HANGING OUT Figured it might be time to do a short update and maybe change the view a little.

The shot above is at Gap Lake along Highway 1A west of Exshaw, Alberta. We haven't been doing to many exciting things here at Dogpound North. Brenda has been tending to her flowers and with the ongoing drought we have been experiencing it is a constant battle to keep them hydrated. We have been busy getting Mom's house ready for its sale and distrubuting family "heirlooms" and donating the rest. The house was sold last week so that journey is now complete. The trailer is still sitting, not even dewinterized as yet, but who knows, maybe this week. I have been having some issues with the solar charging system so will need to get that figured out before we head off into the wild blue yonder. To change things up a little we decided we needed to take a drive out west into the mountains. We went out as far as Lake Louise although not right to the lake, to many people there I am sure. Our drive took us past Gap Lake (photo above) and then out the Bow Valley Parkway past Castle Junction where we had captured a shot of Castle Mountain that will be included here. Castle Mountain has a storied history at least the naming part of it. It was orginally called Miistukskoowa by the Blackfoot people for a long, long time, time immemorial they say. And then along came the Europeans and in 1858 decided it should be called Castle Mountain, because of its resemblance to those European Castles I suppose. From 1946 to 1979 it was renamed Mount Eisenhower to honour the Supreme Allied Commander after World War II, then those pesky European/Canadians complained enough that it reverted back to Castle Mountain. The pinnacle at the Eastern End of the mountain 9right side of the picture) was named Eisenhower Tower at that point and that is the way it remains until now. If I actually knew how to pronounce it I would call it by its Blackfoot name Miistukskoowa, which for all I know just means a really big pile of rocks. No matter its name it is pretty majestic. We had lunch on our way home at a favourite Canmore restaurant Rocky Mountain Flatbread and headed back into our drought stricken neighbourhood. Blogger was its usual PITA and I had to rewrite this a couple of times but one good thing has come from the delay. This morning after my usual session at the swimming pool it started raining here at DPN and hopefully will continue for a long, long time.

Just a little postscript, for those who are wondering I have left the borg for all intents and purposes, I no longer frequent Facebook or Instagram, although I do still have a Messenger account.