It's hard to believe a year has passed since I began my 52 project, but it has and the closing image takes me right back to the opening one, the Calgary Skyline. A year ago my opening shot was taken fom the north of the city, tonight I made a shot of the Calgary skyline from the south east, I'd saved this one for some time after scouting the location using google maps. As we said goodbye to Mark, Hayley and Ethan at the airport I told Ethan I was going to make an image of the Saddledome for him. Sarah and I drove there in 20 minutes from the airport and I knew on arrival that we were in the right place. The lovely sweeping curve of the stadium is reflected by the opposite arch on the bridge nearby and the tower and downtown area in the background complete the image perfectly. It's a great way to close out the 52 project, I never missed a week or posted late, I tried new techniques and refreshed some old ones and I made some half decent images along the way. The 52 has been a great thing to do and to enjoy, you can see the whole gallery here.
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After a wonderful christmas the last night in Canada arrived all too soon. I'd promised Ethan that he could see how my light painting images were made (he's an avid reader of the blog on his Ipad so had seen earlier posts) so we headed out to the driveway to mess with lights for a while. The first shot takes it's inspiration from Rouge One (the new Star Wars movie) that we went to see on Christmas Eve, with Ethan and his dad being Luke and Darth Vadar, the rest are basically Ethans own with his red light up shoes also adding to the colour.
Santa made the rounds this year with goodies for everyone, Ethan stayed in bed until 7am thanks to jet lag and a late night watching the Calgary flames (the night before) so we were off to a great start. We spent the morning opening presents, constructing and playing with them before clearing a good snowfall from the driveway. It would be crazy to get all dressed up just to clear the drive, so more of the back garden sledging was in order. Sledging was followed by the usual over indulgence thanks to a lovely Christmas Dinner that Sarah and Hayley created while we were enjoying the deep snow. After dinner and the usual phone calls home we all went sledging again, it was our best ever christmas in Canada.
The snow began to fall today as predicted, initially it was light and we waited patiently until there was enough covering the back garden to allow us to get the sledge out. A welcome visit from Cecil and Arlene passed a couple of hours of laughing and joking and by the time they left, the driveway had sufficient snow to make a little snowman as we cleared it. Then it was round to the back garden for some sledging, falling and rolling over.
With the snow continuing to fall we set out to Calgary to watch the Flames 'v' Canucks, with awesome seats right behind the 'sin bin' we had a fantastic view of the action and banging on the plexiglass was a frequent event. As usual the Flames store was raided and the shelves left empty as granny went mad spoiling Ethan, but the best gift of the night was from the game official seated just in front of us when he turned and handed Ethan an official game puck that the players had been using. The Flames went on to win 4-1 and it was a great night, as we arrived home at 10:45 the drive was deep in snow again so it's christmas eve snow shovelling for us, and no doubt a bit of sledging in the back garden. A white christmas is now guaranteed but santa is going to have to work hard if he is going to outshine that little hockey puck. Mark, Hayley and Ethan arrived safely and on time at Calgary International on Monday evening, and before long we were sledging in the garden in total darkness, we were off to a flying start. The next morning we headed up Grotto Creek for an adventure and stopped by the frozen falls drinking hot chocolate and watching the climbers before heading back to the truck. We then took a detour on the way home to find a nice slope with some snow for some more sledging (this time in daylight!) Wednesday saw us heading into Calgary for a 'shop till you drop' in the downtown core so maybe tomorrow we'll stay local and rest up a little. It's wonderful to have family here with us for Christmas and have the house so full of excitement, there's even a forecast of snow on Christmas eve and Christmas day which would be fantastic, but there's lots to do between now and then.
We don't usually go mad with christmas lights on the outside of the house but with our little grandson Ethan coming tomorrow we wanted it to be as festive as possible. We put candy canes and lights on the arbour and walkway to the front door, with lights above the garage doors and a couple of christmas wreaths on the front. These were finished with a red and green laser light scattering speckles all over the front of the house. Seems it's not such hard work to spruce things up for christmas, I even fitted a remote to the main electrical connection for the lights so we can press one button and turn them all on from inside the house.
One great thing about the really cold weather here is the spectacular ice formations it causes and few places are as nice on a freezing afternoon as Grotto Creek. Just outside the town of Exshaw this little creek is a beautiful short hike in the winter time. Today I was checking out the route to see if it's still suitable for little Ethan who will be with us for christmas this year, at 6 years old an adventure is always something special and always required. As you will see from the images below it is as beautiful this year as always and I'm sure (weather permitting) it is an adventure in the making. I got some nice shots today and enjoyed spending a while talking to a group of ice climbers until one of them fell on the ice and broke her wrist, they were well equipped to deal with the incident and had numberous first responders in the group so I did the best thing and left them to it. The gallery is all shots taken along the creek as far as the ice falls so there are no captions needed, the large chandelier in the main image is just the begining of a huge stepped ice flow that grows throughout the winter.
After arriving in Cochrane in 2014 I discovered a $5 permit from the forestry department allowed us to go out into the forest and cut our own christmas tree (how cool is that) so that has become our 'Cochrane Tradition'. This year we chose the Elbow River area to go tree hunting in, there are thousands of trees all snow covered and it's -22 and snowing....It was fantastic as always. We cut two this year, the second one is for Sarahs colleague (the permit allows for three trees for $5). The main shot is us after parking on the roadside, saw in hand heading into the trees. The gallery has captions as usual.
I thought I'd better make a post before people start to think we've frozen to death. Temperatures have been holding below -20 for the whole week, last night we were at -29 with wind chill taking us to -36. It is a very sudden reminder of where we live, these things rarely last for more than a couple of weeks and we'll still be out cutting a christmas tree in the forest this weekend come what may, for now here is a shot from the window this morning at sunrise. The steam above the trees is heat escaping from the glacier fed river which is still warmer than the current air temperature.
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AuthorWe arrived in Calgary, Canada on 29th December 2011 to continue our journey. This blog is intended to keep our family and friends informed whilst we explore Canada.You can use the RSS feed below to stay updated. Categories
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