"We left Joshua, Audrey, and Sophia's house at about 5:30 Sunday evening to go to the airport for our week in Calgary with Ben, Sarah, and Ethan. It was interesting to me to read about the formation of Skywest by Ralph Atkin. I could not help but think of what Grandma Hafen told me about Ralph's Dad. When Grandpa died from cancer, President Atkin, President of the St. George Temple, invited Grandma to come down to his office at the temple. There, dressed in his white suit, he proceeded to offer to take Grandpa's St. George property on the Santa Clara Creek off of her hands. She went ahead with this sale, and the property was turned into one of the most upscale golf course communities in St. George. Someday it would be fun to dig into the records and to figure out how much the profits from Grandpa's farm were used to help Skywest make it through start-up cash flow struggles. There was a very interesting airplane magazine celebrating the 35th anniversary of the formation of Skywest, and it was as touching to me as reading Janet Segmiller's "History of Iron County" (0724.html and 0725.html). As we flew into Calgary it was fun to look at the farms and to imagine plowing and planting and harvesting all of that acreage. It was interesting how many small pools of water there were. The water was from recent rainstorms, and the ponds were left over from when glaciers covered this whole area 12,000 years ago.
Customs was not a problem, especially when I told them we were coming to Calgary to spend a week with my son Ben, his wife Sarah, and our grandson Ethan. I had missed Sarah's call earlier in the day, and when I called back from the Salt Lake airport I learned where we were going to be met at the airport by Ben and Ethan. It was neat to come out of customs and to have Ethan waiting for us. He was excited to see us, and as we came out of customs had even more energy than Grant or Colby, if that is possible. My instructions were explicit: I was to sit in the backseat with Ethan. The conversations focused on The Black Pearl, his friend's model of the Pirate Ship, and his saving up to buy one himself. He also talked to me about Egypt and being an Egyptologist.
When we got to the house we went right downstairs to see the museum he had set up in the basement. The center point of the museum was a giant whiteboard in his room with all kinds of Egyptian hieroglyphics he had drawn on it. This whiteboard became our workspace for the next couple of days. I really do not know that much about Egypt, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and so I copied facsimile 1 and 2 from the Pearl of Great Price. Ethan liked them. It was fun.
Monday morning the 2nd of July we slept in. I am surprised how tired I have been in Calgary. Maybe it is elevation. Maybe I'm getting to old to go to China (0724.html), St. Louis (0725.html), Salt Lake (0725.html), and then Calgary back-to-back. Oh well! We went to Big Rock when we got up, as shown by the photos above and to the right. I really like these photos. In the photo above, Ethan standing in front of the world, with a narrow path leading to the object of interest, in this case Big Rock. In the photo to the left Ethan is looking and yearning to reach to his example and mentor, his teacher and father. Me too!
Big Rock is an erratic. These are rocks which were moved to the area by large glaciers in the last ice age, between 12,000 and 18,000 years ago. In this case, these quartzite rocks were moved hundreds of kilometers by giant glaciers. They we 1600 to 1800 tons, depending on which sign you read. It is a really big rock to be moved this far by a glacier. We climbed up on top of the Big Rock, we climbed on the pieces which had fallen off of it, and we had fun. Ethan had brought his hammer, his chisel (tent peg), and his sample box. So we collected samples of the Big Rock. There are nice photos of Andrea and me on a heart shaped rock (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Trips/070701-2_Vacation_Ben_Sarah_Ethan_Big_Rock/dsc09329.jpg), and Ben and Sarah on the same rock (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Trips/070701-2_Vacation_Ben_Sarah_Ethan_Big_Rock/dsc09332.jpg) taken from the top of the Big Rock. It was fun. There are 81 other photos and four animated files in this directory from our activities on Sunday and Monday.
We came back to the house and Ethan got out his microscope and we looked at the samples he had collected. He is quite the little scientist. It was fun, even if you could only see the outline of the rock chips with his microscope. From here we went to a local mall, where Andrea bought some clothes (she left her clothes in the hotel we stayed at in Salt Lake on Saturday night), I got three screws put in my camera, Ethan got a neat world puzzle showing different animals from different places, Sarah got a new dress, and Ben was a good sport. We ate lunch at Arby's in the Mall, and I made a paper airplane for Ethan, which he had a lot of fun with. Then we went to see the animated movie Ratatouille. First class movie, even though I found myself falling asleep during part of the movie. I encourage all grandchildren to see it, or to get it in the family movie library. When we got back to the house, Sarah fixed shrimp, broccoli, and linguine for dinner. At dinner Sarah asked how it felt to be eating at the kitchen table I grew up eating at again. The story that came to mind was when one of the Grimshaw girls was cleaning house for Mom on a Saturday. Dad and I came in for lunch, we sat down, ate, and were getting up to go back to work when she said,"You are the weirdest family I have ever seen. No one said anything to anyone as you ate lunch." We laughed, and it was sadly true. We did not talk at meals. Sarah proceeded to tell a story on Roice. Roice and A.J. were eating lunch one day, and A.J. decided he was going to finish his meal before Roice did. He ate as fast as he could, and Roice still beat him through eating, which is when A.J. explained he was racing. It is hard to know where free will starts and where the influences of environment and genetics stops controlling our actions. Oh well! Ethan and I read from The Twins of the American Revolution. It was a wonderful day.
