gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

A beautiful sunny day, very warm. It is now part of that wonderful, extended bit of not quite summer. Most of the bugs are dead, it's cold and crisp towards evening, but the days are often perfect weather.

We are now seeing the Canada geese forming V s in the air, getting the young ones all trained up for the big migration. I feel their excitement.

My Sweetie and I got up a little earlier (than I usually do) to go to the city today.

I wanted to rent a canoe and go on the big river that goes right through the city, underneath all of the big bridges and so on.

There is a company that rents canoes and kayaks, and they provide the service that is the clincher; you park your vehicle and they take you by bus upstream. Then you get in your canoe and paddle back down stream until you get to the original dock where your vehicle awaits.

If you do this on your own, you always have to do something where you take two vehicles (and it requires either three people, or a safe place to leave your canoe), park one vehicle where you plan to end the trip, then take the other one with the canoe far upstream, and leave it there while you paddle back to your first vehicle, leave one person with the canoe while two other people go back to other vehicle, then come back for the person waiting with the canoe....it's ridiculous.

You COULD just canoe upstream for a while and then turn back, but have you ever tried to canoe upstream in a bigger river? It sucks.

So, we went with the company that gives you a ride on a bus upstream, where you get into a canoe, and float back downstream where your car is parked.

The bus was an old school bus, and man did that bring back memories. I spent about 45 minutes twice a day on one all through school, bumping all over the gravel roads. I haven't been on one for a very long time, but it was so funny to be on one with adults, many grey haired folks.

The canoe ride was great. Perfect weather for it, a very calm day, sunny, no bugs, and the river was fairly low and tame. There was a good current though, and it took us along nicely without a lot of effort.

It was a strange experience to go underneath the bridges, ones we have often driven over, and to see lots of natural grass and trees on the banks (Edmonton left the banks of the river undeveloped for the most part, or as parks and bike paths) with the big tall buildings behind it.

Lots of people were walking along the banks and sand bars, and letting their dogs swim.

We pulled up on a sand bar where two older guys were running a sluice to get gold. We joked that we were pirates, and talked to them for a while before we pushed off.

It took us about two hours to get back to the spot on the banks where our cars were parked (in a parking lot, as that area was part of a public park). It was a lovely day and I would definitely do it again. What an interesting perspective of the city and the bridges.

Then we got food at a kind of healthy fast food chain. Funny to think of how rare that kind of place would have been twenty years ago, now they are fairly common, and I'm happy to see that kind of change.

Then we popped in to a costume store; not just a Halloween store, a full time costume store year round. So it isn't all just "spooky" things, it has all kinds of wigs, makeup, props, and tons of clothes that are kind of like fun vintage stuff so it holds potential as clothing outside of being a costume. Also had glittery fabric and sewing notions.

So much fun! I found a top that is completely covered in sequins, and in an interesting black and silver pattern. I suspect that it was once very expensive. It was on their clearance rack.

There were also some silk "obi" style outfits that part of me really wanted, but they were not something I was likely ever to wear, and I wouldn't have wanted to risk ruining them by trying to make them into something else.

We came home, and it was a little too late to let any animals out into their pastures. This is a normal part of the weather changing; it is getting dark quite early now.

I worked on braiding paracord, hopefully to make a black neck rope for River.

Overall, a very lovely day with my Sweetie, and grateful for another trip around the sun.

I learned that Michaelangelo wrote a poem about how much he loathed painting the Sistine Chapel.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57328/michaelangelo-to-giovanni-da-pistoia-when-the-author-was-painting-the-vault-of-the-sistine-chapel

Nice to know that maybe everyone feels like this about work they maybe care about, but still find arduous and tedious.