New Orleans

Well, I have just returned from a week long trip to New Orleans with my friend Joey.
Over the past year I have been watching the HBO show Treme about New Orleans, and True Blood, set in Louisiana... slowly gaining a slight fascination of New Orleans. I've also been a fan of the NFL New Orleans Saints team from watching football on Sundays with my father. These factors cumulated together making me decided I needed to go down to New Orleans and check it out myself.
Booked my trip around a home Saints game so to fulfil both reasons for wanting to go, and off we went last Tuesday!
My thoughts on the city are all over the place. Obviously I thought it was fantastic, and would go back in a heartbeat. Bourbon Street is probably the trashiest street I've every been on - lights, booze and loud - it was fun the first night, and probably would have been better with a larger group instead of the just the two of us. Everyone else looked like they were having a time.
Food - Loved the blackened alligator and char-grilled oysters from Felix. Didn't get into Acme which had been recommended to me, but I thought Felix's was grand. We went a couple times, the second one we sat at the bar and watched buddy shuck raw oysters. I tried the po'boys that New Orleans is known for, not a fan. Maybe I shoulda had another kind? I had a blackened catfish one. I loved the seasoning on the alligator and was hoping it was the same! It was not. Next time I will try some fried one, like crawfish, maybe there will be good seasoning in the batter? Filled our bellies with beignets (kinda like beaver tails, friend balls of dough) at Cafe du Monde, apparently the most touristy cafe in town. There were the ridiculous amounts of icing sugar poured on the beignets, you couldn't help by get covered. I had an interesting gator on a stick, crab cakes, corn bread and greens for supper. Blegh on the greens, yum yum on the rest.  Jambalaya that I had was interesting. It was good, but once again, I thought it would be more... zinging? It was hot, that's for sure, but I feel like thats all it was, hot rice with sausages and shrimp. Maybe I should have tried it at some other places?

Music - Loved it. I loved that there were amazing musicians playing in the streets. I love that it was such a large variety of music - Jazz, Swing-Jazz, Brass, Cajun, Country - loved them all. The street music I think impressed me the most, I was not expecting them to be so entertaining, though I dont know why, I saw it all in Treme, I should have known!
Hit up Frenchmen`s street a couple nights, so fun! I wish I could dance like those swing dancers at the Spotted Cat, which also has the coolest bathroom hahah, or as Patrick later pointed out maybe the dirtiest piano? I really enjoyed the "big brass bands" I dont know what else their called, but the big groups who play all the brass instruments. So fun! The jazz bands were good too, dont get me wrong, but the brass ones were more entertaining.
We got to see a parade on thanksgiving, holy smokes do they love their marching bands! University, High School and Club bands, all with baton and flag girls. Nuts!
A key presence in our trip, which I was not anticipating - Football. The parade we saw on Thursday was the kick-off to the football weekend. Friday was a big college game between 1st place Louisiana State and 3rd place Arkansas. Everyone in the city was wearing purple and gold colours in support of LSU and everyone was talking about the games, couldnt escape it! Saturday was the Bayou Classic, a huge game between Grambling State and Southern University. It was craaazy busy with all the fans in town for that. Everyone, again, was decked out in either Grambling Tigers clothes or Southern Jags clothes, and that night in the French Quarter/Canal Street is was pretty much shoulder to should people.
Then on Monday, we went to a NFL game, Giants vs Saints. Unfortunately I was exhausted from the night before and so lazed the day away  until 430ish and we missed all the tailgating. I actually dont mind, the amount of people was intimidating for a little town gal like myself. But Joey I think really wanted to go. Oh well. The stadium was huge! We were up in the nosebleeds, but that was ok, the view was still really good, we were on the 50yard line so could see everything on the go! Though dad was right, I missed all the play by play commentary.

We did a lot of other cool stuff, checked out the above the ground cemeteries, definitely a highlight for me. Rode the St. Charles Street Car, explored the D-Day Memorial/Museum, walked along the Mississippi, held a baby alligator and went on a ghost tour (I know, how cheesy). But there is so much more I'd like to do there... definitely returning at some point!

Jean Marie River take 2

Spent the last week in the bush again. Fantastic weather.
Funny how the weather is always what I comment on first, apparently Canadians are weather obsessed.