Tuesday morning, July 3rd, we got up a little bit earlier. We went to a dog park, next to the Bow River. Ethan had a lot of fun throwing rocks in the river. The dogs, Tex and Dallas, are Whippets, little Grayhound racers. They are very, very, very fast, and fun to watch run. They also liked to take on every other dog they came to. I don't know if you have ever been around someone talking to someone who speaks a different language than they speak, and when you are notice how they talk louder to get the person to understand their language. Of course it doesn't work, and it is intimidating to the person who is being talked to. Dog owners often don't understand dog language, and it was fascinating and sad to listen to the various dog owners yelling at their dogs to get them to do what they wanted them to do.
Then we came back to the house, and Andrea and Sarah made ham wrap sandwiches for lunch. Then we drove 1 1/2 hours to Drummheller, where the finest dinosaur museum I've ever visited is located. It was fun. Again there are 116 digital photos and 6 movies at (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Trips/070703_Vacation_Ben_Sarah_Ethan_Drumheller), of which my favorite is the image below:
The Royal Tyrrell Museum has an outstanding exhibit of dinosaurs, fossils, exhibits explaining the age of the earth and the relationship to the various fossils, live demonstrations showing preserving dinosaur bones, game rooms, and a store, in addition to tours out where dinosaur bones have been excavated. We took the Dinosite tour, which was a 90-minute 3 km journey through the Canadian badlands. It was fun to watch Ethan find rocks and ask if they were dinosaur bones. Sarah was the first to find a dinosaur bone. Andrea and Ben also each found one. I was a smart alack, asking what kind of fossils deer tracks are, and asking if dinosaur farts makes coal smell. Ethan liked my questions. Ethan slept most of the way back to Calgary. It was nice to have him laying on my shoulder. When we got back Ben grilled some hamburgers, and I got my computer set up on the kitchen table to rotate, merge, lighten, and fix up the digital photos I took. The computer stayed on the table the rest of the week. We were all pretty tired and went to bed earlier than we had been going to bed.
We were up early on Wednesday morning, July 4th. We went down to the park by the school and tired the dogs out while they chased the Frisbee and each other. Tex is faster than Dallas, and Dallas is more aggressive. Tex could run out and catch the Frisbee, no matter how hard Ben threw it. Dallas usually ended up with the Frisbee, by chasing Tex and taking it away. It was fun to watch, and I got some pretty good movies of this activity. The 4 movies of the dogs at the park are at (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Trips/070704_Vacation_Ben_Sarah_Ethan_Lake_Louise), and there are two other movies and 130 digital photos from the days activities. I've been at Banff a couple of times before, and I think I've been to Lake Louise before. It was very nice to share this time in Calgary with Ben, Sara, Ethan, and Andrea. I forgot how pretty the water was. The blue reminds me of a more violet version the beautiful blue of the clear natural spring at Panquich Lake on Cedar Mountain. I had a long sleeve shirt and long pants on, and so when we got around to the back of the lake, I did not go out on the beach with the others. They waded through the glacial melt, and it was obvious from the faces and body movements it was very, very, very cold. Ethan cut his foot pretty bad, and he did OK the rest of the week. There were some mountain climbers going up straight walls of rock. It was fun to watch them, and I have no desire to follow in their steps, even if I had the strength and weight that I could have. I took some nice panoramas. It was lot of fun.
After getting back from the far side of Lake Louise, we went to eat where Ben, Sarah, and Ethan had eaten before. They were closed for cleaning, and so we went to the Lake Louise Inn for lunch. I had French Onion Soup, and the best Ruben Sandwich I've every had. Ben and Sarah are very good with Ethan, and he is exceptionally good for someone 6 11/12ths years old. After lunch, as we were riding up the the Icefields Parkway, we saw 4 bears by by the side of the road. I got some pretty good digital photos. Andrea and Sarah were particularly excited. We went to see the Crowfoot Glacier. One of the three branches of the Crowfoot have melted. Then we went to the Payto Lake overlook. It was a bit of an uphill hike, and I could tell I am getting old, and that there is a difference in walking uphill at this elevation compared to climbing stairs at lunch in Houston. Beautiful views. Andrea talked to a Japanese couple in Japanese. She seemed to enjoy the practice, and I caught a couple of movies of the discussions. We read from The Twins of the American Revolution on the way home, and then Ethan fell asleep. So did I. We ate so much at lunch, dinner was Root Beer and an Ice Cream Sandwich for me. After rotating, rescaling, and merging the panoramas, I read to Ethan as he fell asleep. It was another great day in Calgary with Ben, Sarah, and Ethan. I did not miss the 4th of July celebrations at all.
