We went down to the Rattray Marsh to volunteer for the annual clean-up. Claudia’s Pathfinder group always helps. There was a lot of fog on Lake Ontario.
The marsh.
there was still some ice hanging around.
Claudia trying to skip stones with her bum arm. Couldn’t remember if she can skip stones with a good arm.
Any chance for Claudia to get in the water she takes it.
Chloe looking pretty shaggy.
We were all home for Family Day. Gillian was on her Reading Week and I had taken the day off for once. We headed out to Mountsberg Conservation Area near Campbellville for some snowshoeing. Here is Angela making a snow angela.
And Claudia.
The girls showing off their footwear.
Despite it being Family Day, the trails were not packed.
Claudia tired of wearing her snowshoes on her feet and switched to her hands.
It was a great day weather wise.
Gillian breaking trail.
This is the area where the girls use to do their year-end camp when they were in Girl Guides.
Afterwards we checked out the display with the Birds of Prey.
A bald eagle.
It was an early start on New Years Day morning, I picked up Stam at 5:00 am and we headed off to Ann Arbor, Michigan for the Winter Classic at The Big House.
The drive took us 5.5 hours, Google says it takes 4.5 hours, so we made pretty good time given the weather conditions. We crossed the border at Sarnia and the weather was good up until Livonia when the snow started coming down. I prepaid for a parking spot in one of the downtown parking garages, it cost $10.25. The lot was about 1 mile from the stadium.
Approaching the Big House, home of the University of Michigan Wolverines.
They had a Spectator Plaza beside the stadium, with food, beer, games, and live entertainment.
Me out front of the stadium, the snow kept falling.
Taking our seats before the game, we were in section 30, row 91 in the northwest corner of the stadium.
The guys on skates shovelling the snow, they had a busy night ahead.
You can see the division between blue on the left and red on the right.
The pre-game warm up skate.
The stadium at near capacity, the announced attendance was 105,491, a new record for watching a hockey game.
The American national anthem sung by the Zac Brown Band. The Canadian anthem was sung by the Tenors (Who?)
Stam and I in the Big House. For another photo of us in the Big House see this photo (we’re in the blue circle).
Where’s “no-shirt” Waldo in the crowd? One of the two guys sitting near us that took their shirts off in the cold. The game time temperature was -10 deg C.
The announcement that the Maple Leafs second goal was good.
Tyler Bozak’s winning shootout goal.
The final score Leafs 3, Detroit 2!
Despite the 100,000 plus people it didn’t take long to get out of the stadium.
The throngs of happy and disappointed fans filling Main St for the walk back to their vehicles.
We had dinner in Ann Arbor before heading to our hotel in Livonia, but the traffic was still bad when we finished. It was the snowy conditions and icy roads that made it worse, we passed numerous cars that had gone into ditches. The usual 30 minute drive turned into 2 hours.
We left the hotel the next morning at 8:00 am and headed for home, after dropping Stam off at home, I was home by 2:00pm. When we arrived at the border, the lady asked how long we had been away. I told her we were at the hockey game and she said “you were one of the smart ones”, although she did say they had extra staff for the night because they were expecting a big rush after the game, but it never came. When we checked in there were three families ahead of us who had checked out that morning, planning to drive back to Burlington after the game, but were trying to check back in because of the weather.
Like the Leafs thank you e-mail said “you made the journey, you braved the elements, you were a part of the largest attended game in NHL history”. Stam and I had a great time and may try and plan for a road trip to Philadelphia to see his NFL Eagles play next year.
Only a couple of more days until the 2014 Winter Classic at the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’m heading down on New Years Day with Stam to be part of the expected 110,000 fans. I had the tickets for the 2013 Winter Classic and held on to them after it was cancelled due to the NHL Lockout.
Michigan Stadium almost ready for the Winter Classic.
Update:
An updated photo with the packed Big House. That’s me inside the blue circle.
Angela and Claudia were out in the backyard last night. Here they are wearing their ice hats.
Claudia, Angela and I went out for a drive this morning to see how things were around the neighbourhood. I put the GoPro on the windshield. Here are a few minutes of our 17 minute drive.
The sun came out this afternoon, it made for some nice scenery with the ice covered trees.
