trail as it has eroded a LOT - heck you can see how much the sandstone bluff itself has eroded in less than a hundred years - that survey post was level with the rock:

so all the wheel ruts are gone. Still I trotted along a trail that has a lot of history, even if that history is not mine.


Dome rock from the Oregon Trail, and some more :-) These views really made me feel like I was in the Wild West somewhere but this wasn't really wild, not like some of the places we've been. Very cool though.





The sunset light was full on Saddle Rock - how pretty! Like Uluru but not.


And the skies lit up gently over the prairie


(Next, the journey home - sunset over the prairie)

Scotts Bluff (a trip to Nebraska, pt 2)

Ah where were we?

Driving through the wilds of western Nebraska. As I drove, I mused on the landscape. At this stage it was all looooong rolling hills. Imagine being a pioneering (white) family and having oxen pull your wagon over the vast prairie and then getting the wagon over the occasional little creek. I don't know how gullied the landscape was when it was true prairie but there are a few gullies now. They would've been pretty tricky to navigate.

The land itself looks rather barren at this time of the year. Anywhere that isn't irrigated (which is most places now as it is November and snow is expected anytime) was a soft grey/beige/green stubble. I have no idea what most of the land is used for but it has fences so its used for something - cattle mebbe? - and some is ploughed, and I'm guessing some has winter wheat on it just waiting to be covered by the winter snows. It looks like land that is asleep and waiting for the days to start getting longer and spring to come.


Suddenly the landscape changes. Instead of long rolling hills, you discover scarps and pointy mesa type hills and the landscape becomes somewhat more exciting.



Wildcat Hills open up on the long prairie beyond. The far west of Nebraska seems to pocked with the remnants of a plateau. The plateau is only sandstone, soft sandstone, and is eroding away. Scotts Bluff and Wildcat Hills are an edge of that disappearing plateau.

Finally I reached Scotts Bluff. It was not my actual destination - a woollen mill was, but as it turned out Scotts Bluff was *much* more interesting!

I had plenty of time to ponder the bluff and Mitchell Pass as there were roadworks happening.


How would you like to be this guy, standing out in the occasionally bitter wind holding a STOP or SLOW sign? Nice view, though. (taken from the north, coming back from Brown Sheep Mill)

I only twigged that there was something special about the bluff when I saw a sign like this:

Like DUH!

Ah. That would be *the* Oregon Trail then. The one that all those nutty, hopeful, nothing to lose and land/livelihood to gain people dragged their families across America on. In this age of cars, trains and aeroplanes, I cannot imagine how it must've been to hitch some oxen up to a wagon or two and take *everything* you had on a trip across the prairie and the mountains (cos I have been across those mountains and they are rather large!).


(Eagle Rock and wagon)

See? They even have an old wagon or two, minus the covers at this time of year, at the national monument. Guess they don't want them blowing away.... The wagons were *very* narrow - about a metre or about 4' wide at their widest point and maybe 2.5m/8' long. That amazed me. I don't know how those poor women survived having everything they needed in the way of provisions, clothing and basics in that small space. The wagon in the pic is a larger freight wagon. It still is not bigger than a family sized car say a Camry or something like that. You can read more about the history of Scotts Bluff on this NPS page.

Here's some pics of Mitchell Pass, Eagle Rock and some extras. I rather liked this place despite the bleakness of the badlands and of the season.







Just you wait - Even More Pics next time! Still of Scotts Bluff and views from the top! It is quite speccy.

A trip to Nebraska, part 1

On the 2nd of November, a most auspicious day, I decided to do a quick trip to Brown Sheep woolen mill outside Scott's Bluff in Nebraska. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone - visit a woolen mill and get to see a little American heritage.

Driving up the I25 to the border of Colorado with Wyoming is well, not terribly interesting. It's only about 40 miles to Cheyenne from Fort Collins but it feels a fair whack longer.


One of the main things I noticed about northern Colorado was:


and


Yep. It seems to specialise in big powerlines. The two shown are just a subset of the many I saw. There are lots and lots and lots of powerlines.


The reason for the lots and lots and lots of powerlines became pretty obvious too. The wind farm was east of the old (coal fired) powerstation - a nice contrast of old vs new tech, ecologically unsound vs sustainable electricity generation. The windfarm is set well away from the I-25. It seemed weird to me because from one angle all the turbines were in a number of rows. In Oz, windfarms are not in lines as they follow the coast or a range of hills and those landmarks tend not to be in nice geometric lines....


The terrain is fairly flat with low hills rolling away from the Rockies. There was one weird lot of lumpy rocks by the side of the road:


and a metal bison on top of a hill:


But that is about it, unless you count the excitement of a car pulled over with not just three but four cop cars behind him and the coppers checking his car out *very* *very* closely.

I'd show you the welcome to Wyoming sign but well let's just say the camera focused on the inside of the windshield and leave it at that.

Soon enough I saw this sign:

and was so excited about taking a pic of it that I nearly missed the turnoff! Hi Minnie!

They appear to grow satellite dishes in Cheyenne, like some weird and enormous form of fungi:


And off we dashed through a wee bit of Wyoming, which I have to admit was a boring bit of Wyoming because it is prairie and a bit bland this late in the year. The opposite diagonal corner of Wyoming is very exciting indeed since it is the home of Yellowstone.


You can see some prairie on the other side of (Pine Bluff?). It seems to go on forever. It looks very flat, but it isn't. It is just mostly flat.

Finally the sign:

Home of Arbor Day? I guess there are so few trees in a place where the prairie dominates that they wanted a few more trees as windbreaks and to beautify the place. After all the prairie seems pretty trashed now.


I've always thought of Nebraska as being flat. Apparently it is wrinkly around the edges (a bit like me I guess) cos I drove over a lot of small hills, like overgrown sand dunes only rocky, and a few larger hills. At least they know how to make good roads there - the ones around Fort Collins all appear to be based on concrete slabs, which all seem to move, so there is a lot of k-thud, k-thud k-thud as you drive around both on the interstate and around town. (Particularly painful on a pushbike.) All of the ones I drove on in Nebraska (all four of them) were good bitumen (asphalt) roads.

I found a little wind farm to take pics of - do you think I like them?


I even took pictures of shrubs and trees on the roadside because I hadn't seen any for quite some time on my drive. I don't need to share them with you as I am sure you have seen trees and shrubs before, but you do get to see these:

Two months ago that field would have been magnificent. But now? Dead sunflowers all bowing their heads. It is sorta sad and dull. Wonder if their seeds have fallen out yet or will hang in there until they are harvested?

Next - Scott's Bluff National Monument and lots more pics.