A Final Walk Around

A few last shots from downtown Calgary.

There was a professional photographer taking pictures of the iconic gnome of Travelocity, the travel booking web site. We first saw him up on the observation deck, shooting the gnome against the skyline. Here he is again at the ticket desk on the ground, where he was kind enough to let me use his Pocket Wizard and lighting rig. We also spotted him and his assistant on top of an office building across the street. For a while they had the doll on the top of the wall, where I was certain it would fall 20 or 30 stories and kill someone.

7th Avenue downtown is the center of Calgary's excellent light rail system, the C Train. Otherwise, it's a bit spotty. A shop owner made a comment on the impending arrival of QE II's great grandchild. The train itself carries amusing advertising for Dos Equis Mexican beer.

Finally, another office tower goes up, with parody fine art at street level.

I have many more images from the Stampede I've just started to edit.  STL DPB will feature the Native Canadian area for the next couple of days.

The Columbia Icefield

We took a day trip yesterday two hours north to the Columbia Icefield. It's a remarkable place. A huge shelf of ice set among mountain peaks feeds six large glaciers. The center is the world's only triple continental divide - the glacier runoff drains into the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans. One of them, the Athabasca Glacier, ends not too far from the highway, although it is receding at 3 to 6 meters a year.

You take a behemoth ice bus from near the bottom right up in the middle of the thing, where you can get out and walk around. Below, Mrs. C makes sure everyone know where she's been. 

Note the bottom photo. There are markers for the end of the ice in years past. I was using a telephoto and the edge of the ice is a lot farther away than it looks. This glacier system provides much of the water for western Canada. If it shrinks much more there will be trouble.                

Around Banff

Monday turned out to be a much nicer day than was forecast.  We just stayed in town. Several of these pictures are of the Bow River, It starts in a glacier to the north and was one of the rivers responible for the inundation of Calgary a few weeks ago. The second photo is the Banff Springs Hotel, established well over a century ago by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. It's an historic place where you can quickly empty your bank account for a small room. The last three pictures were taken after dinner just outside our hotel room.

Long drive today up to the Columbia Glacier. You can take a special vehicle out on the ice and actually have a walk around. The weather should be perfect.                        

It's Yahoo!, Not Yee Haw!

Greetings from Calgary, Alberta, where it's still Friday. Our first few days here at the Calgary Stampede have been fascinating and exhausting. I hit a personal best or worst on Thursday, taking 2,123 photos, although many were repeated shots of the same subject, trying to get exposure and composition just right.

There were so many exciting things to see that I can only touch the surface in this post. That's me and Mrs. C in the top pic, doing the hi, kids, pose. Below, several shots from the ceremonies of the Canadian indigenous peoples. Farther down, two young women promoting a local radio station snack on the famous Canadian delicacy, chocolate covered bacon on a stick.

By the way, at least half of the people around here are wearing cowboy hats. It's no more unusual than baseball fans wearing a Cardinals hat at Busch Stadium. And we were instructed that the proper etiquette is to cheer someone on by shouting yahoo! The expression yee haw is for those, um, Texans.

So much more to come.