Flarke

A few of us were planning on going to the baseball game on Friday night, however come the afternoon, the weather forecast was calling for severe thunderstorms and 5-10mm of rain. We decided it wouldn't be that fun to sit and watch the game in the rain, so Bonnie, Garrett and I went to Ikea instead. While there, we found some fun items including a bookshelf for me for the cheap price of 30$. The fun part about the bookshelf was that those crazy Swedes named it 'Flarke'. Flarke!! What a funny word! Bonnie and I had fun making jokes with the word. "Who flarked?" was our favorite one.

The ironic part about the evening was that it didn't even rain that evening! It would have been a great night to watch a baseball game.

We won!

On Tuesday night, Je Huck Bien played its second game in a lower division - Tier 3. In the end, I think it is probably the right place for us, since we only won one game when we were in Tier 2. We played against a team called Kohlrabi (odd, yes) and they weren't very good, so we had little trouble beating them. The score was 15-4 in the end. It was nice to win!

Dragonboating begins 2007

On Monday night, our dragonboating team restarted practices for 2007. We met down at the docks around 7pm and started teaching our new paddlers, and reminding our old ones, of the techniques and procedures for dragonboating. We put on our lifejackets and grabbed our paddles and headed down to the river. With all the rain Edmonton has received in the last week, the river was flowing really fast and we had to have a full compliment of 20 paddlers in order to go on the water. Usually, in comparison, we need a minimum of 14 paddlers to take to the water, so you can imagine how fast the river was flowing. In fact, I've rarely seen the river that fast!

We encountered a problem when we reached the dock - they had changed the dock configuration this year so that it was one long dock that ran parallel to shore, rather than an 'L' shape like last year. Instead, we had two large wood planks that we were supposed to use to climb from shore to the dock, neither of which was long enough on its own to reach straight from shore to the dock. After some thinking and fiddling, we managed to set up a precarious bridge that we used to get to dock.

There we loaded up the boat and got out of the dock with little trouble. Once on the water, we carried out our practice as usual, except that the river current prevented us from getting very far at any point. As well, the currents in the river were strong and I was a little more nervous when we were out there, especially since I was a little out of practice, having not steered the boat since last year. In the end, everything went well and we made it back to dock smoothly, although the fast current worried some paddlers when we were just drifting backwards downriver on some of our rest breaks.

Tales of a traveling Smurf

During our trip to Utah, we brought along Garrett's rucksack Smurf and photographed him as we went along. Here's Smurf with me in the car on the drive down:Rucksack Smurf on the top of the Aztec Butte trail:Garrett loves his rucksack Smurf, as we sit in front of a grainery:Rucksack Smurf in Arches National Park at the Navajo Arch:Delicate Arch is a great background for rucksack Smurf:(As an aside, I had to balance rucksack Smurf on Garrett's hat in front of the arch for this picture, and if you recall the number of people who were watching the arch with us at that time, you can imagine the weird looks I got).
Rucksack Smurf loves canoeing!Rucksack Smurf agreed our second campsite on the sandy island was a good location:

Utah: Day 9 - Salt Lake City

We got up Saturday morning and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, although we had a lot of trouble getting our meal at it. Suffice it to say, the waitress was overworked and not that capable, resulting in half our meal falling on the floor. It worked out alright, because she didn't charge us for more than half of our meal, so it was cheap. We checked out and drove over to the Mormon Temple Square, where we walked around for about half an hour before becoming bored. We took some pictures, though:After Temple Square, we headed out of Salt Lake City, with an eye out for outlet stores in the suburbs as we left Utah. Apparently, we had entirely too high of expectations regarding the size of the rest of the American cities on our way home, since NONE of them were even close to big enough to have outlet stores. Our hopes of cheap clothes shopping was dashed, but we were making good time on our trip home. We drove through the night again, taking turns like last time. We stopped in a few towns for lunch and dinner, and were totally creeped out by the weird little towns and the people in them. Americans are not friendly! And they are weird! In any case, it was great when we finally got home, and I went to bed and had a nap for several hours before unpacking my gear. Garrett came over later in the afternoon and we went about cleaning all our gear, which were sandy and dirty! Sand everywhere! It was nice to finally be away from the sand all the time, and to be clean.

