Bow River

This evening I went down to the river to fly my kite but the wind was non existant so I started to play with the ice instead. I pushed out a couple of ice bergs about 4 ft long then found that the ice at the edges has formed huge crystals, they were about a foot long, the thickness of the ice.
Despite my best efforts of jumping on the edge of the ice I couldn't break of a large chunk.

Ice crystals, they shatter off and sound like breaking glass.

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The ugliest mermaid ever

In an indian fur shop down the road is a decent collection of taxidermy animals, mostly moose, elk and deer but in a cabinet st the back is a mermaid.

Afterward we went to have a look in the park museum which also had a heap of taxidermy animals too. Here are some if the more unusual ones for us.

Pelican that has a horn on it's beak

Bison

Weasels

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Banff

Today we arrived in Banff. The town is west of Calgary in the rocky mountains, in fact it it's surrounded by mountains and on a river. We have had a good look around the town and have even seen several wild animals, either deer and/or elk.

Bow river waterfall, as you can see it's still extremely iced over

This used to be at the bottom of the ocean

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Royal Tyrell Museum

Yesterday we visited one of the best museums in the world. All of the displays were fantastic and informative. The museum houses fossils, displays and working scientists. There is information on each of the fossils about how it came to be at the museum as well as the normal stuff about name and age etc. One of the most fascinating specimens is a plant. It is one of the first vascular plants to inhabit the land and had no roots or branches, it is only about the size of the pin part of a drawing pin or thumb tack.

After visiting the museum, which took all day, we looked around the path outside which is in a provincial park and has given up many fossils. On the way around the 1 km track we found several small pieces of petrified wood including a piece protruding from a pice of sandstone.

Other pictures from the museum

An ammonite

A 110 million year old marine reptile seeping oil that the bones absorbed

Many of the backdrops bring the skeletons to life

Alberta 69 million years ago

the badlands today. You can see the amount of erosion, it's hardly surprising that so much stuff is found here.

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Drumheller, The Canadian badlands, Dinosaur country

Just north east of calgary is a town called Drumheller. It is situated in a canyon and is the place in Canada to go to see dinosaur fossils. We came over on the greyhound bus and now we are here I almost wish we had a car. The Tyrell museum, which is the main attraction, it's 6.5 km from where we are staying. We walked half way there yesterday afternoon then realized it wasn't worth continuing as by the time we would have arrived it would have been almost closing time. On the way back we took our time and had a closer look at the eroding cliffs. We found a cactus, some fossil wood and a canadian $10 note so it was worth the walk anyway.

All around town are concrete dinosaur statutes in bright colors that are quite cute.

Visitor information centre and the worlds largest dinosaur.

Cactus that live in the freezing cold

Canyon cliffs

Drumheller main road

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Just killing time

Not much been going on, it's been snowing again a little. We are thinking if going to the dinosaur museum in a nearby town as well as Banff next week.

We thought they we we're cold

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Snowman

This is the mini snowman we built this afternoon. It took about 1 minute.

These are the 3 big snowmen some other people from the hostel built before we got out.

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Calgary, interesting city

There are a lot of homeless people around and although they seem harmless enough you can't feel completely relaxed around them. For example we had gone to mcdonalds and it was quite late 10pm. There was a guy who was soliciting for coins and started to look at womans backpack until she saw him then he stopped. He wasn't a safety threat though as he seemed quite out of it and a slight breeze would have been all it would have taken to knock him over. We sat away from the window but where we could see out. The homeless started accumulating outside like zombies, there was about 6 of them and it started to feel like we were in a scene of night of the living dead or something. No problems though, didn't even ask us for money. Maybe it's the rough look we've got going on with the army surplus jackets.

Last night it snowed again so the place looks fantastic.

Gophers, they were running all around the hill never going too far from a burrow entrance and quickly disappearing whenever a seagull flew nearby.

Calgary city

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Homeless?

We are in Calgary and had gone across to the convenience store across the street, on the way back whilst waiting to cross the road a lady in a car stopped and said we are having some food down here if you want to join us. I said thank you and we crossed the road back to the hostel, I said to sharon that we must look like homeless people. It was kind of funny.

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Sick

We haven't been doing much the last few days as we have both got the cold again. Getting better slowly though so should be some more blogs soon.
Meanwhile heres an interesting site I found.

Http://realbibleverse.blogspot.com/

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West Edmonton Mall

Yesterday we went to West Edmonton Mall. I don't think it's the biggest mall we have been to but it's certainly the best. Sure they have plenty of shops and a couple of food courts but they also have a kids theme park, ice skating rink, bumper boats, a big pool with partially submerged submarines and a ship, a Sealion show and finally a massive wave pool with several water slides. We weren't going swimming but it sure looked like fun, I was thinking about going ice skating until the session started and the pros came out to practice, for sure there would have been blood, probably mine. They were great to watch though, spinning and going flat out backwards.

Yes they are real trees

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Edmonton city

Today (yesterday now) we walked across the bridge to downtown Edmonton, we are quite pleased we are staying where we are as there's not much on offer there. It looks nice but is lacking in shops and cafe type outlets on the street, I guess you get that when the place has snow for half the year but where we are staying south of the river has plenty.

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Skiing @ Snow Valley Edmonton

Yesterday we went skiing at snow valley which is basically in the city and accessible by local busses. I stuck to the carpet lift on the bunny hill and Sharon had a play around on a small slope near the shop. It was only $10 for the carpet lift plus $24 for the gear hire. It was fun, we both fell over, I will try to get back next week if they are still open.

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