A Day in the Jurassic Jungle

Once upon a time, there was a family.  A family of four, the eldest having moved away to a more exciting future on a lake.  With power boats.  We couldn't compete with that level of excitement.

Or so we thought!

Having ventured far from home on dusty roads, we discovered a hidden, secret gate.

What secrets did it hold?  Why were the bars so large and menacing?

Seriously?  We hadn't recently seen any dinosaurs in these parts.  Eh, we'll take our chances and go in.  I thought they'd go for the smallest first anyway.  She can't run as fast.  I'm safe.
 

 You'd better take a close look, Alice.  You're the littlest around here.  You'll be the first to go!

 

Hmm, it's that the length of the apatosaurus' femur, I think I might be easy prey myself!  

Luckily, Laura knew that an apatosaurs is an herbivore.  I'm pretty meaty, so phew!  Let's take a scary walk and hope that everyone is an herbivore.  One final family photo in case we don't make it back.

 

Screeching through the air came this guy. 

I don't know what it is.  I had no time to read the informative signs.  He may have been eyeing me as lunch!  Movin' right along!

 We walked a little further.  There were many common plants identified.  If we were for some reason stranded within these high walls, we discovered that we could burn the lichen on the trees as fuel, cooking up a tasty meal of cattails.  We could even have finished it off with dessert of wild raspberries, saskatoons and low-bush cranberries.

If it weren't for the loud, large, scary dinosaurs, it wouldn't be so bad.

At least these two were preoccupied with their own battle and not interested in a meaty, slow-running homo sapien.  We watched their struggle for a while.  It was exciting!  Who would win?  The fierce, knobby guy on the right, or the loud huge guy on the left?   And would the winner then look for someone else to fight when it was done?

Time to move on again.  We did not want to know the answer to that!

Luckily our next encounter with a peaceful veggie-loving guy.  

Coming at him from another angle, we noticed that he had a few problems of his own though.  

If you look closely, he has a smaller creature attacking him.  One with sharp teeth and two more friends on the ground moving in for the kill. 

What kind of a vicious world had we wandered into?

Flat teeth usually means an herbivore, but with a sharp pointy nose, we didn't stick around to find out if he was friendly or not.  He sounded pretty mean, and even the smaller ones were still many times my own weight.  

We left him alone and continued our walk along the boardwalk.  The problem with what could have been a peaceful Sunday afternoon walk was that we were surrounded with terrible sounds.  As we looked into the growth, this jabberwocky charged out at us!

Aargh!

With his puffy black lips, and black snakey tongue, once again we didn't stick around to figure out what his eating habits were.  Or his mood.

We walked 2 km of paths before we finally found a truly friendly dinosaur.  He allowed Alice to sit on him and we could pet him safely. 




Having made it out alive, we rejoiced with each other and went on our merry way. 

As we left the danger zone, we retreated to our home, where this is one of the most dangerous creatures we encounter.

  The end. 

(This adventure was to the Jurassic Park, outside of Gibbons, AB)

I've tried to do a scheduled weekly blog posting before, and I'm going to try again. Maybe I'll never learn, but I don't give up hope.

Hope is a good thing, right?

Rosa and her sister have started a weekly "Travel Tuesdays" link party and I'll see how often I'm a part of it. 

Rumours

If we had heard the stories of Butte before going there, maybe we wouldn't have gone at all.  And we would have missed out on a lot. 

What did we hear?

That it was a town of prostitutes and crack addicts.  

That does explain the few "Don't Do Drugs" murals I saw, but I thought nothing of it at the time.  I didn't know the rumours yet.


That's not surprising, I guess.  It has a past steeped in alcohol and brothels.  About 30 years ago their main industry (copper mining) was in decline and it almost became a ghost town, leaving a city of unemployed blue-collar workers.  Now, I believe unemployment is still high and the main industry is still copper mining.  It's also a university town.

Now why would we bring our kids to camp in a city of prostitutes and crack addicts? 

Because we've seen no sign of that.  The people have been nothing but great.  Two examples:

Example 1
We were walking around looking lost and admiring the buildings, when a car pulled up and asked us what we were looking for.   At the time we were thinking about food (that often the case), and she pointed out some good restaurants we might want to try.

Example 2
I asked Yvon to go drive down a ledge on the road in order to see some great buildings on the hill (onto a one-way, wrong-way road too!) and we scraped the bottom of the van fairly badly.  I made him do almost the same thing on our 2nd date and he had to have the gas tank replaced.  Does he never learn? 

We were dripping oil or gas from the bottom of the van and had to stop.  A kid in the gas station loaned me his cell phone to call a few places, hoping they'd be open late on a Friday night.  He then offered to drive us all anywhere we needed to go if we couldn't get it fixed that night. 

