Bat House

I worked on a bat house in between helping Anna with her bunk bed project.  There was a cutting of 1/2" plywood left over from her bed, and I used it on the bat house.  I found some guidelines on line that suggested sizes and a basic design.  This one is roughly 2 feet square, and is supposed to be able to house around 50 bats.  

It was recommended that it be installed at the edge of a clearing.  It should be positioned about 10 to 15 feet above the ground.  The underside should be open with no branches of obstructions.  And it should face the southeast so that it gets the morning sun.  I understand that it can take up to a year for the bats to find it, but once they do, it should see continual use.  I'm hoping for the best....

The Camera Comes Out

On July 6th Anna and I went out for an evening ATV ride.  I brought the 4x5 along with me, as this was the first opportunity I had for some photography since we arrived at the cottage in late June.  The trails were muddier than we had seen for quite some time, as a shower dumped a millimeter or two of rain just before we headed out.  After riding around for a bit, we stopped by the old store below the town site.  This is one of only four original buildings that remain in the townsite.  I set up the 4x5 here and took a shot of the old building.  The roof is badly deteriorated and it seems it is not long for this world.  Then we moved a little further along the trail and I stopped to do a second set up.  This was a view of the Bighorn Range to the west, with an old fence in the foreground.  I shot this with the intention of cropping the image to panoramic format.  I'm not sure that either of these will be something that I invest the time and materials in to print, but it was great to finally get out an do a little shooting once again.

ICF Blocks

On Monday after the long weekend things got going again on the guest cottage construction.  Scott's crew came over and set up all of the ICF blocks.  These are insulated foam blocks that connect together like a giant LEGO set.  Its a really neat system, and I spent a couple of hours, mostly watching and partly helping to put the big set together.

There is two inches of styrofoam insulation on both the interior and the exterior.  These are tied together by plastic struts that are bonded right into the foam.  There are coat hanger like clips that are used to secure together the vertical and horizontal joints.  Huge zip ties are used to secure the entire structure to the J-hooks that were cast into the footings.  Rebar is fitted inside the blocks, both vertically and horizontally to reinforce the structure.  And there are truss-like metal reinforcements that snap into the upper row.  Temporary supports are screwed into place at some of the cut and fitted joints, and to support the upper edge.  Spray foam insulation is used to seal to the footing, and at some of the fitted joints.

These ICF, or Insulated Concrete Forms, are not stripped away, but remain permanently in place to provide a six inch thick re-inforced concrete wall with two inches of foam insulation on either side.  The whole system is very ingenius, and slick and quick to put together.  We are now ready for concrete, which is supposed to be poured later this week, subject to favorable weather.

Trout Pond

On the evening of July 3rd, I headed over to the nearby trout pond with my brother-in-law Shawn and my nephew Garrett.  I had a fly rod, and the two of them had spinning rods.  There were two other groups there fishing as well.  The fish were rising all over the place, so it looked as though it would be a successful evening.  

But, the fish weren't taking my fly, nor were they going for any of the lures the guys tried.  The two other groups, that were fishing across from us, weren't getting anything either.  Eventually I found that once my fly got wet and sunk under the surface a little, the trout would hit at it.  I ended up landing a small rainbow trout, which came home with us and hit the BBQ later that evening, and Anna quite enjoyed it.

The day had been a much more pleasant one.  The daytime high peaked up around +25C, and was nowhere near the stifling highs we had seen the past week.  A couple of showers rolled through off and on and helped to reduce the extreme dryness a bit.  I drove the girls down to nearby Fish Lake in the afternoon for a little swimming.  Margarit and Shawn and Garrett took a drive in to Rocky Mountain House in the afternoon to pick up a few supplies.

Forgotten Dresses

While Anna and I were out at Nordegg, I worked on yet another water color.  Once again this was based on one of my photographs.  As with my last couple of pieces, I did the water color painting first, and then accented it with pen and pencil.  Anna selected the image from a bunch of my photos that I brought along.  This one was a little different from the last two, as it is not an exterior view of an old building.  Although I like the dry brushing technique that works well for old weathered siding, I wanted to expand and try something different.  

The painting was worked on during the heatwave that gripped western Canada in late June.  We saw daytime highs get up to 40C.  It was too hot to do much of anything outside on those days, so when we retreated to the cottage, I often puttered away on this painting.  The snapshots below show the progression from layout sketch, to water color painting, to pen work, to graphite accents with pencil.

Construction

Things are beginning to kick into gear with respect to construction of our guest cottage.  While we were away, the forms were stripped off the footings.  Of course I delivered the water cistern to site when Anna and I returned to Nordegg on June 25th.

Weeping tile was delivered at some point last week as well.  On Saturday the Insulated Concrete Blocks for the foundation were delivered along with a bunch of the related supplies...  re-inforcing wire, brackets, sealant membrane, spray foam, etc.

The crew would probably start work on the foundation on Monday were it not for the heat wave.  It has been over 30C the past couple of days and is forecast to get up to nearly 40C by the middle of the week.  That is just too hot to work out in the open on a foundation.  We will need to wait until things cool off a little.  

Back to the Rink

The Renegades played two hockey games during the week of June 21.  We played on Monday the 21st, and then again on Wednesday the 23rd.  We have been matched up with three other teams in the second lowest division.  The team that beat us so soundly in the first game of the season were moved up to a higher division.  On Monday we fell behind by a score of 6-1, but rallied back and made it really close.  It was 6-5 when we pulled our goalie with seconds remaining, and almost scored.  But it ended officially as a 6-5 loss.  This was against a team called the Party Sharks.

One the 23rd, my anniversary, we played again against a team called the Mighty Ducks.  We fell behind in this one as well, but rallied back again, and this time tied it in regulation, 6-6.  There was no score in the overtime period so the game remained a tie.

