J on the Flip Side

I'm leaving Alberta for the weekend to head back home for a couple of days and meet up with 2 of my best friends at a rock show in Quebec. It's going to be amazing and I am super pumped. But also a but sad to be leaving all my new friends here in Grande Prairie. I know it's stupid to be sad, its only 5 days! But I know I'll miss everyone. I can already tell that when we all go our separate ways at the end of August it's going to be a tear fest. In a way I feel like I haven't stopped traveling because everyone here that I'm meeting is young and super interesting and fun. My work partner is Jesse, the same guy I drove out here with and we have totally bonded and are now pretty much inseparable! He likes 90's CD's (we have collected almost all of the Big Shiny Tunes from garage sales and thrift shops) and lets me take a site selfie at every site we go to. You all know selfies are the way to my heart! Also, I am sharing a house in GP with 3 other girls who are all amazing, super intelligent, funny, talented, and I love them. Pretty sure we'll be best friends forever.

Me and Jesse at one of our wetlands

My roomies Rianne, Isobel, Allina and me out looking at plants

We work hard all day out in the wilderness and then party and have fun every night. Our job is kinda similar to geocaching, except the only reward for finding your point is doing lots of work haha! But I love it, even the worst day so far (13 hours of work, getting the quad stuck at least 10 times) has been awesome and I'd do it all again. We basically go out to randomly placed GPS points, which are in the most interesting spots - on the side of steep riverbanks, in the middle of wetlands, farmers fields, or thick black spruce forests you can barely walk through. We make our way there using trucks, quads and our own two feet, and then we start our surveys of plants, trees, soil, birds and other animals. At the end of the day we usually chill out at our campsite and have a few beers, cook some delicious food on the campfire, go fishing, canoeing and all kinds of stuff like that. It's really awesome and I have just continued my level of extreme happiness that I had while traveling. Lovin life.

For birding we have to get to our sites a half an hour before the sunrise. It makes for some really early mornings... I'm talking wake ups at 2 am. Not fun. But, when you get to see the sunrise over a beautiful marsh, and hear the birds singing their first morning songs just as the dawn breaks, it's totally worth it.

Sometimes we also get to see the moon setting in the early morning. This was the view from our campsite at Smith one day as we left to do our bird site. How gorgeous can you get?

So anyone who read my blog about my motorbike accident in Thailand knows that I have a phobia of driving small motorized vehicles. So me and quads didn't get along really well at first (meaning I was scared shitless of driving them lol) But now after almost 2 months, I totally love them! Vrrrrooooom Vroooom!!

The prospect of driving the quads on and off the truck was pretty scary at first, but now I can do it like a pro! Fears are being conquered people!!

Me, Cody and Rianne at one of our first survey sites beside a beautiful lake.

One of my birding points was at the top of a huge hill, but I had a nice valley view from the top!

We have to check the depth of wetlands to make sure they are deep enough to come back for further samples... this one was definitely deep enough!

We had to take an Argo into this site. The Argo is like a mini tank that can go through and over ANYTHING!!! So fun.

One of our sites was surrounded by this cool swampy forest.

A couple of Eared Grebes came to check me out in this wetland.

Pretty sure I've seen a deer every single day.

Bears are pretty common too! The urge to cuddle them is strong.

Fun times at the campsite... Chris got this bike from our neighbours... we later found out they got it from a hooker. It was then named the prosti-cycle.

After work play time at the jungle gym!

We make sure to stop at all the historical points of interest, including 12 foot Davis, who apparently made tons of cash from gold found in 12 feet of land he owned. Good on ya 12 ft D!

Beach hang outs!

This week I started my awesome new job in Alberta with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute! These first few days have been really fun and challenging. It's been all training so far, but this training is FUN. We spent a whole day practicing riding around on quads, found stashes of candy in the woods using a map and compass, learned how to fend off a bear attack and I can now back up giant trailers.... well, sorta ;).

