Holy Week Flashback to Israel 2008



Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, and as we were standing in church listening to the reading about Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, I had a flashback to when I was in Jerusalem in July of 2008. I was there for two and a half weeks, volunteering on an archaeological dig with a group of other Lutherans, and I blogged about it EXTENSIVELY. :)

This was our Sunday - the baptism of our godson, Levi!
(Photo courtesy of his Auntie Teresa!)

It was a defining 'moment' in my life, and even though that was almost five years ago now, I can still close my eyes and see it and hear it and smell it and taste it. I want to go back again with a passion that's actually a bit scary if I think about it too much. When I first got back, I thought about it every day. Now I only think about it every month or so, but my memories are just as vivid. I might go back and re-read my own blog posts though, starting here, because while the sensory details are clear, some of the adventures have gotten a bit blurred.

Anyway, I give you just a few of the hundreds of pictures I took. And in look back through my albums just now, I judge the photos I decided to take for being too detailed, with not enough panorama, and I didn't take pictures of things that in hindsight I wish I had, not because I'm forgetting them, but because I want to share them. Next time I go, whenever that will be...

If anyone knows of an archaeology dig looking for a copyeditor, please let me know!!! :)

 

Looking down the slope of the Mount of Olives, at the Kidron Valley. Some of these olive trees are so old that they would have been around when Jesus was there.

 

Praying at the Western Wall - one of the most profound moments in a journey that was jam-packed with them!

 

Sunset over the Sea of Galilee

 

Blue-green waters of the Sea during the afternoon - see the waves? It gets as choppy as the ocean there when the wind picks up. We went swimming every afternoon, but there would come a point where the water was too rough for it to be very enjoyable. Not so much walking where Jesus walked...but swimming where Jesus walked! :)

 

Capernaum, at the very northern tip of the Sea, looking south towards Jerusalem

 

This wander down memory lane has probably done more for me than you, but remembering my time in Israel, and what it means to me makes my heart happy! Tomorrow night as we celebrate the Passover Feast and remember the Garden of Gethsemane, and Friday morning as we remember the crucifixion, and Sunday as we celebrate the resurrection, I'll be remembering my time in Israel and the encouragement it was to my faith.

(And I might say thank-you to my really great husband who stayed home and worked while I went gallivanting all over the Holy Land... :)

 

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Southern Alberta Camping

Last time I tried to go camping in southern Alberta, it was in Waterton, and we came home after one night because of the extreme wind, which literally flattened our tent in the middle of the night. So when I booked two nights at Little Bow Provincial Park, just south of Vulcan, I was really hoping it wasn't too far south for comfort. I really needed a holiday after the stress of running the District Youth Gathering, although I'd forgotten how much work it is to prep for a camping trip, and since Trevor wasn't coming with me packing the car was a bit more difficult than usual, but once I was on the road, I was stoked. Timmies in hand, I headed south accompanied by the tunes of one of my favourite Lutheran bands, Lost And Found - I just got their new live double-CD release in the mail, and it took me almost all the way to Little Bow. I made a quick stop at the Vulcan Tourism and Trek Station for a map and directions, since I'd forgotten mine in my rush to get on the road...and made it to the campground about 40 minutes earlier than I'd planned, which made me very happy. :)

It had been cold and rainy in Calgary, and I was wearing jeans and a thick t-shirt, so my first stop was changing into something cooler, which also made me very happy. However, the weather forecast was calling for the possibility of thundershowers, so we decided to rig a tarp up in the trees over the tent, just to be on the safe side. The guy in the campsite across the lane came over to talk to us about parking his boat on our side of the road, and asked if we needed any help - I felt like he didn't think two girls could put up a tarp - but of course we politely turned him down!

