Golden To Drumheller

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Politically Sincere Footbridge & Rocky Mtn Trench 

2011 05 31 Golden is the most politically correct jurisdiction in the British Commonwealth. From my official folding breakfast chair I could see solar panels on the Municipal Campground Office, a sun powered public bicycle dispenser, a walking school bus (a string of kids with parents front & back) and, later, in the john, a waterless urinal (faint of heart turn away!).

Waterless Blue Dot

The latest psychological urinal trick is a small blue dot, right where the anti-splash geometry has maximum effect. We aim to please, you aim too, please. One question. I understand one grab bar at a urinal. I don’t understand two. As necessary, the men among you will explain my perplexity to the women.

Is Golden’s greenity anything to do with the fact that everything of consequence is run by ladies? There are rough burly men about, lifting things and grunting, but every business we were in was helmed by a person of the feminine persuasion. Even the mayor is named Christina. I’m just asking.

Busman's Holiday

Stopped at the Golden Library and delivered one of my mother’s books. At the nearby municipal office, the clerks (all women) were uncertain of who was planner this week because of a round robin shake-up. When I observed that it didn’t matter who senior staff was, as an old municipal dray-horse myself, it was the counter crew that kept the whole deal going anyway, they awarded me a municipal pin.

As It Hap Pins

Previously I went from town office to city hall cadging copies of the OCP (borrowing from one document is plagiarism, stealing from many is RESEARCH!). These days Official Community Plans are all on the web and I have to conjure up another rationale for hanging around municipal facilities. Talk about old municipal dray-horse...

Local Government: the finest level of government there is. Federal, Provincial and Territorial bureaucrats don’t see the same faces day-to-day and seldom have someone grab them by the tie over the counter. I used to wear those clip-on ties....

No Parking? Shhhh...

Gordy is headed to Golden to begin patching a year-old bridge over the Kicking Horse River. Gordy is a virtuoso of concrete. His concrete pontoons make the new Kelowna floating bridge float...so far. EsDora threaded across the stricken bridge past multiple flag persons and into the really spectacular part of the Rockies. Hurry Gord!

BC to AB

Stopped at Field for lunch. Carolyn wisely knows that every drive needs a complete break and there is nothing like rustling food from nowhere and eating in contemplation of Mount Stephen to refresh the soul. My uncle Wes was a CP Engineer who sometimes let my cousin Donny steer the trains from Calgary to Field through the spiral tunnels. Lucky kid!

Field & Stream

Canada by Degrees Item: Burgess Shale. The oldest Canadians we are likely to see this trip were caught in an underwater landslide more than half a billion years ago. Flattened, even the shape of their soft body parts were preserved between slabs of shale. As a former zoological anatomist, I can tell you that some of the critters undulating under that shallow sea have body plans with no modern counterparts. Mother Nature seems to try many kinds of life. There are fresh epochs when there are explosions of variety and then long dwindling processes of species elimination. When I hear about the current rash of extinctions I wonder if we are just at some end game which will suddenly convert to a new epoch with new living circumstances that will precipitate a flood of new life forms. The trick is to be one of those surviving critters.

Cambrian Era Wood Bug; There's the Rub

The interpretive centre at Field lets you play with trilobites.

On to Canmore where our trusty GPS took us to a nice person’s driveway rather than a RV encampment. A little back tracking takes us to the municipal campground which is woefully under subscribed. Although EsDora is nimble enough to back into a space (with Carolyn waving her arms frantically as a picnic table looms in the back-up camera) I selfishly take one of the pull-throughs, down stakes and commence active slothery.

Here comes the Wapiti Hipity Hopity

2011 06 01 At Canmore:

Relocated to a site with WiFi in anticipation of tonight’s Canuck’s game.

A very pleasant walk along the Policeman Creek past the original North West Mounted Police building (cottage size, now a tea room; that’s how we Canadians settled the West!).

Carolyn shopped. As we roamed the main drag, I read from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on nearby sidewalk benches. The only showers happened when the sun came out, so the book dried as it was watered. Lunch in the Rose & Crown pub where they assured they were serving diet Guinness. I got to shop at Second Story Used Books run by Lawrence & Heath Hutchings downstairs at 713 Main Street.

Selected items in Canmore:

Kananaskis Means "Big Head"

Policeman Creek

WiFi Hockey Lashup

2011 06 02 Through Calgary

After even a short time on the road, big cities rattle me. Manoeuvring a too wide, too long conveyance on strange streets filled with drivers who know their way rattles me. We had a gracious invitation to stay at a friend’s. The surroundings were equipped with standard parking stalls which required funding every four hours. No place to alight.

