Cheap Playground Equipment

This is the best idea I've seen for dirt in a long time. Instant playground and toboggan hill... Lots of schools around Red Deer have hills like this, as well as regular playground equipment to play on. Nice.

Tourist Attraction Attracts Tourists, part 2

Into the "badlands" of Drumheller!
Watch your toes... he likes plastic.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology was our Drumheller destination on Sunday August 12. Turns out about 2000 other people had the same idea. Half of them were under age 12. Half of those were under age 4 and in strollers. I felt like I might become a fossil while waiting to get up to an exhibit to read about it.

The museum is oustanding, as far as design and content goes. High time in the summer pays the bills but doesn't allow for the fullest experience. As we were advised, it makes more sense to camp in the area for a few days, and then visit the museum for 2 or 3 shorter visits on off-peak days. Oh well, we didn't have that flexibility.

Afterward we found ourselves a nice restaurant in town, Yaris Family Restaurant, and enjoyed a good meal with good service. It's amazing what one experienced waitress can do when fully committed to serving the customers. There were two others on duty, but I only saw the older one working. She said under her breath once, "My helpers aren't helping!"

Red Deer Hospitality

Of all the places we've visited, I know the most about Red Deer, thanks to the tours I got from my uncle D. and aunt J. When the head guy from the local historical society takes you on a tour, you need to sit up and listen. In the short time we had on the first evening we looked at the Bower Ponds, the newly located Cronquist House, the Mackenzie Trails and we learned about some of the flood control features that have been built into a few of the new subdivisions around town. And, we were shown a church designed by famous architect Douglas Cardinal, which is without straight lines anywhere. At Bower Ponds we saw a fanatical mallard duck mom who chased away all other ducks that approached her ducklings, then when we looked across the pond we saw a pair of muskrats boldly swimming around. Driving on our way to the Mackenzie Trails (part of which is a reclaimed dump) a couple of deer played hide and seek with us.
The Cronquist House (above). The Cardinal-designed church (below).But topping it off, we were treated to some fine Alberta steaks, prepared by N. Awesome. In his spare time N. fixes/disposes of old PCs, and before I could finish chewing my steak I was being handed a PC tower with Unix newly installed. thanx!