There were two more games in the last week of June, but I missed them both as I was out at Nordegg.  I understand that only about seven players were able to show up for the first one.  This was on June 29th, against a team called the Patriots.  The guys tell me that it was a hard fought game, but they hung on for the win.

The last game of June was on the 30th, and the guys won that one too.  Maybe I should stay away from the rink as it seems the team wins when I am not there...!

Abraham Lake

On June 29th, Anna and I took a drive with Shelly up to Abraham Lake.  We went in Shelly's VW convertible, which was well suited to the hot weather.  This was the day that temperature peaked at +40C, and we were out during the hottest part of the day.  Driving down the highway with the top down, it was so warm that the rushing wind felt like it was coming from a furnace.

We spent an hour or two down on a gravel bar beside the lake, at Windy Point.  It was breezy on this day, but not the gale force winds that are typical of this location.  That breeze felt really nice, and was in fact a little deceiving.  I am very tolerant of heat and rarely find it uncomfortable.  But on this occasion it was so oppresive, that even I put on shorts.  My pasty white legs had not been exposed to sun all year, and they were torture tested in these extreme conditions, down by the water.  I ended up with my legs sunburned, and Anna got roasted too... mostly on her back and shoulders.

The water level in the lake is slowly starting to rise, despite the relatively dry conditions this year.  The big sandspit that is exposed at Windy Point every spring had now mostly disappeared.  After splashing around in the shallows for a couple of hours, and collecting rocks, we headed back to Nordegg.  It was only at that point that we realized how sunburnt we had become.

We stopped in Nordegg at the Canteen and got some ice cream cones before heading back up to the cottage in the late afternoon.  We popped over to our next door neighbor Dan's place for a visit and a beer.  He invited us inside his place, which is air-conditioned.  It was nice to shed the extreme heat of the day and get our body temperatures back down.  After that we had a quick dinner of some leftovers, and then headed out for our usual evening fishing down at the creek.

Creekside

Our close friend Shelly was out at her cottage.  She was out by herself as her husband Eric was at work, and her three kids, Jacob, Jordan and Amy, were back home in the city.  Shelly and Eric have a cottage that is about 12 lots over from ours.  They bought their property out here a couple of years before we did, and in fact is was through them that we first learned of the Nordegg subdivision.

In the evenings, once the intense heat of the day had subsided a little, Anna and I took an ATV ride over to the creek to try a little fly fishing.  We did this two evenings in a row, and both times we invited Shelly to come along with us.  I almost landed one small trout but it shook the fly before I could get it to shore.  I had a few other hits but mostly the fishing was not overly successful.  The first evening we just fished in a section of creek that traversed an open meadow.  The second evening we went to a more wooded spot.  While I was fishing, Anna caught a toad that swam by in the stream.  She also rescued a battered tiger swallowtail butterfly that had fallen in the creek.  It made for a couple of really pleasant evenings, even though there were no trout for the frying pan.

Hanging Around the Cottage

Anna and I headed out to Nordegg together on June 25th.  We delivered the water tank for our guest cottage, and then settled in for an extended stay.  The heat wave that hit western Canada at the end of June was just getting underway.  The rest of the family would be joining us for the Canada Day long weekend.

On Saturday the 26th we dropped my prints off at the Beehive Artisan Market.  Later that evening we attended the free concert down at the community hall.  Multiple Juno award winner Bill Bourne played a show there.

With the temperatures so extreme the construction on our guest cottage was halted.  The heat in the late afternoon was overbearing, and we had to be careful.

I found that if I closed all the rollshutters on the south side of the cottage during the day, it kept things a lot cooler.  We were able to maintain an inside temperature that was consistently about ten degrees cooler than outside.  Fortunately, in the mountains it cools off significantly at night.  We were getting night time low temperatures down in the range of 15 to 17C.  Once the sun began to set in the west I would lift the roll shutters and open all the windows in the cottage.  This created a lot of air movement and really cooled things off, allowing us to start each day with a relatively cool living space.

We tried to accomplish a little outside, and managed to do some work in the shade.  We had to time our projects to the sun, so that we could work in the shade beside or behind the cottage.  We made some progress on the bunk bed that Anna and I have been working on for the past few weeks.  

One morning I went out behind the cottage and cut up two dead trees that had fallen down.  We set up the log splitter in the shade on the north side and worked splitting all of this for firewood.

Most days I had an afternoon nap.  We made a few nice meals for ourselves, though mostly we tried to avoid cooking inside.  It was stuff done on the BBQ for the most part.  Later in the evenings, once it had cooled off, we went out for ATV rides, visited with neighbors, and did a little fishing.

Breaking Records

There has been a major heat wave across western Canada at the end of June.  Something like 38 record temperatures were recorded in Alberta on June 28th.

I have a weather station in my yard, at the cottage, and its been there for about two years now.  The highest temperature it has ever recorded was 33C.

On June 26th we broke that record as it recorded a temperature of 34C.  According to Environment Canada the record for Nordegg was 32.8C recorded on July 25 1950.  They announced a new official record of 34.8C, recorded on June 28th.

My weather station, which is a mile or so away from the Nordegg townsite, and higher up on the flanks of Coliseum Mountain, recorded 35C on June 27th, 38C on June 28th, 40C on June 29th, 40C again on June 30th, and then 39C on July 1.  Its geeting somewhat overbearing and it seems there will be a break in the pattern starting on July 2nd.

July Calendar Image

This is the image from the July page of my 2021 Calendar.  The graffiti in this old cabin dates back to the 1950's.  Lots of previous visitors signed their names on the log walls, and jotted down a date.  It is located in David Thompson Country, not far from the Kootenay Plains.  In understand it is destined to be demolished.