Was out for a stroll and had to take this shot over one of the lakes in our part of Calgary. Gorgeous colours.
Category: Alberta
Only In Calgary
Another reason to love Calgary. Check out this forecast. Rain and plus 5c changing to an evening thunderstorm with plus 3c. Then to complete the trifecta, we have snow overnight and minus 5c. Don’t see that every day.
Celebrating The First Deck Beer Of The Year
Put this up on the wrong place lol
The Skaters Of Calgary
You may remember my post on the Skaters of Seville, if not it is here. There was another reason for our interest (insert parental pride here). That is the talents of our sons as aggressive roller-blading. Basically, like doing skateboard type tricks, but on roller blades. I bring this up as our youngest popped a video on Facebook which made think of, first, Seville, and second, how good he is on his skates. Take a moment and watch the video.
Pretty cool. Wish I was still agile enough to do that.
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To Sail Or Not To Sail – Ghost Lake, Alberta
We last left off awaiting Lori’s post on the Glenmore reservoir Sailing School adventure. As we awaited, I posted about our small road trip to Lake Newell. Well, I guess we are still awaiting, so I will move on to our next investigation, Ghost Lake, near Cochrane, Alberta.
The lake is a reservoir on the Bow River, withing spitting distance of the Rockies. We found it had spectacular views, a large community of boats, a sailing school and plenty of mooring availability. In other words, it ticked most of our boxes. What it is missing is the ability to go on week-long adventures, as in, no down lake areas to moor or anchor. Very beautiful, only that this is all there is. Scratch Ghost Lake.
Didn’t take to many decent pictures, but here is a video of crazy Canucks sailing Ghost Lake in November.
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- To Sail Or Not To Sail – Lake Newell (isitpossibletoseeitall.wordpress.com)
To Sail Or Not To Sail – Lake Newell
When we last left off, we were about to take our first lessons at the Glenmore Reservoir here in Calgary. Lori asked to write this and now, months and months later, I have given up and am moving on out of sequence. After our Glenmore adventure, we determined that we may need a spot to practise with a cheap 20 footer, or something of that ilk. Basically, we are full of ideas, but no plan, kind of winging it as we go. We had asked around and we were told of another reservoir near Brooks, Alberta that offered space and consistent winds. Many people had boats here, and it was reasonably close to Calgary. So, off we went to investigate.
We quickly determined it was a lake of some substance, just not the prettiest lake. This is quite common on the prairies.
We also determined that some pretty good size boats were out here.
Unfortunately, we also determined that the lake was not what we were looking for. It definitely had few surprises for wind as it was a good-sized body of water with few impediments on shore to disrupt the wind. This was also a negative as were looking for a place that could give us with enough variety and nooks and crannies to keep us occupied on overnight trips. This was not a feature of Newell Lake. Can’t win them all. We will continue the search in our next instalment.
A Beautiful Winter Day In Calgary
Had a beautiful walk today. Cool, crisp and clear.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons
Living in Calgary gives us ample opportunity to hit the Rocky mountains when the urge strikes us. Banff is an hour from our front door and Lake Louise a little further down the highway. This shot was taken in Lake Louise in late May, just as winter is loosening its grip on the lake.
- Lake Louise As Spring Takes Over
To Sail Or Not To Sail – Now What
As I noted in the earlier post, To Sail Or Not To Sail – What we Did On Our Summer Vacation, we have made the decision to explore the feasibility of retiring on a sailboat. Having made that choice, we hit the first hurdle, which is simply put as “Now What”.
Our first step was to visit a sailing shop of some sort. These are fairly rare when you live in an area without access to your typical sailing venues. We are kind of landlocked with no big lakes close by, which is not really a good thing. We did find a shop (Glenmore Sailboats) in Calgary and popped in for a visit. Very friendly place and very willing to discuss sailing and live-aboard. As first moves go, this turned out pretty well. We asked questions, he answered. We asked where people sailed in the area and he listed off 4 places. These are Chestermere Lake, Glenmore Reservoir, Ghost Lake and Newell Lake, Alberta. We now had some places to check out. We asked about lessons and he recommended the sailing school at Glenmore Reservoir. We asked about live-aboard and if people actually do what we were thinking. The answer was a resounding yes. He knew of many people who do it. Some succeed, some don’t, which makes complete sense. Preparation is key.
We left feeling pretty good about things, other than the answers creating even more questions. I’ll leave that to later and concentrate on our next moves. Lori arranged lessons on the reservoir through the Calgary Sailing School. These were to start on June 1 and were on Lasers. I’ll leave that experience for the next post.
At this point, we now know that we are going to seriously look at this, that it is doable as people do it all the time. We immediately went into lala land and started casing out costs and boats. I was shocked. Check this one out.
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Pretty impressive living space. The pricing is amazing to. Sailboats in this class can go for anywhere from $75-125,000. The other part we looked at was living costs including maintenance. This is where it gets hairy. We have read that you can do this for anywhere between 500 and 5,000 a month. Both ends I see as extreme and the most common number I see is 3,000. The idea suddenly becomes a bit less crazy.
I’ll leave off here and take you to our adventures on Glenmore Reservoir on my next post.
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Janice and Kirk Come To Calgary
My sister Janice and her husband Kirk (they just retired so I’m kind of pissed at them) popped out for a quick visit with us over the Canada Day long weekend. We did a bit of sightseeing with them before they headed off south into Montana. I have decided to name this the Great Calgary Wildlife Tour.
We did an afternoon in downtown Calgary. You can get a nice drink and a stupendous view of Calgary’s downtown wildlife from this perch on Stephen Avenue. A great place for people watching.
We did a run out to Banff and Lake Louise. On the way we saw a moose, but could not stop to take a picture.
As we pulled out of Lake Louise and onto the Bow Valley Parkway, I spotted something in the ditch, a flipping bear. I pulled over to the shoulder to try to get a picture. Please note the car to the right. This is a panic-stricken idiot of a tourist who decided to stop in the middle of the freaking highway. Also note the oncoming car moving at 60 miles per hour. Also note that the fool was blocking our view and could only shoot out the rear window.
As we continued on, we came up on a line up of traffic. It was like the drive through at Tim Horton’s on a weekday morning. As we inched our way along, I soon saw what the hold up was. A Bighorn Sheep on the side of the road. Once we got up to it, I literally stuck my phone out the window and took a picture. The pavement edge is in the bottom right corner.
Our next stop up the road was at a spot where about 30 vehicles were pulled over. We looked, couldn’t see anything and then noticed the elk, way back in the forest. Kirk hopped out and headed for them. He got the shot from afar. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that they wander the streets in parts of Banff.
To sum up the day, we got pictures of 2 elk, 1 bear, 1 bighorn sheep and 3 beer drinkers. We didn’t get shots of 1 moose, a bald eagle and many gophers. A pretty good day.
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