Back to Jasper

This weekend just past I took the Monday off to make it a long weekend, and headed up to Jasper National Park. The main reason for the trip was a combined birthday, with Breanna's two cousins celebrating their birthday on the same day. The last time I was in Jasper was during winter, so of course things were a little different without the snow there.

It takes about three and a half hours to get to Jasper. We actually stopped a little out of the township and drove around a hill to the Miette hotsprings, where you can hike up the rest of the hill on a couple of different tracks. There is either the short track or the extremely long track, but considering the short track is 5km straight uphill, seriously it isn't short by anyone's standards.

Its quite interesting hiking up the hill, because it is a National Park with wild animals running rampant. Not the type of animals you might find back home in New Zealand like birds and rabbits, but dangerous ones like Black Bears and Mountain Lions. Of course most of the time you'll be lucky enough not to encounter an angry animal, but they are usually wandering around. In fact, two of the party on the way down the hill ran into a couple of Black Bears, but luckily the bears didn't seem terribly hungry that day so let the encounter slide.

I'm not sure exactly how long it took to climb to the summit, but it was in the neighborhood of just under three hours. Quite the climb, considering you have to climb back down again. The view at the top was worth it though, as you got a 360 degree view of all the different mountaintops and the surrounding area.

The weather up there was nice but definitely cooling down from the heat of the summer. On the other days we traversed around a lakeside track, and went exploring the multitude of gift stores around the town. Jasper itself isn't terribly big, kind of like Hanmer, but in the surrounding area there is a lot to do. It was nice to escape away from the city for awhile, especially to enjoy the last of the warm weather before the winter snows hit.

All Quiet on the Home Front

Just thought I'd post a quick update on my current situation. I started a new job last week, and although its going pretty well it has been keeping me really busy, which could be part of the reason for the lack of posts. The company I'm at is called Bartle and Gibson, and its basically a big wholesale place for plumbing and electrical. Not exactly in my preferred area of interest, but film seems to be pretty hard to get into here without being part of the IATSE union and doesn't pay enough to get by. I enjoy likening a career in the film industry to an actors career - although it may be your area of interest or passion, for the most part you're going to need a day job to survive - you know, to pay for essential items like food. Of course in both careers the prospects look up once you start becoming either successful or really lucky, but until then it can be hard to get by.

Anyway this job pays quite nicely, and its a hell of a lot more easy going than any job I've had before. I've got my own big desk, and my own computer that luckily isn't restricted in anyway, so when its quiet I can do internet stuff. I like to think of it as my day job, even though I don't exactly have any other jobs.

I've also been a lot more active on deviantART, which is a fairly huge community. Its especially good for putting photos up and checking out what other people have done, even though I only have a point and shoot digital at the moment so can't quite exactly upload any professional grade pictures. Its something to keep me occupied however which is nice, since I can't exactly do a lot of film making related stuff at the moment.

To sum it up, here's a picture I took at the local park during a rather violent lightning storm. Not sure exactly about the weird imagery in the picture, the park must have been made on top of an ancient indian burial ground or something...

The fabled land of Sherwood Park

Sherwood Park, my current residence, is a rather interesting place. Well it can be sometimes but for the most part I must admit it is rather dull. Sherwood Park is a strange type of place, as it is considered a hamlet rather than a town or city. A hamlet, according to Wikipedia, is a rural community— that is, a small settlement —which is too small to be considered a village. The strange thing about Sherwood Park is that it is rather big to be a hamlet, and has a population of 50,000 people, almost the exact population of Invercargill, New Zealand. As to the name, it was taken from Robin Hood. In fact, a Robin Hood association exists, and some of the streets and parks are named from the Robin Hood story.

For having such a big population, there isn't a lot to do in Sherwood Park. In fact, this is probably one of the reasons they have tried to keep the 'hamlet' status of the place. Granted, there are a couple of things - there's a small mall, a movie theatre, a couple of gym's and a park in the centre. But it terms of things to do, there is surprisingly little. I mean, I can say that it is better than Hawarden, New Zealand. But only marginally so, as there is nowhere to actually go to do things, there is no downtown type area or interesting shop places.

In all fairness, however, the city of Edmonton isn't too far away. By car it takes around 10 minutes to reach the city limits, or about 20 minutes to get downtown provided the traffic isn't too bad. There are multitudes more things to do in Edmonton, but if you don't have a car that can make things a little more difficult. Anyway, enough ranting, I found a couple of silly videos on YouTube about the aforementioned hamlet. There's a Sabotage, by the Beastie Boys, remake made here http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=fSmaWKyW8HM&feature=related and also someones version of The Soprano's intro, except of course its Sherwood Park. http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds3hlX_BkQk&feature=related Who would have thought...