Phew! I'm finally done all my blog entries about our trip. Hope everyone liked the pictures!

Utah: Day 8 - Canoe Trip 3

Our last day of the canoe trip was pretty relaxed. We woke up to a gorgeous morning view of the river:We had to get to our take-out site by 1pm, but since we only had to travel 8 miles, which takes about 2.5 hours if we paddled the whole time, we didn't rush as we ate breakfast and got ready in the morning. Once on the water, we took it easy, paddling half the time and floating the other half, taking pictures and goofing around.We floated the last mile in the river to the take-out site, called Mineral Bottom. Here, we dragged our canoes out of the water and unloaded our gear onto the beach, then found some shade to sit and wait for our ride. We arrived 45 minutes before our ride was going to arrive, so we ate lunch and chatted with the crazy old hippy who lived down at Mineral Bottom. His name was Alan, and he volunteered for the Parks Department to collect paddlers' river licenses and make sure everyone was safe after their trips. He was nice enough, but he was really weird and proceeded to share with us his research 'theories', which basically consisted of him making vague connections between two things and correlating them. For example, he started off asking us why birds rotate their eggs in the nest and lizards don't? Then he went on to tell us that it's because mammals need to always be moving in a magnetic field and that if we set up rotating magnets (like he has, over his bed) at the right frequency, we would double our lifespan! Anyway, you get the point - coo-coo! But we were polite and just listened, not commenting. This apparently encouraged him, because apparently he gets in arguments with lots of other paddlers, so our lack of discussion with him was taking as encouragement for him to tell us more. In any case, we had a long time with Alan, because our ride broke down at the top of the hill coming down to get us, and was an hour late. Some 4x4 jeeps came down the hill to tell us our ride was fixing the engine and would be down there soon. We were really glad when Jerry finally made it down the hill to us, and we loaded up and headed back up up up the hill.
To get out of Mineral Bottom, we had to drive up 800 feet over 1 mile. It was pretty steep with lots of switchbacks on a very bumpy road. It didn't help that we could see a car that had fallen over the cliff way below us.Once back at the outfitters, we loaded our gear back into Ian's car and took a picture with the outfitters.Then, we were off! Well, sort of. First we stopped at the grocery store in Moab and got some food for dinner, then we started driving back to Salt Lake City, where we were spending Friday night. The drive was about 4 hours and we arrived around 9pm, having no trouble finding our hotel and checking in with our internet reservation. Then, we all had SHOWERS!! The best showers ever! None of us had showered for four days, so we were feeling really dirty, plus most of us had rashes from the heat, bug bites from mosquitos or sand flies (nasty little creatures, similar to deer flies), scratches and dry skin. I've never had my skin feel so rough and gross! The shower cured the dirt problems, and lotion helped with the dry skin, however it took a week or so for my skin to start feeling normal again!

