Last Wednesday, Collin and I headed over to Prince's Island to see a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, put on by the drama masters students from University of Alberta and... d'oh. Another place that has masters students. It was really fantastic - I've never seen it performed before, and the setting was perfect for it. I was really impressed by the cast's athleticism (the park's design is such that the scenes that conclude or are interspersed with Helena chasing Demetrius were incredibly effective and hilarious: the two actors were flat out sprinting after each other along the jogging paths).
We had a fun time, and the weather was lovely. So, that was that.
On Saturday, we headed up north, east of Innisfail, to the banks of the the Red Deer River. Some friends of ours have a family cabin they invited us up to, and we were both ready for some time outside of the city. "Cabin" seems like a bit of an understatement: as one of our friends said, you can get a pretty good deal on land out there. Most people who go to buy a cabin want a cabin in Banff, not on the edge of Badlands.
Most people are crazy, says I. Their house was lovely, and fit three couples and two toddlers quite easily. Some enterprising family member had also built a hot tub on the deck out of a plastic water trough and some copper plumbing, with a pump and a wood-burning stove to circulate hot water through it. It was big enough to hold six adults (although we did end up recreating Archimede's 'Eureka' moment - and good luck trying to keep three off-duty physicists from idly calculating our collective volume when the opportunity presented itself). It was a wonderfully relaxing spot to watch the Perseid meteor shower streak across the dark country sky.
The land owned by the family was atop a bluff. Their neighbors on one side raised cattle and (I think?) potatoes, on another side was Crown land.
"Crown land?" Collin asked. I was too busy being impressed by the proximity of royalty to comment. I am, after all, an American.
Of course, it does not mean that it's literally owned by royalty (although in my defense, Edward, the Duke of Windsor, did own a ranch in the Bow Valley so there was some precedent for my assumption). It merely means it's state land. So nobody was likely to notice or care if we did end up tromping across it.
After I was told that there were fossils around, I went off to tromp with a vengeance. Their property is bordered, as I mentioned, by the Red Deer River. On the other side, above the narrow, verdant banks, rose a bluff of gorgeously banded sediments characteristic of the Albertan badlands. It was along this river in 1884 that a geologist first discovered what was to become the province's official fossil: Albertosaurus sarcophagus. So to say that I tromped is perhaps untrue - I may have actually been skipping as I left.
At least, at first. While Collin remained back at the cabin with Bill and the kids, drinking beer and evidently being towed around by a four-year-old looking for mice, I was collecting several nice rocks, but hadn't found any fossils. And my window of opportunity was closing, because I had done something very foolish before departing - I had forgotten to put on insect repellent.
As the sun sunk lower in the sky and the air became cooler, swarms began to gather. At first it was just one or two irritating midges, but as I walked closer to the river, I was viciously attacked from all sides by mosquitos so massive I was surprised basic aerodynamic principles still permitted them to remain airborne after relieving me of several pints of blood. Eventually I paused to gather a handful of long grasses to use as a kind of fly whisk, and wondered if the smoke created by lighting my hair on fire would be sufficient to deter the little beasts.
Eventually, physically and emotionally wounded, and suffering from extreme blood loss, I headed back to the cabin. When I got there I found Collin, Bill, and Rebecca chilling out on the deck.
"How was your walk?" Rebecca asked.
"Fine. Itchy. I wasn't able to find any fossils," I replied.
Oh, she told me - they were just down a little ways. We could walk there quickly after dinner!
And we did. It did, seriously, only take about half an hour to reach the spot. In a layer of pale, crumbling sandstone, pockmarked with iron globules, was the fossilized remains of a forest fire. It was a little bizarre to remove a chunk of fossilized log and see the clear char marks on the end.
It may seem strange to end an entry about a weekend stay at a cabin with praise about their rocks. So instead, I will conclude with another telling fact about the group of friends we stayed with: after playing 'Arkham Horror' (a board game so complex and time-intensive that it takes half an hour just to set it up), no one tried to throw it in the fire, and everyone was still willing to speak to me. Good people.
We had a fun time, and the weather was lovely. So, that was that.
On Saturday, we headed up north, east of Innisfail, to the banks of the the Red Deer River. Some friends of ours have a family cabin they invited us up to, and we were both ready for some time outside of the city. "Cabin" seems like a bit of an understatement: as one of our friends said, you can get a pretty good deal on land out there. Most people who go to buy a cabin want a cabin in Banff, not on the edge of Badlands.
Most people are crazy, says I. Their house was lovely, and fit three couples and two toddlers quite easily. Some enterprising family member had also built a hot tub on the deck out of a plastic water trough and some copper plumbing, with a pump and a wood-burning stove to circulate hot water through it. It was big enough to hold six adults (although we did end up recreating Archimede's 'Eureka' moment - and good luck trying to keep three off-duty physicists from idly calculating our collective volume when the opportunity presented itself). It was a wonderfully relaxing spot to watch the Perseid meteor shower streak across the dark country sky.
The land owned by the family was atop a bluff. Their neighbors on one side raised cattle and (I think?) potatoes, on another side was Crown land.
"Crown land?" Collin asked. I was too busy being impressed by the proximity of royalty to comment. I am, after all, an American.
Of course, it does not mean that it's literally owned by royalty (although in my defense, Edward, the Duke of Windsor, did own a ranch in the Bow Valley so there was some precedent for my assumption). It merely means it's state land. So nobody was likely to notice or care if we did end up tromping across it.
After I was told that there were fossils around, I went off to tromp with a vengeance. Their property is bordered, as I mentioned, by the Red Deer River. On the other side, above the narrow, verdant banks, rose a bluff of gorgeously banded sediments characteristic of the Albertan badlands. It was along this river in 1884 that a geologist first discovered what was to become the province's official fossil: Albertosaurus sarcophagus. So to say that I tromped is perhaps untrue - I may have actually been skipping as I left.
At least, at first. While Collin remained back at the cabin with Bill and the kids, drinking beer and evidently being towed around by a four-year-old looking for mice, I was collecting several nice rocks, but hadn't found any fossils. And my window of opportunity was closing, because I had done something very foolish before departing - I had forgotten to put on insect repellent.
As the sun sunk lower in the sky and the air became cooler, swarms began to gather. At first it was just one or two irritating midges, but as I walked closer to the river, I was viciously attacked from all sides by mosquitos so massive I was surprised basic aerodynamic principles still permitted them to remain airborne after relieving me of several pints of blood. Eventually I paused to gather a handful of long grasses to use as a kind of fly whisk, and wondered if the smoke created by lighting my hair on fire would be sufficient to deter the little beasts.
Eventually, physically and emotionally wounded, and suffering from extreme blood loss, I headed back to the cabin. When I got there I found Collin, Bill, and Rebecca chilling out on the deck.
"How was your walk?" Rebecca asked.
"Fine. Itchy. I wasn't able to find any fossils," I replied.
Oh, she told me - they were just down a little ways. We could walk there quickly after dinner!
And we did. It did, seriously, only take about half an hour to reach the spot. In a layer of pale, crumbling sandstone, pockmarked with iron globules, was the fossilized remains of a forest fire. It was a little bizarre to remove a chunk of fossilized log and see the clear char marks on the end.
It may seem strange to end an entry about a weekend stay at a cabin with praise about their rocks. So instead, I will conclude with another telling fact about the group of friends we stayed with: after playing 'Arkham Horror' (a board game so complex and time-intensive that it takes half an hour just to set it up), no one tried to throw it in the fire, and everyone was still willing to speak to me. Good people.
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