The good and the bad about Little Bow is that there's no internet, and as I discovered, no cell coverage. I was glad to have a few days of rest of the net, but I'd promised Trevor a phone call. As the evening wore on and it got a bit darker, it looked more and more like it would rain, so I set out to hunt down a pay phone. After walking not five minutes to the parking lot, it was dark as night, and the wind was blowing in off the lake. There was also some lightning on the horizon, so I turned around and headed back. When I was still a few blocks away from the campsite, it started to rain, and by the time I got to the tent it was pouring and I was soaking. We scrambled into the tent and battened down the hatches. Then I realized that I couldn't read because my flashlight was in the car, I was hungry, and I had to go to the bathroom. It felt like eons before the storm let up - the lightning was blindingly bright, the thunder was shaking the ground, and the rain was POURING down - but it was only a couple of hours. Once it let up we regrouped and went to bed, but I had uneasy dreams all night about the tent flooding. Really though, the only water that got in the tent was what we brought in on our wet clothes, so when boat guy from across the road stopped by to ask how we fared, I was quite pleased to report that not a drop of rain leaked in. :)

Saturday was bright and sunny, and after a lazy morning reading, eating, and people-watching, we hiked up one of the hills surrounding the campground.

The scenery of the hills and the lake reminded me so much of my trip to Israel and the Galilee region - Little Bow is more green - but the heat and the dust and the rolling hills and the blue water gave me a bit of a flashback.

So pretty! I'll definitely go there again. We also checked out the lake shore briefly, but I didn't have my camera on that walk. It was a really restful weekend of reading, Scrabble, eating and recharging, which I really needed after the insane few months I've had.

Although speaking of insane...I came back and jumped right into helping with Vacation Bible School, which I haven't done in about nine years. I'm a classroom helper for the Grade 1/2 class, and there's about 23 kids, one teacher and four helpers. It's actually lots of fun, and it's really nice to not actually being in charge of keeping things running on time or anything like that, but I do feel a bit old when I see how much energy a grade 1 boy has! Each group has an animal associated with it, so I'm 'Mrs. H' of the Sandcats. We'll see how the week goes...maybe next week you'll get a blog of "Mrs. H's VBS Version of 'Kids Say the Darnedest Things'". :)

Aaaand...I've recently figured out how to use HTML to make links work properly, and I went a bit nuts in this post, and linked to a bunch of old posts. So if you're a relatively new reader, check them out, ok! Especially the Israel ones...that was such an epic trip - one of these days I'll go back!

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Grotto Canyon - May 2012

Once upon a time a Canadian girl got to fulfill two life-long dreams in one trip; to visit the Holy Land, and to experience life on an archaeology dig. Her worst fear about the trip did come true: she fell in love with Israel and archaeology, and another trip is always at the back of her mind, and if money had been no object, she would have gone again every summer since. (The adventure inspired her to quit her job and pursue a university degree, which is a story for another post.)

However, something happened on the trip that she hadn't counted on at all: she made a friend! When the heroine of a story is an introverted bookworm, finding kindred spirits doesn't happen often - largely because one would have to take one's nose out of a book to notice them. :) But when people travel together, there's a lot of time to chat, and when one finds that kindred spirit, one generally tends to forget about being an introvert because there are so many interesting things to talk about.

One of the most fun legacies of my 2008 trip to Israel was almost immediately clicking with my roommate, Jenn Shack. We had several mutual friends who told me that we'd get along, but since I'm not the world's chattiest person, especially with strangers, I was a bit sceptical. But get along we did, to the point that some of the other volunteer diggers asked us how long we'd known each other, expecting the answer to be years, when in fact it had only been days.

In 2009, Jenn moved to Alberta to pursue a Masters degree, and now with that done, she's heading back to Ontario to do a PhD. When we were in Israel, discovering a mutual interest in exploring the mountains, I told her about a hike in the foothills that I really love, and said we should go there one day. Well, we're running out of time before she leaves for the east, so despite questionable Alberta spring weather, we headed out last Tuesday.

We left Calgary about 11 am, in the POURING rain. Our trip nearly ended before it even began, thanks to one of my windshield wipers snagging on something and springing up in the air with a snap that nearly startled me into driving off the road. (I still don't know what was wrong with them - they snapped back and forth all the way there and home again, but they won't repeat the trick for my husband, so who knows...) Thankfully, by the time we got to the exit for Morley, the rain had let up to a mere drizzle, and the clouds had lifted enough that I could actually see the hill we'd be hiking by.

