Living to Tell the Story

This morning I woke up to a whopper of a headache that leaves my brain having a hard time trying to think of sentences to put together into paragraphs that would make any sense. So guess what? You get to be subjected to, forced to, hog-tied and a contraption used to make your eyelids stay open ala Nick Cage in Next to look at my holiday pictures. So grab a coffee and get comfy!

We headed into British Columbia for holidays this year. We thought we'd do a really nice holiday considering one of my little birds is about to fly the coop. *Gulp* *Sob* Okay, deep breath. I'm ok. Moving on to the pictures.




Here we are heading into the mountains that will take us from Alberta to B.C. That's Turtle Mountain you see straight ahead on the road. I must pause here to say I took a lot of scenery shots that I may or may not subject you to entertain you with. I was trying different features on my camera, one of them being the SuperSteady Shot Anti Shake (Sony). I must say it's an awesome feature. Here we're whipping along at about 110 km or 65 mph. And most of my pics came out clear. Anyhoo, this looks like your nice, average little mountain, doesn't it?

Well, don't let it fool you, it's not. If you take a close peek you'll see that the front face of the mountain is all rubble. Big rubble.

Big, big rubble. (P.S. Mr. Bikerman, please don't be mad at me for posting your pic all over the internet. But you wouldn't move and I really needed this shot.) Below are my teens climbing around on a small portion of the boulders in the direction moving away from the mountain.

In 1903, the crest of Turtle mountain literally broke away in the early morning hours and slid down the mountain breaking into boulders (74 million tonnes worth) and burying about 7 houses on the outskirts of the town of Frank. It all took about 90 seconds. In a town of 600, 70 people died. The opening of the mine was also buried but some miners managed to tunnel their way out. The rest of the town eventually returned and thrived until 1911 when the provincial gov't shut it down because of more instability.

Today the highway runs right through the middle of it. You really cannot fathom the overwhelming feeling of being there and seeing this. Picures don't do it justice. It is a huge area that is covered in these limestone boulders. Geologists are monitoring the mountain today believing that one of these fine years the other side will eventually do the same thing.

So there you are, the first snippet of "Holidays 2008". How did you do? Don't say you never learn anything here at Living To Tell even while you are being highly entertained. I'll now let you move on, but never fear, I have more.