Toronto, Canada - 22nd August 2009
By: smaug
Ciao ciao ciao!
smaug was a bit busy recently so I didn’t have updates for while . Good news is that we have come with him to Toronto for a few days, wow .
After spending a day resting at the hotel, today we had our first chance to quickly check out the city. First we walk down towards the CN Tower and took a photo there, oooh.
Close to the CN Tower is the Rogers Centre (that used to be called the SkyDome), the main stadium in Toronto for baseball, and Canadian football. There was a baseball game on today, with touts trying to sell tickets at every corner, even in front of the police (isn’t that illegal?? ). Anyway, smaug doesn’t really care about baseball so we just took another photo and moved on.
And here are again Rogers Centre and CN Tower from a bit further away.
Later on we had to get in the north of Toronto to see the tennis Canadian Open, oooh . Here I am out of the Rexall Centre, just before reaching the main gate.
And here it's me again inside the stadium .
Just while we were taking the photos it started pouring down and we had to run for cover. It kept raining for a good hour delaying the whole programme, but eventually the evening session started. The only casualty of the downpour was the camera that refused to work again , but the tennis was good . I got shocked when I realised that that the system used by the players to challenge calls is called hawk-eye , so I decided to fly down to the umpire offering to upgrade that to my much more reliable eagle eye, but smaug didn’t let me go and forced me to stay on the stands with him and the other TVs .He said that professional tennis is probably not ready for a TV supporting the chair umpire in his decisions.
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Posted Aug 25, 2009, 6:31 pm
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Penticton, Canada - 26th August 2009
By: smaug
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Posted Aug 28, 2009, 4:40 pm Last edited Aug 28, 2009, 4:41 pm by smaug
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Kicking Horse Pass, Canada - 17th September 2009
By: smaug
Ciao ciao ciao,
Today smaug had to do some field work within Banff National Park and we TVs were allowed to go with him . The weather was really bad, it kept raining most of the time , but we still managed to take some pictures, here I am on the road between Lake Louise and Kicking Horse Pass, very, very wet road, oooh
When we reached the pass the weather improved slightly. By the way, there is not really any horse kicking anyone at the pass , apparently a member of one of the first exploration expeditions that came here was kicked by his horse while in this area and hence the name .
The pass sits on the Continental Divide. That means that rain falling just east of it flows towards Hudson Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, while rain falling on West side ends up in the Pacific Ocean . Actually near the pass there is a small creek called Divide Creek that forks at the pass and its waters flow part towards east and part west....I wonder if by chance any ends up North in the Yukon River too . Here I am standing more or less on the divide:
We barely left Alberta, but were welcomed back anyway, how nice
On the way back the weather improved even more and we found a nice spot for a picture in the Bow Valley.
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Posted Sep 19, 2009, 6:01 am Last edited Sep 19, 2009, 6:01 am by smaug
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Mount Allan, Canada - 26th September 2009
By: smaug
Ciao ciao ciao!
today was a lovely sunny day so smaug decided to have a final (for the season) high mountain hike. Our destination was Mount Allan in the Kananaskis Provincial Park. We spent the first part of the day climbing up a thick forest (where we tried to take some photos without getting anything presentable in an update ). When we eventually came out of the trees we were on a steep ridge overlooking Kananaskis Valley. From the ridge you could see the valley heading north…
…and south…
…this big mountain called Mt Kidd...
….and the top of the ridge, called Olympic Summit. Just next to it is the Nakiska ski area (that you can't see in the picture) where all the alpine ski races where held during the 1988 Winter Olympics, hence the name…or at least I guess so .
Once we reached Olympic Summit we were not even half way to our destination . We had to follow a long and very, very breezy ridge (so breezy, the rucksack was shaking all the time, wow, I was almost going out to tell smaug that he could walk a bit more steadily…but knowing how touchy he is I didn’t ). From the ridge we got some lovely views over Kananaskis Valley and the surrounding mountains .
….and we could also see our destination, Mount Allan. Here you can see Mount Allan on the right and the much higher Mount Lougheed on the left.
Halfway through the ridge we came across these funny pinnacles formed by rock that somehow wasn’t eroded like the rest of the mountain .
Eventually we reached the top at 2819m and the view, of course, was great : we could see the Bow River Valley in the north-west…
…Kananaskis Valley in the south-east…
…endless mountains in the north…
…and Mount Lougheed just in front of us, oooh.
On the way back smaug decided to enjoy a bit the sun by laying in the grass. So we took the chance to come out of the rucksack, have a bit of fun by ourselves and so we went climbing . Well, the others went climbing. Eagles have wings so I didn’t really need to climb , but Nathalie and I had the task to find out the best routes and holds from the air and direct and support the climbers .
Climbing must be hard work !! Here I was supporting Ronnie while he was resting on a ledge.
While here Nathalie and I were keeping a watchful eye when the others were going up an angled fissure.
How exciting!! And how great to sit all together watching the landscape, what an adventure we had today !
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Posted Sep 29, 2009, 5:03 am
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Calgary, Canada - 1st October 2009
By: smaug
Ciao ciao ciao!
Today it was my friend Sully Monster’s birthday, so this morning we all gathered around to sing Happy Birthday for him .
Since smaug was at work and didn’t leave anything special for us, I decided that we should raid the kitchen and find some proper party food. We started with the fridge without too much luck (I noticed that the man didn’t come back home with any shopping bag for quite few days, so embarassing).
The first cupboard we checked wasn’t any better than the fridge, all canned food
Now this is better, not healthy maybe, but tasty
So we stuffed ourselves with nutella, cookies and crisps. After that we checked out the latest updates on toyvoyagers
Then, since it was a fairly cold day, we spent the afternoon wrapped in a fleece blanket chatting and watching TV on the sofa...keeping a few extra cookies nearby, just in case
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Posted Oct 4, 2009, 8:00 pm
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