Jet Lag, My Arch Nemesis

In light of the fact that I'm now wide awake, I'm going to do a quick post about my trip to Alberta. With apologies to anyone still using dial-up.

I was in Edmonton for meetings from Friday through Sunday morning. I hadn't been to Alberta in 24 years. Both Edmonton and I have changed. The meetings went well and everything was over by lunch time on Sunday. My Uncle K picked me up and we headed to his hometown. (For those of you who might think his last name starts with K, well, you're wrong, it's his first name that starts with K. But you all can call him Mr. K.)

I spent some time with my cousins on Sunday night. They have both grown up to be seriously cool "adults" in the 8 years since I last saw them. In case they read this: You are both welcome in my home at any time, day or night, ok? Seriously. Take me up on the offer soon, I may decide to move to AB after seeing the mountains again.

Ok, about those mountains. Wow! I said Wow so many times I thought that Auntie K (yup, her first name starts with K too) and Uncle K would demand a boycott of the word. So I started saying it backwards: woW!!

My dad had been out to visit them in 1998. When he was there, he didn't see one wild animal at all. Maybe they knew he's an avid hunter, I dunno. But when I was there, I saw all of these animals on Monday:

and the real life versions of this guy (those photos are on my film camera):

and this guy:

Here, Mr. Bear is seen walking up the side of an old road. He caught up with us later at Athabasca Falls. That encounter deserves its own post which I'll write later when I have more time and less sleeping to do.

I took my sock on a hike:

And in honour of the Trekking Knit along (of which I'm not an official member), I cast on for a toe up sock.

On Tuesday, we went for a bike ride on this really neat trail that makes me want to search out every trail in Nova Scotia. We stopped and dipped out feet into a glacial lake:

And then loaded up the bikes. Thinking our strenous activity was over for the day, I settled in to the back seat of the truck. Instead of heading straight home, Uncle K made a pit stop. We had been forced off a rock face on Monday b/c of a storm. The weather was glorious on Tuesday. Before I knew it, I was doing this:

That's not a solar eclipse. That's my butt. Those who mock the bum should know that the bum was about 40 feet over the ground at that point.

Just for dramatic effect, Auntie K and Uncle K coached me to do this:

My Xmen suit should arrive in the mail next week. As I said to my Uncle, I'm not surprised I liked it, b/c I've been to the climbing gym and LOVED it and I used to climb trees all the time when I was a kid. I was more surprised that I was able to do it. I climbed the rock face twice and the second time I climbed right over the top. That was really cool. I felt like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade where everyone thinks he's fallen over the edge and in the meantime, he has managed to cling to the rocks and eventually pulls himself up and over the edge.

Ok, that's all for tonight. I'm sleepy now.

Henry was with me for this trip, but I'll share his photos later. As you know, he's much more demanding of the prose I write to describe his travels, so I'll do that when I'm not fighting jet lag.