Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

Yesterday's word:

temerity \tuh-MER-uh-tee\, noun:Unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger; rashness.

Drumheller proved to be much more interesting and entertaining than I ever expected. However, Calgary awaits so we extricated ourselves from the Dinosaur Campground and started to make our way to the home of the “Flames”. It was another nice day but there were threatening clouds on the horizon. As we approached Calgary from the east we could see the outline of the Rocky mountains in behind the city. It was all very impressive. We arrived a our campsite, which is just next to the Olympic ski jumps, from Calgary's 1988 Winter Olympics, and found that we had a site up on a hill overlooking the valley. As Chantal and I stood at our site and surveyed the view we could see what looked a little like smoke from a forest fire off to the west. But the colour seemed too brownish and I commented that it looked almost like it was dust that had been stirred up by something. It couldn’t have been more than about 15 seconds later that a huge blast of wind arrived kicking up dust and dirt so much that we had to turn our backs to avoid getting all the debris in our eyes. Then the strength of the wind did not subside. We looked around and saw other people's MoHo awnings pulling loose of their moorings, people running to lower their tent trailers before the ends were blown off, and trees bending over against the strength of the dusty wind. It was crazy! And it was a cold wind that dropped the temperature from about 25C to 15C within about 60 seconds. Everyone who was swimming in the pool when we arrived were out immediately and we actually had to put on a sweatshirt to stay warm! Crazy weather to be sure and altough the wind lasted most of the evening it fortunately did not develop into anything worse. We ended up meeting some people from Yellowknife, Yukon who were camping close to us. They were outside throwing a nerfball around and we could hear that they were francophones. Their cute 11-year-old daughter was also out throwing the ball around and it didn’t take long for our two boys to run out and join them in-spite of the gentle rain that was beginning to fall. Her named turned out to be Veronique and she ended up joining us for a board game in the MoHo. She was a real character and we all had fun. Unfortunately for the boys, Veronique is scheduled to leave tomorrow.



You know, I've been thinging, (yes, that may come as a shock to some of you) and I figure that, given the sometimes lengthy waits between post, perhaps it would make more sense to include the definition of the word of the day at the end of the entry in question. So, starting today, that is what I will do ... in an effort to make your blogging experience that much more pleasurable.

extricate\EK-struh-kayt\, transitive verb:
To free or release from a difficulty or entanglement; to get free; to disengage.