Hoodoos

Hoodoos are those columns of soft rock capped by a flat cap of harder rock that are plentiful around the Drumheller area. I was hoping to add a photo of them but it is not working today.
The word comes from West Africa and refers to a practice of magic similar to Voodoo that was imported to North America in the 18th century. The local native people believed the rock pillars represented giants that had been turned to stone for their evil deeds. Reminds me of Lott's wife who was turned to salt.
Today we are sitting on the picnic table under a fir tree by a nice log fire at our cabin property, enjoying a bit of sunshine, and awaiting the usual afternoon rain!
There are a lot of noisy birds about, like Yellow Warblers and Baltimore Orioles.
Hanne has been trimming off the lower branches of the fir tree over the picnic table, whilst I have been burning them....I have also been sawing logs for fun and exercise.
Yesterday we had hail in the afternoon!

It's that time of year around our lake!

Sunset over Pigeon Lake

Pigeon Lake

We have completed our Danish Seminar,said all our goodbyes to friends old and new,and have now arrived at our cabin at Pigeon Lake, about 300 Km away. En route we had lunch at a deli sandwich shop, run by a couple of young people. A young teenager was eating his lunch there, and he wanted a second apple pie, so as the lady was preparing food with gloves on, and her husband was out back, she couldn't come to the till,so the teenager was allowed to serve himself and put his own money in the till! Such is small town living! The other strange thing was that they were a small operation and didn't have a WC so I received detailed instructions on how to slip into the Chinese restaurant across and use their WC!
A serendipitous visit to Buffalo Lake near Stettler gave us chance to watch a whole flock of White Pelicans feeding by the beach.They nest on an Island in the middle of the lake, which we saw in the distance as a snowy white disc.
As a tribute to our seminar teacher Don Mowatt, here are the three things he would possibly encourage us all to do before we die.
1. Love God and your neighbor
2. Involve yourself with Music, the international language
3. Listen to all Don Mowatt's CBC Radio documentaries!
Don worked for Canadian Broadcasting until 1997, producing many radio programs, and he is a talented actor,singer,director,producer,violinist,and presenter.He has interviewed many famous people including The Aga Khan and Sir John Gielgud.
He divides creative writing into three types.
1. Truth.
2. Fact.
3. Story.
Some writers mix all three.
As humans I think we tend to also mix all three as we interpret our everyday world. The planet may well be coming to an end in short order, but we don't react as if it were true or a fact, just a story....Other folks' worlds are daily coming to an end, but not ours...

Out and About

Drumheller is a little town in Alberta with lots of spare railway lines because a couple of years ago it was closed by the CPR or CNR. It seems strange to have all the equipment still
there like crossing lights and it never gets used.
We were taken in a small twelve seater bus to see a miniature version of the Grand Canyon, some buffaloes ( their meat is worth more than beef ),a suspension bridge over the swollen, muddy Red Deer river, which was used in the old days by the coal miners, now just for tourists to wobble on; and to an impressive 3000 seat outdoor stadium used for passion plays about ten times a year.( Shades of Oberammergau )After lunch we visited the awe-inspiring Royal Tyrrell Museum displaying massive dinosaur skeletons. They are still collecting them. The latest is from of all places Fort MacMurray oil sands,where a rare dinosaur was just discovered.The museum website is worth checking out...
Today we are studying Karen Blixen.

Drumheller

We are now visiting Drumheller for a week of Danish culture at a sort of high school convention for mature Danes. The surrounding area has strange topography;we are surrounded by horizontally striped flat- topped hills whose appearance is still what it was just after the ice-age. In some areas there are hoodoos which we have been photographing. Strange columns of slowly eroding soft rocks capped by harder rock lids. The other feature near here is that there is a vast area of dinosaur bones which people come and dig up and study. Even the huge dinosaur museum, the hospital, and several other buildings are design to match the hills by having horizontal stripes. The locals have built huge plaster replicas of the dinosaurs all over town to attract the tourists. In the past there was a boom in coal mining here and There are various disused mine sites to visit. Last evening we were taken to the "Last Chance Saloon" in Wayne for a barbecue steak dinner , where all the miners used to go in the old days.So we are now full of Alberta meat and Hans Christian Andersen, ready to leave in a coach to learn more about the dinosaurs at the museum...

New Lutheran Church

After last night's Gala Dinner and Dance, today the sun came out, and we piled into a school bus and with a total of 150 people attended a two hour service celebrating the consecration of a new church. The building was constructed by Danes eighty years ago, but this congregation was a combination of that of the original church and another Danish Lutheran church. There were lots of flags, choirs, and four pastors and one bishop, and lots of speeches, with some glorious organ music, and a luncheon afterwards. There was a ceremonial procession of a large model sailing ship, which will be installed. Tradition has it that the ship represents the church with Jesus Christ at the helm.
The weather continued all day, so what with the rain then the sun, everyone's lawn now needs cutting in a bad way!
By the way I tried posting my blog by email with a photo to blogger but it just went into cyberspace and never arrived! I will put photos on when we get home in June...