Anyways, drove out on Sunday with Glen and camped out on the bank of the Jean Marie River with the students from the school, and a couple of community members. It was pretty fun having the kids around, much nicer camping with a group than by ourselves.
We spent the week paddling around in the beautiful fall colours of Ekahli Lake. It was so nice out! The first day was socked in with fog, but after digging a bunch of test pits at the trail head of Embaa Eteneh and finding some flakes, the fog lifted to perfectly still water!
We paddled the length of the river several times, dug tons of test pits, several flakes were unearthed, all in all it was a very successful week!
We spent Tuesday walking in the bush looking for old trails. Tons of high bush cranberries, which turned out to be gross. I do not like them at all. We didn't find any of the caches we were looking for, but we did find three abandoned cabins. Not so much wildlife, lots of moose tracks and bear poo, and poor Richard was hoping for a moose, but no success. But all the fall colours, and the fact that we could wander around in the bush with no bugs harassing us made up, somewhat, for the lack of moose.
Wednesday and Thursday were more of the same as Monday, lots of paddling. On Thursday I also hit a major load of cranberries. Glen thankfully let me stop for a half hour and pick what I could!
Staying with the school kids was pretty interesting too, their teacher is amazing. They made omelets in ziplock bags and boiling water, cooked pizzas in cardboard boxes, played so many games like sardines and camouflage with them, made and set snares, set fish nets, tracked moose, and did art projects. Koodoos to them!
All in all it was a fantastic week, it started to rain Friday morning as we were packing up, and rained the whole drive home. What a luck! Unfortunately I got sick along the drive home. Argh.

Sandy Point

Well I've been here at my grandfathers for a few days now, with absolutely fantastic weather! The south winds from that silly Hurricane Irene have been treating me to a hot hot past few days.
Arrived and within a few hours I was out tubing with Luke and watching the news (dear me it's repetitive to try and fill ALL day with constant news) with granddad. Sunday I got up on skis for the first time in 6 years, first try too. Man I was some pleased with my self! Too bad Gwen or any of the Uncles arent around help me with dropping a ski. Anyways, I tubed some more with Luke before Linda and John had to go back to the city. So yesterday and today I spent all day reading in the sun. Everyone who passed went on about how if my hair was lighter, I'd be my mother with her nose in a book. Haha. She would kill them if she knew that! Tomorrow I'm driving into the city to see my archaeology girls! and driving around the bays where I've never been before - always had to take the stupid bus! So I'm excited to see everyone and all the communities. The weather better hold out tomorrow or I'll be some contrary ;)

Location:Newfoundland

I love my job

Well for the past two weeks I have been camping in two of the territory's parks - Lady Evelyn Falls and Sambaa Deh Falls. I went with two others from the office, Glen and Rebecca, and it was so good.
Well...  it rained the whole first week in Kakisa (where we worked first).

We showed up on Monday and it was beautiful!
Did some canoeing, found a beach, were devoured by horseflies and dug some test pits.  It was a glorious day! I even managed to find some flakes in my first shovel test, it was fantastic. I honestly thought to myself "excellent, you didnt forget everything from school!" Well, I did forget the correct terms for various aspects of the flakes when I was trying to describe them to Glen, but he knew what I was trying to get across. Success. It thundered for a while that night... and then we woke up to dark clouds. Ugh. The rest of the week carried on like that until Friday morning around 10:30. Seriously. We went out everyday with our Elder/Guide who took us around to old camps that were scattered around Kakisa Lake, and to the mouths of various rivers so we could shovel test.

 - Shovel testing is to dig  little squares in locations where we want to see if there is any trace of occupation without actually going through all the effort of a full scale 1x1 excavation. We were testing on raised beach ridges to find pre-contact sites around the lake and rivers. If we found a high percentage of successful test pits, then we could decide to fully excavate or not. -
We tromped around in the bush, getting drenched, but I totally underestimated our weather forecasters when it comes to being accurate. It hasn't been right once this summer, why would it be right this time? Ugh. We played a few games of scrabble, doused ourselves in muskol and had a grand ol' time :)
Identified a few multi-component sites (different occupations in the same place), got a lot of flakes, bones, and two tools!
One site on the Muskeg River was so promising, that we actually spent Friday doing a 1x1 unit excavation. As we were there the sun came out and dried up all the rain (ha) and it became quite fun. But we didn't really get anything from it... and it was time to head back to town.