Utah: Day 7 - Canoe Trip 2

The second day of our canoe trip started out with some examination of our river map.The second day was our longest day, with us completely about 24 river miles. In comparison, we only covered 11 river miles the first day. Included in those 24 miles was a really tough section of the river, where the wind (called 'Mariah' by our superstitious outfitters) was strong and could seriously impede our progress. However, we didn't have to deal with that until until the afternoon. We reloaded our canoes and off we went, keeping a steady pace throughout the day.
We say a number of birds throughout our trip, but the first bird we were able to photograph, ironically, was this guy:Canadian goose! As the day progressed, we dedicated a fair amount of time to 'heron-stalking'. There were a large number of blue herons living around the Green River, and we say lots of them flying by or standing on the shore as we floated down the river. Here are some of the better shots for our efforts:At one point when we had to navigate an island in the river, Joelle and Ian took one side and we took the other side of the river. Turns out their side was really shallow, and they had to climb out and pull their canoe for awhile:We had lunch on a tiny beach prior to the tough part of the river. It wasn't the nicest lunch spot we'd found, but it did the trick.The next part of the river was definately the toughest. Garrett's shoulder was really hurting him and the wind came up strong and steady, pushing against us as we traveled the 5 miles around the Bowknot Bend. It was a long haul and pretty tiring, but we rewarded ourselves by floating with our canoes once we were past the worst of it.After floating down the river, it was about time to find a campsite for the night. There were several options for us, except the first one we found was small and hot without shade, and we couldn't find the second one until we flew right past it in our canoe. We were stuck moving onwards until we saw a nice sandy island that looked like a good spot. As we pulled up to the island, we spotted a blue heron eating a fish!We checked out the island and found it to our satisfaction, although it too didn't have very much shade. We played frisbee in the water next to our beach, before setting up our tents and making some dinner.>After dinner, the girls relaxed while the boys played with their cameras and captured the amazing landscape surrounding us.
Once the sun went down, we started a fire and sat around relaxing for an hour or so. As we were sitting in the dusk, we saw a beaver swim by! Cool! We didn't get a picture of him, though.

Utah: Day 6 - Canoe Trip 1

On Wednesday, we started our canoe trip. We got up really early to pack our gear and pick up our canoe license - we forgot to get it ahead of time, so we were stuck scrambling the day of our canoe trip! It was a little stressful, but it was no problem in the end to get our free license from the information centre. Next, we drove over to our canoe outfitter, the Red River Canoe Company, and 'checked in'. This included us paying our fees, buying a river map book and learning out a few unpleasant things like the 'river toilet' we had to bring along with us. Next, we loaded our gear into the red Silverado and prepared to drive out to our drop-off spot. We were getting dropped off with another group of four, so we all squeezed into the vehicle and drove north on the highway for about an hour. Then, we turned off onto a dirt road which ultimately leads to a hillbilly ranch called 'Ruby Ranch'. We had to pay a fee per canoe and person to use the boat launch on the Ruby Ranch lands, however it's cheaper to launch there than at the State Park farther upstream, so it seemed a fair deal to us. Once at the boat launch, we unloaded quickly and loaded up our canoes.There was another outfitter unloading another group around the same time as us. This other group of men were taking one of the large, 18 foot rafts down the river and they were LOADED to the hilt!! They even brought their BBQ! You can see in the picture above that our canoe wasn't really that full. I had felt silly at first that we were going to bring our cooler down the river, however once I saw how much other people were bringing, I realized we underpacked! I guess that's the Canadian way - it's not supposed to be like BBQing in our backyard when we're going down the river!

We started out on the river promptly after loading the canoes, and at first the landscape was pretty plain. There were trees on the shore of the river and some low cliffs, but quite quickly the cliffs got larger and more interesting. The river itself was very calm and with little current, so most of our forward motion was generated by our paddling. Garrett quickly taught me the best way to paddle a canoe and we worked on synchronizing our strokes.You can see below that the cliffs started getting more interesting:There were these really neat bird's nests on the cliffs:The nests look like the birds masticated their food and then built up little homes with the mush they made. That would make sense if birds have teeth...so I'm not really sure how they made them. Maybe they just collected mud from the side of the river. I think the birds themselves were some sort of starling, although they flew quite quickly and we didn't get a good look at them.