Someone else overhead our problem, and we came out of the shop to find him on his back under our van.  He correctly diagnosed our problem, called a shop for parts, gave us directions and offered to fix it for us after his shift was over.  We bought the parts and the guy at the till offered to fix it right then and there.  We must have looked pathetically useless.

I don't know when that's ever happened to me in Edmonton, and I love Edmonton.  I love the people of Butte, crack addicts notwithstanding.  I never met those guys and I'll continue to visit Butte. 

Butte continued

I do this every year.    I don't feel like blogging, although I can't say it's because I'm too busy or not wanting to sit in front of the computer.  I do plenty of that.

While in Butte, we had time to do some touristy things.  Everything required long walks in the hot, hot sun and up and down hills.  I don't know if it was the weather, the altitude or my general fitness level (or likely, all three), but I was really tired out by the walking. The girls and Yvon tend to have a destination in mind and head in a straight line for it (if we knew the straight line!), while they would leave me behind to dunk into doorways and see things like this:

If there were "For Rent" or "For Sale" signs, I had to read them and dream a little about living in those beautiful suites.   

Then I would stop to take pictures of some of the buildings, like this:

This one is for sale!

I'd finally look up and see the rest of the family WAY up the street, stopping to let me catch up.  I couldn't help it if there was so much to see, could I? 

We spent a bit of time touring the "Copper King Mansion".   It was gorgeous.

 Everything inside was hand carved, or stained glass or had intricate details.  You could spend a lot of time looking at everything, but the tour guide moved us along fairly quickly. 

The ultimate shower - with multiple shower heads and holes placed all along every pipe for a full-body spray.  Cool!

The current owners are big collectors, so there are collections and artifacts everywhere you looked.

This is a communion wafer iron.  Knippijes, anyone?

An optometrists set of lenses

I've since read that W.A. Clark was a pretty lousy man, but his house was beautiful so I won't hold it against him.

Then it was on to the Montana Folk Festival, the main reason we were in town.  Two days of music, all different styles from all over the world.  The music was great and there were often spaces under the tents to shield ourselves from the sun.

Hordes of people, surrounded by beautiful downtown buildings

This polka family band was such fun.  The ability to dance and fiddle amazes me.

 It was hard to fit all of it in that we wanted to hear, so sometimes we split up into two groups of two and followed the girls to the groups that interested them most.  For me, I could have listened to the gospel group all day.  Unfortunately they didn't want to sing all day for me, and I was forced to listen to some awesome accordian and fiddle music, Vietnamese music, stringed instruments from everywhere, swing and stuff that I can't categorize.    
 

The crowds at the main stage, as seen from the shady cool interior of a coal mining building.

High above the main stage, an original copper mining tower

We drank Arizona iced tea by the gallon once we discovered that they sold it in gallon jugs. 

Cold drinks were distracting

 

My favourite group - the Birmingham Sunlights.  It was like a Sunday sermon if you listened to their lyrics.

It was hard to fit all of it in that we wanted to hear, so sometimes we split up into two groups of two and followed the girls to the groups that interested them most.  For me, I could have listened to the gospel group all day.  Unfortunately they didn't want to sing all day for me, and I was forced to listen to some awesome accordian and fiddle music, Vietnamese music, stringed instruments from everywhere, swing and stuff that I can't categorize.    

I don't like to be away from home long in the summer because there is so much to do right at home, but I'll come to Butte again.  Anyone want to join us next time?  July 12-14.

More travels - From Alberta to Montana

I've been criticized of not posting anything at all about a past holiday.

"Oh, come on!  Of course I blogged about that trip to Yellowstone!"

"Nope.  Just a "We're back and here's my garden" post."

"I wouldn't do that.  I would have blogged all about the fun we had and the sights we saw."

Why would my sister lie to me though?  Surely she just remembered incorrectly.

I looked back and sure enough, nothing.  I launched right back into "real" life without any pictures or record of where we camped.  Nothing for my three readers to see.

Fine, lesson learned.  I'll record our trip to Montana this time so that I can look back and know what we did, where we stayed, what I'd do differently and what I still want to see in Butte next time.  There will be a next time.

We drove from Writing on Stone into the US without incident.  We gave up a few pieces of fruit at the border crossing and the officer emptied a tupperware of wilty cucumbers in the garbage for us, and we were off.  (For future reference, we crossed at the Sweetgrass crossing south of Milk River and there were only a couple of cars ahead of us and it took no time at all to get through).