Carolyn got VVBoutique time.

Calgary has very few listed RV sites. One within walking distance of the extensive Light Rail system would have been ideal.

Ended up at Mountain View Camp N51 04.203 W113 51.826

Thoughts while dreaming

INVESTMENT: It may be that if you put some money in and get more money out that all you have done is to devalue your’s and everybody else’s money. Investment, even successful investment, needs to expand the general economy not just pass numbers around.

FRIENDS: While old friends are the best friends, friendship needs to be nurtured. In my life, with so many schools in so many provinces, so many moves to so many neighbourhoods, so many jobs and projects in so many places, enduring friendships have been hard to maintain. This trip is partially about contacting old friends and relatives. There are many dear acquaintances but we live parallel lives and (mathematically) parallels are hard to intersect.

2011 06 03 Still in Calgary

EsDora shows an engine needs attention light. In consideration of her dowagerhood, we off to Canadian Tire to have her codes read. While Carolyn gathers the little list of discovered necessities, it is determined that the transmission needs a look see. Off to Universal Ford Truck division. The young lads are most attentive, read the codes and suggest we go to lunch while an estimate is generated. The bottom line is that the transmission will need to be replaced. That’s the good news. The bad news is that securing the right tranny will take two weeks. After an earnest chat we mutually determine that the transmission will function for an indeterminate but predictably short period, that overdrive is the problem, that shifting will be “bumpy” and eventually EsDora will experience “slipping”.

The decision is: the trip continues. Budget is adjusted to include a new transmission and at some point in the future we will have a two week “vacation” from our “holiday”. Wonderful opportunity for a side trip we say with our glass half full.

Relocate to Whispering Spruce Camp in the hamlet of Balzac just north of Calgary.

2011 06 04 Whispering Spruce N51° 13.451’ W114° 00.257’

A bitterly cold misty morning. Sure wish the little furnace would do more than blow cold air.

First Light in Balzac

Dreams while thinking: Calgary is a hum of activity. Overlooking Hwy 2, an endless flow of single occupant vehicles and impossibly long B-Trains swishes by. Do all these people and goods need to get both north and south? Can’t the Calgary bound Pepsi transport do in Edmonton what the Edmonton bound Pepsi truck proposes to do? I’m not talking about all the oil being burned, just the simple economy of efficiency. This from a man lugging a small motel on his back.

Spent a glorious day with a friend from School of Architecture days. In our parallel lives we designed and caused to be built, significant bits of cities.

Dan’s city pieces are thoughtful, passionate and urbane. Shared the bumps and boones of two longish careers which began with both of us pledging to create, not “R”chitecture, but Comprehensive Life Support Systems. Too busy gawking to document, but Calgary, for all my driving trepidation, is worth a return trip. In a small, speedy car.

TO DO: Promised Dan a copy of “The World’s Largest Jellyfish” a Super 8 epic documenting our part in building the (then) largest ever inflatable structure at the current site of UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium. Some day a future archaeologist will find a mysterious, perfect circle of 360 buried tires more than an acre in span. This movie reveals all. Shelter costing 12 cents a square foot in 1971 dollars.

2011 06 06 at Drumheller N51 28.103 W112 42.929

On the way a stop at Horseshoe Canyon where the underside of the prairie is revealed.

Dark Layer is Coal, It Seams.

In Drumheller, if you sass the lady at the River Grove Campground, she rents you a site with two big trees you have to back between. Mirrors clear by six inches on a side. Carolyn outdoes herself arm waving and mouthing profanity at driver. Profanity is symetrical and can be understood in reflection it turns out.

Right Between the Two Big Trees

Drumheller is a neat town from an urban design perspective. For example:

Great Pedestrian Street

Except for...

Rain all night. In early AM, wading into the micro-sized bathroom is never a good thing. The least bad thing is because the vent, which was opened to dry laundry hanging in the shower stall, has flipped up and is letting the rain in. Will try a permanent fix when rain stops. Of course, then it won’t be leaking.

The birds greet dawn just as noisily in the pouring rain.

Yesterday afternoon had a great walk around Drumheller.

Another Brick in the Wall

Hard to avoid dinosaurs which are on every street corner. When a Prairie town themes it themes hard. This early in June, the tourist centre was hopping.

Don't Telus; A Dinosaur on Every Corner

The Red Deer River, which flows down to Empress, is extra muddy and is receding; we hope... The River Grove RV park is down by the river behind a massive dike. Spend most of night listening to rain impact EsDora’s roof and remembering newsreels of mobile homes being carried away by flood tides.

Don't Sweat Flooding, People bin campin' here for years...