Since we launched around 10:30am, we only paddled a little while before stopping for lunch. We found a neat little beach in the shade, although we did end up in a bit of quicksand near the shore when we hopped out of our canoes. There are several kinds of river bottom that we came across. The two main ones were your standard sandy bottom or a silty, sinky, quicksand-like bottom. In any case, no one got too stuck, although Ian almost lost a shoe. We soon learned to take our shoes off before hopping out of our canoes - better to get a dirty foot than to lose a sandal!
Here is Garrett eating lunch:Our canoes on the beach at lunchtime:After lunch, we paddled for another few hours and the cliffs steadily got bigger. The river itself makes large lazy bends back and forth. You can't find anything resembling rapids, so I felt quite comfortable in our boat.

Our next stop along the river was at a valley on the outside of a bend, called Trin Alcove. It had a really cool petroglyph, which, unfortunately, our picture came out really fuzzy. We took some pictures from up top of some rocks near the petroglyph, looking out at the river:

You can see the river is really brown. From farther away, it actually looks green (seems odd, I know, but it's true) and this is why it was named the Green River. The siltiness of the river is disconcerting when you swim, since you can't see your legs at all, and it makes your clothes dirty, but overall it's harmless. After Trin Alcove, we decided to float downstream with our boats for awhile to cool off. We strapped on our lifejackets and grabbed the lead ropes of the canoe and off we floated. It was really fun and really relaxing - in fact, I had trouble just floating and not swimming while we went. We floated for about an hour, until we actually felt a little cold when the wind came up, then we climbed back in the canoes at a shallow area.

As we paddled downstream, we saw a number of cliff structures which we called 'amphitheatres':These are big round alcoves in the cliffs that echo incredibly when you yell, even when we were only in the canoes. They almost seem like they were made to be theatres, since a number of them had 'stages' in the middle at the bottom. Pretty cool.

As we neared our campsite around 3:30pm, Garrett did something silly. He noticed the river was quite shallow - probably knee height, using his paddle as a measure. So, without warning me, he decided to climb out and swim the rest of the way to the campsite. He stepped out of the canoe, expecting the bottom to be right there, except that the depth of the river had changed suddenly and was now over his head. SPLASH! He went right over the edge, rocking the boat really good. I screamed, because I didn't know what had happened. I thought we were flipping our canoe for sure, and all I could think of was that Garrett's camera was going overboard too. I looked back to see Garrett in the river with a sheepish look on his face and I got angry!! My heart had stopped and he was just being foolish. In any case, now he had to swim with the canoe and I had to paddle us in to our campsite alone. It's really annoying to paddle the canoe on your own, because with every stroke on one side, the boat turns. Plus, Garrett can't swim as fast as the canoe can be paddled, so he trailed behind and couldn't really help me at all. Add to that, the wind came up at that point and started pushing us around, and I was pretty annoyed by the time we got in to shore. Here we are:In the end we worked it out, but I told him he must never do that again!

Our campsite was really nice and we had it all to ourselves. The rule on the river is that if someone is occupying a campsite, you head on to the next one, unless it's after 8pm and then you can share the campsite. In any case, we were at the campsite quite early and claimed it for our own. It had a really nice beach that we used to swim and refresh ourselves. We also played on the rocks, jumping off them into the river:
Before we ate dinner, we went on a walk past our campsite on a poorly-used little trail, because there were supposedly petroglyphs and graineries nearby. I say supposedly, because we searched for just under an hour to find these petroglyphs and didn't find a thing. We did, however, find the grainery, although it's not as clear as the ones on the Aztec Butte trail.There were also a ton of these little guys all over our campsite:They were so cute and would constantly pause, allowing us to snap their photo.

Once we started dinner, we opened up the cooler and cracked open a few of the beer we had brought with us. I can tell you, even Budweiser tastes good after a day of paddling in the heat!We started our fire in our fire pan. We actually used a fire log, since they are small and burn away completely to ash. As well, the ones we bought actually produced less carbon dioxide than wood would have, so they were better for the environment. In any case, we lazed around, using our lifejackets as seats.We didn't stay up too late that night. When brushing our teeth in the river, we noticed this little guy under the edge of our canoe:Toad! He posed quite nicely for us too. Wild life everywhere.