The last time we went to the US, we were hoping to do some cheap American shopping.  I always hear of the inexpensive electronics, clothing and shoes, and all over blogland I read of the cheap groceries.  Well, that wasn't the case in Montana.  Maybe it's too close to Canada to make any difference, or maybe it's because there is no big city in the whole state and the whole concept of bulk purchasing can't be applied.  Nothing was any different than in Alberta, except that there was no GST.

This time we stopped in Great Falls to shop.  It's still a small city, but they just get smaller as you head south so we made time for it.  Just one stop into Shopko.  It was basically just like Walmart, a store I try not to shop in here in Canada.  While on holidays though, we through any ethical shopping ideas out the window and partook of cheap clothing.  And when I find jeans that fit and are long enough, I buy two!  We probably spent too long there, but we all got something out it, even Yvon.

On to Butte.  We arrived at our campground and set up.  Then the wind started and the rain began.  Now, our tent is starting to age.  We originally bought it because it fit a playpen in it, and all of our baggage without problem. Alice is now 9.  The seams are starting to leak in a couple of places, so we struggled in the wind with a tarp and covered the whole thing.  There is nothing worse that a drip on your forehead in the middle of the night.

For reference:  Deerhead Beaverlodge Campground, about 25 minutes out of Butte.  A little isolated and we didn't find the water pump until day three.  Other campers said it didn't exist at all.  When we did find it, the water was cold and tasted great.  The isolation was only a problem when someone made a mess of the outhouse and we had no Warden check in until our last night to clean it.  Whatever.  For $5/night, what kind of services did we expect?  

We took no pictures  of the campground or our setup.  It wasn't beautiful, being so dry and ravaged by pine beetles, but it wasn't bad.  Firewood lay all over the ground and was easy to start, and it was quiet.  We mostly just slept there anyway.  I think I'd want to look at the few other campgrounds next time, and continue to stay away from the KOA in town.  There was also camping in any public space in Butte during the festival, and in any forestry area apparently.  They called it "Dispersement Camping", although we saw no one doing that. Good to know in the future though so that we don't worry while at home about being unable to reserve anything ahead of time.

Okay.  First morning we went for a horseback ride.  We've been meaning to do this for a few years.  Laura particularly.  It was 2 hours of silent riding through this sort of land. 

 It was hot, dry and windy.  A bit boring, but also peaceful.  The lack of features in the terrain totally messed with my head and I had do idea where we were going or how far we went.  These ranches are big if you can ride for two hours and see virtually no sign of human life. 




There was this old abandoned saw mill, but that's all we saw. 



After that we spend some time in Butte touring a beautiful mansion and had a big of adventure before the start of the Folk Music Festival, the reason we were in Butte. 

But that's a whole 'nuther story for another day.

Travels

That's not really true, but it is fun to tell the stories afterwards. 

This is one is more true yet.  Travelling with teenage girls was fun.  The way wasn't short though.  It was still a long drive.  But we made stops along the way.

First stop:  Writing on Stone National Park.  This is the only dinosaur we saw, but the scenery was beautiful, and so was the weather, if slightly on the hot side of things.

We need to go there again and stay longer.

 But...

Nope, we had another destination in mind and many miles to go.

Morning Bliss

Oh my gosh.  Baked oatmeal makes me so happy! If my family doesn't wake soon, they may not all get some of this.

I can't be held responsible.

Baked Oatmeal

3 cups oats
1 1/2 c. milk (or 1/2 c powder milk, 1 1/2 c. water)
2 eggs
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. brown sugar, honey or sugar
1/4 c. butter
2 c. apples, apple sauce, or any canned fruit

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.  

As a canner, one thing I love about this recipe is that I can throw any fruit or jam that isn't moving quickly in place of the apples.  This time I put in 1 c. of rhubarb marmalade and added the peaches on top after it baked.  Skip the apples and cinnamon and try ginger and pears.  Canned plums that turned out mushy, or that weird sauce you thought might be good over ice cream.  Or you can try sunflower seeds, almonds, raisins, cranberries, dried cherries -- be creative and resourceful.  

Every combination I've tried has been a success.  Even though I woke way too early this morning, I'm happy!

Early July Garden

Just an update on the garden.  The speed at which it fills out always amazes me.  Year after year I forget how full it gets and how far apart I should be planting things. 

Carrots going to seed.  I've never managed to overwinter carrots before.

The straw bale garden around the swing set

May 29 back garden...

...and now.

Climbing beans, some 5 ft. tall already

I'm so happy that it's summer. 

After years of thinking about it and looking around for a table and chairs to move outdoors, I found our table in the basement and just moved it outdoors.  As the plants grow, we'll feel less exposed to the neighbourhood, but I don't really care.  There's rarely anyone else outside, and if there are interested neighbours, they are welcome to join us in our meals and games.