WE’VE SEEN IT!! So I discovered (Hannah has known for ages) recently that it would be possible to see the Aurora from Sudbury. The Aurora occurs directly over the magnetic poles, logically when the earths northern pole is tilted furthest towards the sun the Aurora appears at it’s strongest in this hemisphere. Thus the best time to see the Aurora Borialis is around the Spring equinox, which has just past. I spotted this afternoon that the Aurora had a rating of 3 out of 10 and was forecast as being “strong” for this evening: Also I checked the cloud cover forecast for the evening: so Hannah and I invited Craig to come with us on our drive out of Sudbury and away from the light pollution that might obscure our view. We went as far as Crab Lake and waited, eventually we saw some strange lights in the sky, my camera struggled to get an reasonable pictures of […]
Tuesday afternoon Hannah and I took a trip out to Powassan to Mathew’s Maple Syrup Farm. It’s about a 2 hour drive from us, as we approached the farm we were able to see loads of blue pipe, about 10mm in diameter going from tree to tree. Brendan joked that this was for cider, and Hannah being gullible believed him! Te he he. They drill a hole into the tree, then drive in the tap, which the pipe connects to. The pipe then joins into a main line which returns to the distillery come refinery. Hannah is stood next to the mainlines below in the pictures. The tree produces about 20psi of pressure to push the sap up, a vacuum is used to help draw the sap along pipes. Reverse osmosis removes the first 20% water, then they heat the sap to remove yet more water until it is 60% sugar. The syrup is filtered to […]
Last week Hannah got some pictures of Tigger hiding out around our apartment: I think I forgot to mention that on our way back from Chutes we saw two transport trucks, with a tank on each and behind that a Land Rover each! This weekend has been cold with a high of -14 today I believe, though the sky is clear and blue, the sun is busy melting the snow. Ramsey Lake has very little snow left on it, the ice is showing through now. There are still ice fishing huts and people driving their trucks on the lake today, so we took a stroll out towards to island. Hannah was very concerned that we might fall through. If we had fallen through we have about one minuet to get out of the water before one is unable to move.. Luckily for us the ice is very thick, easily able to support a 2 tonne truck, and probably […]
This past week has been “warm” in terms of Canadian winter. It rained on Sunday all day and didn’t stop until mid week. Much of the snow and ice melted. The parking lot (Carpark) is now clear of snow and ice, the roads are all clear, it’s just the snow banks and snow mountains that remain. There is road grit everywhere now, the snow melts and runs away leaving the grit behind, up to half an inch thick in places, enough to cover the lines in the road and parking lots. I moved cube today, I am now one the other side and at the far end of the row, it’s a dark spot, as noted by Terry Pratchett; light thought it was the fastest thing in the universe. But no matter how fast it travels it finds that darkness got there first and is waiting for it. Sure enough this […]
Firstly, Chutes, the Provincial Park, which we visited last year in the summer, this is the entry. Anyways, this time it was only a couple of degrees above zero. The snow is becoming like ice pellets, a little wet and heavy, so hard to snow shoe through. We were unable to drive into the park at all, the snow bank at the entrance to the park was about 3′ high, I tried to walk through it but wound up sinking very deep and then struggled to get back out, Hannah stood by and laughed at my predicament. We snow shoe’d down to the “beach”.. Now in the summer it looked like this (just in case you DIDN’T check out the old entry!!): We passed a sign, which we have tried to get pictures of a number of time, but failed until now: Hannah got some pictures of Tigger And lastly, I have been flying the […]
My health has been sub-optimal for approximately a week, only a sore throat and a cold. Didn’t stop me, just annoying. So the blog failed to get updated. I enjoyed drinking milk.. We visited Science North to see Ripley’s Believe it or Not show which is being hosted there. We saw some pretty amazing things and some gruesome things also. Afterwards we visited Science North, having been through the first floor including the butterfly room (which is now also home to some small birds) we began our accent of the ramp leading to the second floor where we were met by Quillen on his daily walk. On the second floor they were boiling maple syrup and then cooling it in snow and wrapping it onto popsicle (lollypop) sticks (second to last photo below). We went snow shoeing around the area that we picked blue berry’s last year, just to see what it was like when it is all under a couple […]
Hannah and I went to see the snow cross at Sudbury Downs, which is the ‘OLG Slots; an amusements arcade that used to host horse races, the track had been converted into a race track for the snow mobiles, or ‘sleds’ as they are known colloquially. It is very similar to motor cross on in the UK. They were using groomers to build/fix the track in between races. When we returned to the car, we spotted snow machines also sharing the carpark. Lastly, here’s some video footage of the racing: http://youtu.be/Dy29cqdovqQ I bought a snow machine! Only a toy though, for scale, here’s Tigger getting in the picture: This is Hannah doing a great job clearing the snow off the car, also the snow last week and an icicle which had formed attaching our car to the ground. The car body gets remarkable warm in the sun, melting the ice on […]
Dear Blog Readers, So this week Brendan wanted to try cross country skiing. Did you know that it is referred to as XC Skiing. I didn’t. I also didn’t really mind if we didn’t try it!! We went to Capreol XC Ski as it was the cheapest option – $5 for the skis and $5 for the trail pass. We tried the 2 km trail and it was AWESOME! We will definitely go back. The club is run by volunteers and they were all hugely helpful; from getting the skis measured to advice on trails. We both found it to be quite a good work out – although our methods differed immensely. Brendan favoured the ‘two ski poles in the snow and pull yourself forward’ method, whereas I liked the ‘walking in the snow on two narrow strips of wood’ method. Who knows who is right?!?! There were a couple of […]
Last week while in Mississauga Mike K. a colleague gave me a lens from a projector TV after I told him about my taking pictures through my microscope. I was demonstrating to Hannah how the lens works; I held the lens up and placed a sheet of paper an inch or so in front of it, and voila. Outside.. but upside down… Also, I gave Tigger a good grooming, he is beginning to appear to enjoy it! until he gets too static.. Then he usually retreats to safe location. Monday, Family Day, we went to French River with our snow shoes. We set off at about 9.30am, passing by Tim Horton’s for a coffee, upon arrival we found the car park to be well packed snow and the wash rooms to be in constant use by travelers using the 69. We walked, minus our snow shoes, to the Welcome Center, which is closed this time of year. As we passed under the back of the building we came across this icicle, […]
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