August 13, 2016
After getting home from the office on Thursday, we captured a nice double rainbow visible out our 12th story window that appeared after a brief thunderstorm passed over us. The quality of the rainbow was much more intense than the picture captured. Beautiful!
We continue to get thunderstorms (sometimes with hail) nearly every afternoon. The Calgary area, and much of Alberta, has seen more rain this spring and summer than it has seen in 90 years. Mostly the storms have been brief but intense and are followed by bright sunshine, - perfect for the lawns and crops. Soon, however, if this pattern continues it will become a problem; many of the grain crops are awaiting harvesting. The rain is delaying crop maturation and it is problematic getting heavy equipment onto the fields when the ground is saturated, but in the meantime, everything is so beautiful and green.
Yesterday (Saturday) was an exceptionally beautiful and clear all day with none of the usual buildup of thunderheads rolling off the Rockies. This worked out well for our P-day. We took advantage of the clear weather and drove to the northwest end of the Glenmore Reservoir where we had not yet hiked. The same trail we have included in other blogs continues all the way around the reservoir. The bridge you see in the distance in the one picture connects the trails from the south side with the trails along the north and enables getting over a delta where the Elbow River leads into the Glenmore Reservoir. This area, known as Weaselhead, is a very nice bird and game preserve. The area to the south is an Indian (Indians are called First Nation's in Canada) Reserve. The First Nation tribe living on the Reserve are known as the Tsuu T'ina Nation. They have a large casino and hotel on the Calgary side of the Reserve just a couple of miles further west from the site for this picture. If you look carefully in the one picture you can see a canoe and a kayak making their way upstream. toward the mountains. I hope to do that myself and get further back into the Weaselhead area than you can go on a trail.
The Glenmore Reservoir provides much of the drinking water for the Calgary area. It is a flood control measure as well, although even the reservoir was not sufficient to keep the downtown area from flooding in 2013. While the reservoir controls flow from the Elbow River, another larger river called the Bow River, flows through the area west to east as well. The Elbow River outflow from the Glenmore Reservoir connects to the Bow. From the lessons learned in the flood of 2013, the reservoir is not maintained at or even near full capacity to accommodate another flood better than the last experience.
The reservoir is a wonderful recreational resource. For example, we had a hard time finding a place to park yesterday as there was a large crowd there for a rowing event. There is a large rowing club on the northwest side of the reservoir and a beautiful 18-hole golf course. Then there is a large sailing school on the southeast side. The rowing event had apparently drawn rowing teams from all around the area for a competitive event.
We have been recording the NBC version of the Rio Olympic events. In addition, two Canadian broadcasting services have their coverage of the events as well so there is no shortage of coverage. We have been able to watch our NBC recordings in the evenings but have to fast forward through some of the events (and the commercials, of course - which is so nice!) in an effort to keep up. I usually watch the news daily but I had to be careful to change the channel quickly when the Olympic news would come on so it wouldn't spoil the results for us. We spent yesterday afternoon cleaning the apartment and doing our weekly domestic chores while trying to catch up on Olympic events and erasing what we had watched in order to clear out recording space so we can record more of the events today and into next week.
We are having a wonderful young lady taught here in our home. We did this on three separate evenings during the week and this contributed to falling way behind on the Olympic coverage. We still have the final two events of "America's Got Talent" to get to as well. We appreciate being able to record what we want to watch but the storage capacity of our VCR is limited so we end up having to delete many of the events we have recorded earlier in the week but are selective in the process such as white water rafting, rowing, judo, etc. This is just as well. After all, we aren't here to watch TV.
Mini Zone Conferences are underway in the mission. They are called "mini" in that they are shorter, are held just in the morning, and do not involve car inspections (yea!). Because the southern Zone Leaders had not been to the office lately, the mail for the south zones was piling up, so Kathy and I made a quick trip to Lethbridge on Wednesday to take the mail. We drove in rain much of the trip down and back.
And that is the news from our Canada Calgary mission experience. Have a wonderful week.
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