The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo Two

We continue our adventure through the Calgary Zoo!

When last we met, we were wandering through the Canadian Wilds, today... I bring you a little bit more of that, because I haven't planned out each post to be about a different area. Maybe if I had taken an equal number of pictures in each area... but I didn't do that either... I HAVE DIGRESSED!

Little Prairie Dogs at the zoo... so many holes!

Past the Wolves we saw Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs who were having a fantastic time being harassed by the mutant black squirrels in the area; the squirrels were running in and out of the prairie dog holes stealing their things and playing with the prairie dogs. It really was quite a sight and I'm a little bit sad that I wasn't able to get any good pictures, but I was able to get a short video of one of the squirrels.

Seriously, these squirrels are actually a mutant strain of gray squirrels which escaped the zoo back in 1929 and now run rampant throughout the area. They're very beautiful to see and they seem to be quire the troublemakers. Luckily I was able to get a very short video of one of them jumping around seen below.

Look up on the edge! There's a little black squirrel jumping up and over!

On the other side of the trail was something a little bigger than little prairie dogs...

TEDDY BEARS! Okay no, a little bigger and more real than that.

There were quite a few bears in there actually; black, brown, and even a white one hidden in there somewhere. We were lucky enough to come back to the bear area later on in the day to see them doing training with one of the bears. They explained to us how the training with the trainers is good for the animals because it helps them if ever there was any sort of emergency or situation where someone would need to be in control of said animal or the animal would need direction. The example they gave us was when half the zoo ended up being flooded a few years ago, their animal training really helped them keep the animals calm and direct them to control the situation.

Whoa, that's a BIG cat!

The last awesome creature we saw in the Canadian Wilds area was a Cougar! How crazy is it that there are wild cats that big possibly outside in our backyard? I think it's bad enough when I see a house cat wandering around outside because I don't know if it's going to be friendly, or if it's going to try to scratch me up on the sidewalk... what would I do if I ran into one of these on my way to check the mailbox?

There are so many animals living just outside the walls of our houses, but it's so hard to imagine them because we spend so much time inside staring at our screens we forget about the beauty of being outside and enjoying the fresh air. Learning about this stuff is truly amazing and I hope as we progress into the future that it isn't the only way we are able to learn about these things.

Fun Fact: I heard the results of a survey recently where about 90% of Canadians felt happier when surrounded by nature... and about 75% said they find it easier to stay inside.

Let me know in the comments below what your favourite outdoor activity is.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Back to Honeymoon Adventure

The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo

After our long six and a half eight hour journey to Calgary thanks to driving back home and then stopping in Medicine Hat for a bit, we managed to finally get to the Days Inn hotel in Northwest Calgary. The staff were super helpful during our visit including taking our payment in such a way that our yet-to-be deposited cheques weren't an issue. We unpacked, hung around the hotel for a little bit, then decided to explore our first location of Calgary, Alberta... which happened to be an outing for food at Moose McGuire's; seeing as we hadn't really had much for food since we left home. Following this adventure was pretty much back to the hotel and off to sleep with some television to keep us company for the night.

Day 2

The next morning was a highly anticipated day for us; the day of the Calgary Zoo. After having a lovely breakfast at the hotel of a couple muffins for myself, we left bright and early for a long drive through an unknown city. As it turns out, even though getting from point A to point B takes a while, if you leave super early in the morning and arrive at your destination before nearly anybody else... the traffic is quite similar to driving around here in Moose Jaw during the day... (non-existent). We did get there and find a super parking spot right by the entrance super early in the morning and despite the dreary and rainy weather, we excitedly paid and entered the complex with gusto hoping to goodness that we would be able to see everything there would be to offer.

We made it into the Calgary Zoo!

The first thing we saw was a special exhibit they have right nearby the North Entrance which is a penguin habitat. I tried not to take pictures of everything I saw everywhere I went; if you want an idea of what it was like in there, imagine going outside in the cold of winter only to see a gathering of penguins outside your home as if you're in the middle of a Happy Feet movie... only without any singing. We even managed to witness one of the handlers removing a penguin from the area (for some reason we weren't aware of). As it turns out, these penguins are about half the size of a person and even though it looks painful to be a person getting wapped and nipped by one... the handler didn't seem to mind. I should mention that we were warned not to stick anything out over the glass because they WOULD take our things if they got the chance to do so.

From this point we started our adventure into the "Canadian Wilds" where we were about to see many animals which are out and about within our fantastic homeland if you're brave enough to go find them. I won't go into detail about each and every thing we saw out there, but I did see a lot of really cool creatures, some of which would be beautiful to see in their natural habitat, and some of which I think could be absolutely terrifying to see. Now it's hard to remember exactly what everything was, but I'll do my best to caption each picture correctly and try to tell something interesting along the way.

This I think was a young caribou?

Now I couldn't get any awesome pictures of the wolves, but here are a couple anyways.

