Know Your Watershed

ResEau is an online government project that focuses on making water information easily accessible to all Canadians. The new Know Your Watershed website provides an easy way to learn more about your watershed as well as making it easier to find local watershed protection groups. All you have to do is go to the website, type in your location, and check out what's in the database.

You can find the site here: Know Your Watershed.

Slippery and Slushy

Yes it's that time of year when the Wishart trail will both make a mess of your pant legs and break your wrist at the same time.

Areas of the trail exposed to the sun are probably quite muddy so bring your boots. However, areas in the shade are fast becoming vertical skating rinks so make sure those boots have some treads or cleats on them.

With the great looking weekend ahead of us, a walk around the Sanctuary would be a fun Saturday activity for the family.

We Know, We're Living With It

Those of you driving up and down 45th Ave past the Nature Centre, Parkland School and River Glenn School have probably noticed this scene being played out on the east side of the road.

Trust us, we are well aware of what's happening and to be perfectly honest, we're not all that concerned at the moment.

The City of Red Deer is installing some much needed water supply and sanitary lines. Four of them to be exact and they're pretty large. What the digger/bulldozer brigade is up to is site preparation so the pipe crews can safely excavate & shore their route.

The plan did go through the Gaetz Lakes Sanctuary Management committee and while the work is happening on the Sanctuary buffer zone, it's outside the Sanctuary proper. The land being prepped & excavated is not pristine, untouched land. It has been disturbed in the past and will be replanted & returned to a natural state at the end of the project.

This is a two-phase project. There are two lines going in this year and then two more proposed for 2008.

The City's news release is located on the City website here.

We are not anticipating any changes to the Nature Centre's hours, operations or programming.

Backyard snowshoe

Hello from up North! We are finally getting a good whack of snow so I could enjoy one of my favorite pastimes... snowshoeing! Like anything, it's important you get them on correctly. There's nothing that creates more misery when your snowshoes keep falling off (like my first time). I figured out that my shoe is too small or that the binding is too big but I managed a short term fix of stuffing a glove between the shoe and the binding. :) It was a beautiful day for a snowy romp, the sun shining, not a cloud in the sky. And lots of deep snow. At first, I experienced the first impressions that I have seen with many beginners, that little disappointment that you don't stay right on top of the snow and do sink quite a bit. Seems silly to doubt it, I know but it's like driving.. when you're driving on the highway and after awhile it doesn't seem like you are driving that fast anymore (til you slow down anyways).. well, it's the same with snowshoeing, after awhile it doesn't seem like you're staying that much on top of the snow (until you try it without them).And being me, I had to make sure.

I took a picture of my snowshoe track,as you can see. The hole beside it was a step I had taken without the snowshoe. The hole is at least one hand deeper than my snowshoe track. It was proof that my snowshoes really were helping me stay on top of the snow. I quite happily snowshoed all over the back yard and along the school yard after that, it was great. Now I just have to get bigger shoes (some boots maybe) and I can head into the forest :) and find the smaller version of my tracks (the snowshoe hare's tracks)!