The following week the three of us headed back out on the road. This time we drove to the Deh Cho to work with the community of Jean Marie River around three specific lakes. The goal was to map out and inventory old camps, caches, trails and spiritual places.
Unfortunately, the day we arrived the lady who was organizing everything for us quite! Argh! So we arrived and no one was expecting us. Poo. Fortunately we rounded up some willing Elders to take us around Ekahli Lake. We spent the next few days paddling around Ekahli and Sanguez Lakes searching for trails and camps. It was pretty successful. I also learned all about their local berries, to add to my expertise of berry knowledge! They also had the biggest trees I've ever seen in the territories there, must be because of the Mackenzie Valley, and the fact that they are also the warmest area of the territory.
The falls where we were camping were cool too, we did a little one unit excavation at the first set of fall - Coral Falls - it was chalked full of flakes! On the last night we walked down the river the other way to the Sambee Deh falls. They are call carved through limestone canyons, the bottom was riddled with fossils! We were technically hanging out on an ancient ocean floor. It was cool.
The second week was completely different from the first in almost every aspect: it was clear and sunny every day in the Deh Cho, we did our own paddling, and there were hardly any bugs!
I cannot wait until I get to go into the field again!

Kakisa for the day

Well bright and early this morning Glen and I set out for a meeting in Kakisa. We made pretty decent time and saw tons of bison and baby bison - so cute. Around Chan Lake we hit some dense smoke from the fires, but survived.
We arrived in Kakisa, stopped at Lady Evelyn Falls to poke about. That's where we'll be camping in a couple weeks, super nice, but DISGUSTING bulldogs (stouts/horse flies). We had our little meeting with the chief and two elders and confirmed our date for coming back for work. We examined the shore line of the mouth of the Kakisa River and Glen gave me some methodology lessons.
We left and made our way back to town, stopped at Dory Park for a quick look around because Glen had read about some surface sites there from the 60's, but we couldnt find anything, and got accosted by flies.

On our way back past Chan Lake we encountered the smoke again and could see it smouldering on the side of the road.
We made it back to town perfectly fine and overly exhausted.
(Click the map to see the rest)

Alberta Premier Cup

Well as I sit here, waiting for the French leaders debate to start, and instead of studying, I've decided to update this blog with my last trip away from home.
This past weekend I went to Edmonton with the volleyball team I help coach. It was a training tournament for the girls to get experience playing together (their first time) and to play higher calibre volleyball. The tournament was in Edmonton, so Veronica came up from Smith on Wednesday for a couple practices before we all flew down on Friday. Our games on Saturday were at the University of Alberta, and the girls did so well! They played four games, which is amazing. We left the hotel at 6:50am to make it to the first game and their last game wasn't until 5pm! Long day!
The girls did so well, their first game against Taber Wham! was a little of a struggle, but that was to be expected - first game jitters, unsure of what to expect. Then they went on to win their next two games against Edmonton FOG and Peace River Storm. The girls were on top of the world! As they should have been. Those first three games were their round robin games, which would place them for the play off games. Surprisingly they came in 2nd in the pool! That result just blew my expectations, and their own, out of the water! They were placed into the Championship side and played Lethbridge for their last game of the day.

Sunday morning we had another early game, this time against the 17U Wham! team. It was a pretty close match up, but frustration was a little on the high side. The last game was against another FOG team, and was such a good game! Unfortunately the scores were 23-25, we just couldnt scrape that last win!
Overall the girls places 27th out of 66 teams! 66 Alberta teams no less! What an accomplishment!
Sunday afternoon we obviously spent at West Ed, where I bought a couple dresses for the up coming wedding, and we dined at Earls for our team dinner.
Planning begins for the rest of the season! I'm so excited, I'm gonna plan some team building events - camping, costume party, scavenger hunt, and I need some more ideas!
The debates on so I'm done!

Skiing

So I downloaded this TripJournal app for my phone and tried it out skiing on Sunday... this is what it made...(click on it)
It tracked my ski out on Prosperous Lake, out on to River Lake where Kevin has a cabin. Jane and I met up with him and their friends Paul and Emily who all stayed out there and built and igloo. We skied to some waterfalls and saw otters!
Oh I LOVE spring!

This was such a success that Jane and I are going to use it every time we go out and make a big Google Earth map of all our skiing.