 

Unfortunately a pack of wolves just don't really stand still very much which makes it a little bit difficult to take a good picture of them.

Something super fun that happened to us while we were near the wolves was a sudden attack of pinecones from a nearby tree. As it turns out... there was a little guy climbing around up there knocking them off for some reason and I was lucky enough to get it on video.

Here's one of the squirrels in action; I've never seen this happen before.

This picture is a little bit low-quality; apparently it's difficult to get a picture of a squirrel sitting still.

There's so much to tell about our visit to the Calgary Zoo, that I think I'll have to stop here for now and continue on again next time with another post. I'm super excited to share this all with you and I apologize for the delay in the coming posts; it's difficult having a family and starting a new job all at the same time. :P

Have a great day everybody and wish me luck with my new job! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Back to Honeymoon Adventure

I Survived Camping With Friends =17=

I have great news, I survived camping with friends! Surprisingly, I had a fantastic time out in the "wild" with our friends. I managed to stay off of my phone nearly the entire time except for a short time while boating when I was hanging out and watching the fishing going on; Carley caught her first fish by the way. :D It's a bit of a personal accomplishment for me to be able to spend nearly a whole four days without being all over my phone the entire time, so I have to say I'm quite proud of myself.

Considering how Carley likes to plan things ahead of time and I like to make lists... you'd think we'd be more prepared for things. As it turns out... we didn't bring our pillows for the second camping time. I'm hoping to be much more prepared the next time we go camping. I'm pretty sure we had everything we needed for Isabelle, which is great and all... but we totally forgot to be prepared for ourselves. We forgot to bring our own bug spray!

Unfortunately during the second day we were out there the zipper on our tent split so we weren't able to close our tent. For the most part this wasn't an issue, but eventually it got a little more wet out and the mosquitoes started coming out in large numbers. This wasn't too much of an issue while we had bug spray... though eventually we ran out on the last day and that's when things got really bad. Thankfully we were able to buy a tarp at the store which we were able to bungee to the front of the tent with the help of our fantastic friends.

The great news is that Isabelle had a great time (I think). She played a bunch with Ella and complained a ton that we wouldn't let her go near the fire pit, but she seemed to enjoy being outside a ton; she wouldn't go to bed when she was supposed to. I think the only night she went to bed on time was the last night only because she was so tired from the day before that she couldn't keep herself awake. Canada day in particular she only got about half an hour of sleep before getting up to go see the fireworks at 10:00 pm... which she enjoyed so much with Carley's hands over her ears that she started to fall asleep while watching them.

All in all, camping was great. Super tiring to get up so early and do so many things throughout the day including long hikes with the baby on my chest, but totally worth it. I'm confident we'll be camping again soonish.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== When Dogs Go Wild ===

     So recently I find myself torn between my love for our dog, and my dislike for him getting into things; it makes me furious when dogs go wild. Our dog is a black shih tzu / cocker spaniel named Furgle; he's super cute and does the most adorable things when he's trying to get your attention, or when he's just TRYING to be cute. I absolutely LOVE him and he makes it so difficult to stay mad at him when he does something wrong.

     Just yesterday we came home after a day in Regina to a torn up pile of swim diapers and a couple other objects from around the house spread around the floor of the living room. That right there is a lot of valuable money that we don't want to have to spend again... but I also understand where he's coming from. Most other dogs don't have a problem with separation anxiety like he does though.

     When I say separation anxiety, I don't mean your average run-of-the-mill "Oh no, my family is gone so I'm going to be sad" sort of stuff... I mean "WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? HOOOWWWWWLLLLL!!!!!" Mix that with a little bit of puppy / cocker spaniel chewing on everything destruction and you've got our dear Furgle. I know I make it sound bad, but he's really not THAT bad. He's pretty calm when we're home most of the time and even when company comes over, he calms down pretty quickly as long as they actually let him sniff them... or jump all over them.

     Jumping isn't the only bad habit he has which we'd like to get him out of. I'm sure some of this he'll grow out of as he gets older and after he gets fixed, but he likes to bite SOOOO MUCH. Don't get me wrong, I love to do a little bit of rough-housing, but I HATE being bitten. So currently that's a never ending fight to get him to stop with that along with jumping (which is also pretty cute) and getting so frantic whenever there's a door between us and him. Currently I absolutely no idea if we'll ever get him out of that last habit... we might be stuck with a dog who doesn't want to be separated for the rest of his life. I think I would be alright with that; It's really not so bad having him always want to be around us.

     He's absolutely a sweetheart and the cutest dog in the world when he's not so busy biting us all the time. He's super athletic so we're thinking of getting him into some agility training at some point. There's actually a dog agility club here in Moose Jaw believe it or not. I think that would be good for both him and us. And of course, we'll get our dog to stop going wild with a little bit of help from a puppy-training class after we get him fixed.

~ Kyle Welykholowa