I think the first of the week wore everyone out. Andrea got up about 7:30 and went for a walk down by the river. Everyone else slept in until about 9:00 Thursday morning. When we got up and showered we went to eat crepe's at Cora's Breakfast & Lunch. What a great breakfast. Lots of fruit, and I've been eating so much it will probably take me a couple of months to get back down to the 230 pounds I was before all of this travel. Oh well! I called John Bennett and set up for dinner on Friday evening. I also received a call from Mike Pinnell, who is the father-in-law of one of Joshua's best friends (0726.html). He said he has been on vacation, and that his partners want someone who has more experience interpreting in the Canadian Overthrust than I have. They are looking for office space in Salt Lake, and have not made a decision on whom they want to work with them yet. Oh well!
Thursday afternoon was my interview with Satinder Chopra, Editor of the CSEG Recorder. I had arranged for Ethan to go with me. Ethan was busy with a TV show about digging up a mammoth in someone's backyard, and said it would just be boring, so he didn't go with me. He is right, it would have been boring. Although he would have been in the photographs and mentioned in the article if he would have gone with me. When I showed the questions Satinder asked to Sarah, she said, "Some of those questions are very personal." I guess I don't know where that personal boundary is, because I answered all of his questions to the best of my ability:
There was a photographer at the meeting named Penny B. Coltron, who is also a geophysicist. She asked very interesting and penetrating questions, and it was fun to see her reaction to some of the discussion. She took several dozen photographs. I was sad Ethan was not with me for the photographs, as I think they would have made the article more interesting to Canadian readers. However, I'm sure he would have been bored to death, and the interview would have taken a completely different tract if he had been with us. I'm sure there will be additional words about this interview in future Thoughtlets. I did send the following e-mail to Satinder on Friday morning:
When we got back, Ben and Ethan had gone to the park. We walked down by the school, and Andrea figured Ben must have taken Ben to the river. We decided to go back to the house, and as we were coming into the subdivision, there were Ben and Ethan. They had gone to a different park. We met two of Ethan's friends, who came over to the house to play. Ethan watched Goonies a couple of more times that afternoon and evening. We went to a nice Japanese restaurant for dinner. We also went to the Marble Slab and bought an Oreo's un-birthday cake for Ethan. Good stuff. Ethan came upstairs and I read another chapter of "The Twins of The American Revolution" to him just before he fell asleep. I think the book is just a little bit too old for him, and I really enjoyed it.
Friday morning, the 6th of July, I woke up very early, like 4:00 AM, and could not get back to sleep. I worked on this Thoughtlet, did several e-mails, and when Andrea got up she asked me if I would go with her on a walk. Didn't really want to, and I did. It was beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I often feel like there is too much to do to take time for things like this. I need to take more time for this type of activity. There are some nice panoramas I took in the directory http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Trips/070705_Vacation_Ben_Sarah_Ethan_Neighborhood. There are 38 digital photos and 6 movies in this directory.
We went to Heritage Park Historical Village, advertised as time travel in Calgary later in the morning. The Heritage Park has similarities to Nauvoo (../0648.html), and to This is The Place Monument in Salt Lake. There were some very good folks at some exhibits, and some were just kids working at a summer job. Andrea and I enjoyed it a lot. Sarah thought we would get through in 2 hours. We were there closer to 6 hours. I took a lot (120 pictures and 4 movies) of digital photos (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Trips/070706_Vacation_Ben_Sarah_Ethan_Heritage_Park). We started at the Aboriginal Encampment, Our Lady of Peace Mission, and the Hudson's Bay Company Fur Trading Fort (c. 1860). I mentioned to Andrea I have wanted to study early American Forts, before and after the Book of Mormon was published, to see if there is any correlations to the forts General Moroni built. In the fort was a good guide, who talked about beaver pelts. When he found out we were from Texas, he wanted to point out how folks from Texas and Alberta had many things in common, including claiming to have the biggest of everything. He showed us a Texas tomahawk, then a giant Alberta boulder with the same approximate shape. We all had a good laugh. After this we went to several cabins, to a school, to a NW Mounted Police Post with a Mountie, and to a saloon with rules for using a fan and rules for staying at the saloon (including be up by 6:00 AM so the sheets can be used for table cloths).
