Dinosaur Park Again, Biking This Time

So I had never been to Dinosaur Park since I was a child and now I went twice this summer.  Never planned to go again but on the long weekend I saw a post they were allowing you to walk or bike on the Nature Preserve Trail.  Normally you don't get to go on that trail unless you work there or on a bus tour.  So I figured it was worth it to go on.  And it was.  Neil suggested we biked so biking it was.

When we got there the park staff suggested we go left on the loop and I'm glad she did.  It was gravel and kinda hilly, but the biggest hill was on the right and we got to coast down it.

(not 5 minutes in Neil sees someone he knows)

(Admiring the view while stopping for water)

(I think these are cool)

(another water break)

(and I got him to take my picture)

(pretty high cliffs in some spots)

(nice road to travel on, a lot of big gravel which was a challenge)

(the scenery is just cool!)

(a ferry type boat the lived on and got to the park with, its new this summer)

(so Neil rowed it)

(a rib fossil they left partially burried)

a trial for lifting crates onto boats, cars now)

(the cube rock was pretty cool)

(and Neil again waiting for me to take more pictures)

Took us an hour 20 ish.  And I was a little tired, had to walk up some hills but makes me feel like the rode from Banff to Canmore is totally doable.  Yay!  Since that's coming up this weekend!  Yikes.

Odds and Ends

We had a lot of mosquitoes this summer, the horses were miserable, staying in the worked up ground in the shade and Jess all covered in fly sheet and mask and still got irritated with bugs.

And the cows just stuck all bunched up.  Finally they forecasted snow and freezing temps, was kinda early but I was so tired of mosquitoes it was kinda wanted...not snow just a frost then it could go back to being warm again.  Well the day came and luckily even though being miserable and cold, we never got a killing frost and only rain.  I expected it to turn to snow overnight but we only had a skiff in the morning, whew!  But it did kill a bunch of mosquitoes probly from drowning them, lol.

Well it went away and the temps got super warm again that was nice but rather unexpected!  I headed to Calgary a couple days later to get a bike from the rental place next to my sisters store that sells all their rental bikes and water skis and whatever other summer stuff.  I got a really nice bike I am super excited about it, but they still had snow in Calgary but it was warm so I even went for a ride to try it out.

But on the way home I had a look at all the crops, what a mess, I feel for them farmers it just looked all trashed, gonna be pretty hard to get some of them off.

We finally got our water fixed from no shower all summer (at least the toilet and sink worked)  But we been heading down to Emerson Campground to shower and they were closing up for the season, which was good it was getting too cold to go right outside after a shower.  Wasn't all bad, lots of times we headed to Brooks for supper afterwards and one day we saw Cookie Monster in the Tim Horton's drive thru, lol

Other than that been riding and amazed at how green the grass is this late in the year.

My Calgary Stampede Day

I headed to the Stampede on Sunday.  I was going to the Reba concert that night so we decided not to go super early cause we knew it was gonna be late.  We got there about noon and boy was it HOT!!  We took pics of us in the frame, we went through the new Agrium building it was kinda cool.

We walked through the building with all the selling stuff, didn't buy anything and then through the art building, always some really nice stuff and some slightly weird stuff.  Then we walked by the Bell Adrenaline ranch and last year it was on water this year BMX but we had time so we grabbed a drink and went to watch it.

Got a few videos of it, it was really pretty impressive even if I have no desire to usually watch that kind of stuff it was still a good show.

Its amazing how much time there is to do stuff down there if we don't go on rides or to the rodeo.  I woulda loved to do the rodeo but seeing as it was showdown Sunday I'm sure it was sold out and if not I couldn't afford tickets to it anyways.  Then the best part of the night, the reason we went on the last day....REBA!!!

She was sooo good, not sure if she has any new songs, but she did a kinda neat concert as a progression of her career, from her first song, her first video, her first movie, her TV show, her Broadway show, it was pretty cool.  She never sang all her songs but lots of them she did.  Got some video of part songs too.

And after that it was still daytime, haha unexpected but we had a couple more things we wanted to do...

And then home for the night and not enough sleep.