Hey Holman

Whoa, little late on the update, I've just been exhausted since I returned.
As in the previous post I was supposed to head up to Ulukhaktok on the 8th, unfortunately because of the weather there, my flights were delayed :( but kinda glad since it was -38, with winds gusting to 56km, making it a balmy -55 or so with the wind chill. No thank you!
I was quite upset, but turns out they had to cancel the career fair any ways because the school pipes froze and burst! Hooray! This meant I got to go last Tuesday after all!
I packed up all my artefacts and poster board and boarded the First Air flight to Ulukhaktok (YHI) via Kugluktuk (YCO). The flight was phenomenal! Bright and clear day, landed and went to the house where I was staying with Agnes and Robert Kuptana. They helped me with my Inuinnaqtun words and showed me how to get drinking water (she is convinced that the tap water is bad, we bring in blocks of freshwater ice and leave it in a container to melt, from which she drinks and cooks with.)
That night Agnes sat down with me and helped me resize my toddler duffel pattern to fit a 5 year old, and how to measure and alter for any other feet! Then we drew out patterns for fur mittens and she gave me a sweet cheap place to get seal skins in YK. Awesome!

After my little sewing lesson, I went with Agnes for a nice little walk around town.
Wednesday was my career fair, it was nice, I was the only one there who was not from the IRC... but whatever, I think I did ok. I brought in a bunch of artefacts from the Education Collection so the kids could all pick them up and play with them (always a big hit!) The fair ended with drum dancing demonstrations, not sure who for, because I was the only one there not from the area... but it was fantastic.

During the Inuvialuktun dance, Agnes got me to come up and dance with them, it was nice! After a whole bunch of elders came in to help sing and demonstrate for the Inuinnaqtun dances. It was just so nice to watch and the two are so completely different!

That night I went for a nice long walk out to an igloo across the bay and then up to one of the three bluffs. It was just beautiful!
I went out on Thursday morning to get some furs for sewing... but they were all extremely overpriced. So... I didnt get any :( and then flew home!

Leaving again!

Oh thank goodness, I am going on a trip to somewhere I have never been again! I really miss travelling, and cannot wait to go to Ulukhaktok. Sally got me some parcel paper so I can harass all the ladies up there for patterns.
Technically, I am going there for a career fair on behalf of the museum, but I am more-so taking advantage of travelling to a settlement to experience their culture. Apparently there will be a community feast on Wednesday night and lots of drum dancing.
For the career fair I've made up brochures for all the sections at work, and a nice "presentation board" (really a science fair board with pictures). I feel kinda bad, there will be all the mines and other big companies there who do career fairs on a regular basis. They'll have all this stuff to give away and nice poster boards... and I just have my make-shift board.
I also didn't have a place to stay until noon today, and I am just sleeping in the organiser's house. She's cleaning out her daughters toy room for me to crash for two nights. Super nice. So I'm bringing her up oranges, apples and Tims. haha. Typical trip North.
Anyways, I'm super excited! Another northern community off the list.

Not really travelling.

Well, this entry isn't really from a trip that I just made. It's more so just because I'm so pleased with myself, and miss writing in here. Mind you have an upcoming trip to Holman so can't wait to write about that!

Anyways, the point of tonight's blog entry is because of the stellar northern lights.  CBC was touting that tonight is a Giant Solar Flare so I needed to stay up to see it. I have a undeniable love for the northern lights. I've always secretly wanted to get married under them, though I recall my father once telling me no one would come to my wedding if I did. But it would be sooo pretty! So I am skipping out of skating tomorrow morning to stay up extra late (work is going to kill me tomorrow) so that I can see this supposed show! The peak hours start at 11, and that is late for me.
So I decided to go out twice, the first time was 10:30 till 11ish.
Short because my battery ran out cause its fricken -33 (-43 avec le windchill). They didnt turn out as well as I was anticipating - there is a full moon so my shutter time was a little too long... regardless they are still decent. They were super pretty, more so green and pink. They were just shimmering across the sky too. I didnt dare whistle because they were already dancing up a storm (ha). But not only did the battery freeze and drain, but so did my fingers from putting on my mitt and taking it off. I had to return home to charge up the battery and struggle to stay awake. I had big plans for my second outing, it was going to be later (obviously) and thus better! My plan was to head out the the giant mine docks...

Stupid full moon. Drowned out the lights. 

Made it there and was super surprised that there were NO truck on the highway. The winter road is open, and the other night on my way to volleyball, they were doing their standard truck every 2min deal. This time nothing. Also, no lights! WFT. I drove all the way out on the highway and got nothing. Went back to the ice road thinking that must be where they are best (dont question my logic). But nothing. I was out for an hour and not even a dinky shimmer. Im crushed. Im exhausted.
There better be some lights tomorrow.