A lot more pleasant than yesterdays view looking down Rainwater Drive.
One of the trees in our backyard.
The maple tree that I grew from a twig is still doing well.
We turned our house into a warming centre. Steve and the boys came over this afternoon as they have been without power for a couple of days. Mom and Dad and Carolyn are also coming over for dinner as they have been without since Saturday night.
Later in the day we headed back out once the freezing drizzle stopped to survey the damage and clean up. Looking west along Rainwater Drive, this end of the street did pretty good.
The tree next door, Lars was starting to clean it up.
Looking down to the east, that end of the street was hit the hardest out of the sub-division.
Lars trying to pull down one of the broken branches, unfortunately it brought down one of the other branches.
Lars cutting one of the broken branches off.
Neighbours helping neighbours.
This is the tree that broke while we were out earlier.
This is the other end of Rainwater Drive, we counted about 5-6 boulevard trees that will probably be cut down by the city.
This blow up snowman took some collateral damage.
A close-up of Frosty.
Angela breaking ice of the small maple.
Ice on the pine tree out front.
This father and son were surveying the damage with their hard hats on.
Lars trying to get more of the ice off, but getting most of it down his back.
Everyone standing clear of Lars and his ice wielding stick.
A big pile of ice on the road.
More of the plants and bushes covered in ice.
What did you wake up to this morning? We headed out to church for 8:00 and on our way home we took a drive around the neighbourhood. When we turned down our street, we discovered it was blocked with fallen trees, after turning around and coming in the other way we went for a walk to see the damage. Our neighbour Lars lost a couple of branches.
Looking back to our house.
Around the corner from us we came across the fallen trees.
This tree in front of friends fell over and is totally blocking their driveway.
Another tree blocking the road.
Angela and Claudia in front of the destruction.
As I took this picture, we heard a loud crack…
…and turned around to see the one side of this tree go down…followed by another loud crack…
…only to see the other side go down in front of us.
That is the same tree that is on the right in this picture that I took as we were walking down earlier. You can just see Chloe by the tree, probably going to the washroom.
The ice made for some nice photos.
The ice coated trees in front of our house.
I moved our cars right up to the house just in case our tree decides to come down.
I guess we should heed the Peel Regional Police Twitter feed.
The girls had a PA Day last Friday. We headed out to Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area for a walk with Chloe. If she didn’t have leaves stuck to her it was burrs.
The one trail leads along the edge of the escarpment.
Looking across to Mt Nemo.
Angela and Claudia climbing the rocks.
Gillian taking the easy way up.
There are a lot of rock climbing areas. There are points all along the top with ropes hooked on.
Claudia trying to get over the branch.
Watch out below!
Chloe finally found a portion of the wall short enough for her to see over.
We learned today that Chloe doesn’t like stairs she can see through. There were grated stairs that lead down the escarpment. She wouldn’t go down, so Angela carried her down to the first landing. Then we tried to get her to come down another flight and she wasn’t having any of it.
Some of the escarpment walls.
Claudia and Angela climbing up for a photo op.
There were quite a few people rock climbing while we were there.
After Rattlesnake Point we headed to Hilton Falls Conservation Area. On the way to the falls Chloe started going down the grated stairs, although these ones weren’t as open as the other ones.
The falls were more of a trickle, we’ll have to go back when the creek is running a little more.
Part of the old sawmill waterwheel.
The girls and I at Hilton Falls.
They had the fire pit going, too bad we didn’t bring any marshmellows.
The top of the falls.
Started off on another trail until we realized it was for mountain biking only.
The walk out to the falls was 4km one way. The weather was great and we had great time on the trails.
On Saturday night we did our first backyard movie of the summer. Our feature was Rango. It was a good night, the girls had a couple of friends over, hoping to do another one soon.
Ever wonder how much rain has fallen in the last 7 days? I came across an web site that takes the guess work out of it, it is called Rain Caddy. All you do is enter your postal code and it will find the closest Environment Canada weather station and give you the results.
I updated the local weather display on the website, I replaced what I had (originally from the Environment Canada website) with a php script that pulls the same data from the EC website. The old one was flash based which didn’t work on the ipad.