The Burnside Ranch House was built by the first white settler of Calgary. He was 42 when he married a 14 year old, who bore him 14 children. Then we went towards the main part of the city and saw interesting old farm implements, old gas pumps like the one Dad used to have by the Meat Packing Plant, and then we bought some sour dough bread. We then went to the train depot, where there was a tour guide from Glasgow who was a lot of fun.
Next we found ourselves on a paddle wheel riverboat. As we left shore some little girls came running buy and one said, "There's no one here!" I turned to her and said, "I'm here and I'm somebody." We didn't see her again the rest of the trip. Sarah laughed at my sense of humor. The captain missed the dock the first time and we went back around again. There was a two-alarm apartment fire on the other side of the lake, with a helicopter fly over. After the ride, we walked back up to the center of main street. Andrea and I were fascinated with the Masonic Lodge. The following is the Declaration of Principles of The Grand Lodge of Alberta, stating the Freemasonry as a Society is:
Then we went to the General Store and the Pharmacy. When we got over to the fairground, Sarah and Ethan were on the Ferris Wheel. Andrea wanted to go on it, and they shut it down. One of the operators said he felt rain, looked up, realized the sky was clear, and there was a little girl who was very scared and had an accident. They stopped rides while they sanitized the entire ride. We ate some corn dogs, and then Ethan and I went on the Whip. Then we went on the horse pulled wagon ride around the park. Then back to the Ferris Wheel, where Ethan, Andrea, and I barely fit in the seat. I had a hard time getting my camera out of my pocket. Then we went to the 1894 Prince House, which was very interesting, and ran to catch a train ride around the park and back to the front entrance. It was a lot of fun, and another great day with Sarah and Ethan in Calgary, even if Ben was working. When we got back to the house I worked on the photos until it was time to go out to dinner.
I had made arrangements to meet John and Carlene Bennett at the Delta Hotel at 135 Southland Drive in Calgary at the Atrium Cafe at 7:00 PM. We were a couple of minutes late because we stopped and got gas and cleaned off the windshield of Ben's car. It was mutually good to see John again. Peter Blomfield and his wife Mary joined us for dinner. Peter was in the Ipswich Ward when John joined the church back in July of 1971. What a wonderful evening. Actually the waitress had a chip on her shoulder, the service was lousy, there were problems with food delivered, and none of this really seemed to matter. I had not seen John since about 1982, and there was just plane a lot to catch up on. And Mary is a real talker and had lots and lots to say. I loved the time we spent together. The best photo of the group of us is at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Friends/070706_John_Bennett/dsc09771.jpg, and there are 7 other digital photos in this directory. Peter and Mary Blomfield are short, and John and Carlene are tall. Peter was a Bishop for several years, and the Blomfields have 10 children. Carlene has 3 children, one still home, and John 3, his two daughters are married. Ben served a mission. I could go on and on about the stories, and this thoughtlet is so long I won't do that to the reader.
It was about 11:00 when we got home, and Sarah and Ethan had gone to bed. I worked on the photos, and proceeded to give a static charge to the USB drive and destroy it. I was not a happy camper. Oh well! I was finally able to copy the last of the digital photos onto a CD for Ben, and I went to bed about 1:00 PM.
I got up at 4:00 AM on Saturday, 070707. I double checked and triple checked to make sure we didn't leave anything, especially after our one night in Salt Lake. We left for the airport about 5:15 AM and got to the airport just in time to check in for our flight. I slept to Salt Lake, and much of the time we were in Salt Lake. Rachel picked us up, and took us to Pioneer Park, where we met Joshua, Audrey, and Sophie and spent the morning at the weekly Farmer's Market. Lots of crafts and junk. I saw and talked to Dr. Gerald Schuester, a geophysics professor at the University of Utah. Joshua bought a pretty necklace for Audrey. I took 15 digital photos, which are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/06_JoshuaAudrey/01_Bobbie_Sophia/070707_Sophie_at_the_Farmers_Market. We went to lunch at an Italian place across from the Park. On the way to Johsua and Audrey's we stopped and I got a new 4 GB USB drive. We went to Joshua and Audrey's for a while, and then to Rachel's for a while. I kept falling asleep, and so I missed the drama which was playing out in front of my closed eyes (0728.html). Oh well. Rachel took us to the airport, and we made it back to the house about 10:30. Anna Schmidt thought she locked herself out of the house, and so much of our mail and papers were at the Schmidt's house. Oh well! There was a Christmas card returned from the Grand Cayman Islands, which I had sent to Robert Winsloe. It was nice to be home. And it was especially nice to reflect on our wonderful week in Calgary with Ben, Sarah, and Ethan."