To get to Grotto Canyon from the TransCanada, you take the Seebe/Exshaw exit (about 45 minutes from the Calgary city limits), and take the 1X to the 1A (also known as the Bow Valley Trail), where you go left, towards Exshaw and Canmore. (Seebe is a former company town, now a ghost town. One of these days I want to hike in there - I love urban and rural decay!) Once you've passed through Exshaw, about five minutes up on the right you'll see a beautiful mountain pond, which is Grotto Pond. Technically that's the trail-head, and there are outhouses there. I usually keep going up the road for another minute, and turn right at the Baymag Plant #2. If you keep to the right, there's a gravel access road that meets the hiking trail, and I park there. This cuts off the tedious part of the trail and lets you get to the interesting bit that much faster.

Follow the trail past the plant, keeping a sharp eye out for a very small green sign with a hiker on it. Make sure you turn right just before the sign! The trail goes uphill at that point, and comes out overlooking a creek basin, with a wonderful view of the mountains.

From a February hike in 2010

Hop down into the creek bed and head up the canyon (to the right of the above photo). This stretch of the trail is different every season, and every time I've been there. In the height of summer, it's a gentle creek of icy-cold mountain run-off, and the 'hike' involves a lot of hopping from rock to shore to log to rock, which I find VERY fun (wear rubber boots or be prepared for damp feet) and since the creek is never much deeper than my knees, there's very little actual danger. In February, it's a slick slope of ice that requires patience and skill to negotiate up without breaking a limb, but going back, the downhill slide on the ice makes you feel like a penguin (be prepared for a wet bum...).

Icy canyon - looks like Narnia!

This time of year it's a mix of thick sheets of muddy ice (not slippery), thin sections of ice over rocks (be careful - there's no or not much water under them, but if your foot fell through, you could break an ankle) and bits of shallow creek with lots of rocks. You really have to pay attention to where you put your feet, since it's not warm enough out yet for the cold water to feel good on overheated feet. :)

When I say thick layer of ice, I mean THICK!

About an hour after leaving the car, the trail comes to what looks like the end, with a waterfall up ahead and to the right.

Frozen waterfall

This is where I like to break for lunch, because any amount of exercise makes me hungry, so by that point I'm STARVING. The canyon opens up a bit, so there's a good selection of flat rocks to sit on, and sometimes you can watch people ice or rock climbing.

Only slightly damp, thanks to a drizzle rather than a deluge.

The trail heads to the left at what looks like a dead end. There's usually not much water or ice up that way - just rocks. After about 10 minutes, the canyon opens up into a valley, and up on the left there's a sandstone cliff with a cave in it. The inside of the cave isn't much - just a dirt hollow big enough to stand up in and feel like you're in a cave. I haven't made the scramble up the near-vertical hillside myself, but that's what I've been told by others.

 

I've never gone further than this point, although the dry/rocky creek bed does go on past the cave. But by this point I usually need a bathroom and a Timmies so I'm ready to head home. I like the mountains, but I'm not die-hard about it...

As you head back out, once you're a few minutes downhill from the waterfall, keep an eye on your right-hand side for very faint red-painted pictographs on a flat section of the cliff face. The height they're at varies depending on whether you're walking on the creek bed or on top of a few feet of ice - they might be at eye-height or a bit higher.

Heading back into Calgary I always take the old 1A highway to Cochrane, which is far more scenic, and gets me to a Timmies and a bathroom faster! Watch out for a cute little white settler-era church on your right, as well as assorted wildlife crossing the road. We got home around 4 pm, so despite the fact that it's not really a long hike, with the drive to and from town, it takes the better part of a day.

The morals of this story are: do things that some people think are crazy, make friends with people who are doing the same crazy things, and get out and enjoy the mountains! And if you want to hike Grotto Canyon with a tour guide, let me know - I'll do it for the price of a Timmies. :)

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