Once I found out I had the job in Alberta, it was a pretty easy decision to drive out there instead of flying. I've always wanted to do a west coast road trip, and now was the perfect time. Plus I knew I'd want to have my car for more epic road trips on our days off from field work. One of my new co-workers sent out an email asking if anyone was driving from Ontario so I jumped at the chance to have some company for cross Canada adventures.

I started out from Toronto in my little Mazda 2 that I have affectionately (and yes, somewhat ironically) named "The Beast". We headed up to North Bay to pick up my new friend and co-worker, Jesse. Good thing he turned out to be super cool. He's a musician, hiker and camper and general lover of fun and adventure like me. So we pretty much immediately decided to do as much sight seeing as we could on the way, including some hikes and camping.

Me and Jesse

Jesse and The Beast at Lake Superior

The coast of Lake Superior, it was really snowy and icy!

Lake ice was pushed right up to the sandy shores

Typical Canadian road sign, keep your moose eyes on!

Jesse spotted a Lynx by the side of the road! I screeched to a halt and turned around to take a look. Thankfully it was still there, stalking a bird in the bush. This was the best pic we were able to get. Lynx are usually very elusive and hard to spot. My first Lynx sighting!!!!!!!!!

One of our first planned stops was this general store in Wawa, Ontario. They have world famous summer sausage! We were pumped for sausage!

But unfortunately we realized that this store, like many other of our planned activities turned out to be closed for the season. No summer sausage for us. Sad face.

But on the bright side, there was a giant Canada Goose statue right beside the store!

We continued driving, but the weather kept getting worse and worse... check out those snow banks near Thunder Bay! We had planned to go hiking and camping in Lake Superior Park, but the negative temps and the snow covering everything made us think otherwise. Sad face again.

The next day we visited Kakabeka Falls! Selfie time!

Kakabeka Falls is the Niagara Falls of the North

Icy cold!

Northern Ontario

Our last stop in Ontario was to see Husky the Giant Muskie! Remember kids, Husky says, prevent water pollution!

The weather got a bit better when we got to Manitoba. Blue skies and sunshine!

Hello Manitoba!

But as soon as we got to Winnipeg, we immediately got accosted by 3 homeless people one after the other. When one left, the next one came by. They had helpful parking tips and then asked for $20! I know I've been gone for a while, but I'm pretty sure the bums in Toronto only ask for change. What kind of rich bums do they have in Winnipeg haha!!??? Anyhow, we each gave $5 to the 3rd homeless guy who came by because he had an anemic wife who lived in a stairwell and was just short a few dollars to take her to go to see the Elvis impersonator show. I hope they had a great date night with Elvis!

After all those encounters we were a bit scared to leave our hotel which was obviously in the sketchy part of town, so we had these bevvies as our nightly entertainment before we got up enough liquid courage to go out again to face the homeless population for a night on the town, aka the all you can eat Indian buffet.

The next day we left Winnipeg as fast as possible and headed onwards to Saskatchewan. We stayed in Regina and woke up to a snowstorm, but we had to push on!

The plows were out on the highway

There were lots of trains in Saskatchewan

We took a detour to see a National Wildlife Area, and The Beast did pretty well on the dirt roads. Unfortunately this deer didn't do so well on the barbed wire.

Ferruginous Hawk

Swainson's Hawk having dinner

Cows are such an underrated cute animal IMHO

Saskatchewan is full of farms and rolling landscapes and big skies. Beautiful!

The closer we got to Alberta, the better the weather got!

The Alberta sign and big trucks... a match made in heaven haha! It seems like EVERYONE in this province owns a giant truck. The Beast is about a quarter of the size of most of them haha!

Awesome Alberta wildlife sighting: Pronghorn Antelope! This one had a particularly cool white afro.

We found a beer called Cariboos!

We tried to go to the Burrowing Owl interpretation center but it was closed for the season. So instead we planned to check out the Dinosaur Provincial Park in Brooks. Road trip miracle, it was actually open! Millions of years ago, this area was a dinosaur hotspot, and now there are tons of fossils being discovered all the time.