Michael's Meanderings: October 2011

A Werewolf in Whitehorse!?

We all went for a little hike today. With the little bit of snow we have on the ground, it's great for seeing tracks! We saw mink tracks and rabbit tracks and mouse tracks and squirrel tracks and bird tracks and more.

The most impressive of them all, though, were some huge canine tracks. Just how big does that dog-like beast need to be to have a paw pad nearly as big as my hand!??!

To provide a little more context, you see the dog prints to the right of my hand print? Those are Nanuq's tracks.

Nanuq isn't a giant dog, but he isn't a tiny dog, either.

Check this one out. It's a different print, but from the same canine. See that coin? That's not a penny. That's a loonie. A great, big, freakin' loonie (no bigger than other loonies, just pointing out that it looks tiny in the canine's print).

You may have noticed that I keep calling it a canine print. I'm not calling it a dog print because, well, it's more comparable to a wolf print in size. But it's a strange place for a wolf print to be. The area where I found the track is well within the realm of canis domesticus and homo sapiens. Furthermore, the track seemed quite purposeful, heading straight down the road. Wild dogs tend to investigate things along the way. Hmmm... maybe the tracks aren't from a wolf or a dog at all...

Maybe they're from... a werewolf!

That would be so cool.

But unlikely. Which is why we enjoyed a small campfire and snack in the warm sunshine of an early winter's day without fearing the imminent attack of a werewolf.

Besides, everyone knows that werewolves only come out when there's a full moon...

MONSTER!

I took the girls and one of their friends to the "Hallowe'en Spooktacular" at the Canada Games Centre on Saturday. It was quite the event! There were games, stories, puppetry, and a big tunnel "maze" (like, a giant, long, fort).

They loved it.

Or, rather, Jade and her friend loved it. Halia didn't love it quite so much and that's entirely because of this guy...

Jade had no problems with him. She was excited to have her picture taken with him. Halia, on the other hand - my child without fear - was absolutely petrified! She could not bear to look at him without crying and wailing, "Take me home! Take me home!" She clung to me like her life depended on it.

She wasn't the only kid who seemed to be affected. He might not look all that scary in this picture - and he wasn't trying to be scary, but what you can't see in this still-shot is the way his googly eyes moved. The moved independently of each other. They kind of vibrated. It was like he could see in nearly every direction at once. Creeeepy! And awesome.

Ah, Hallowe'een, you wouldn't be a tenth as great as you are if you couldn't scare the wits out of small children.

Stuff I haven't blogged about (until now)

I'm so far behind on my blogging it's crazy. Instead of trying to do individual posts for everything, I'm gong to do a quick rundown on a few things now.

1. Sailing
We got out and did some sailing this year. Not as much as I would have liked, of course, but the sailing that we did was great. The winds were fantastic this year, steady and very useable. I have pictures and may post them yet. But not now.

2. The Yukon Adventure Challenge
I competed in the Yukon Adventure Challenge again, this time as a soloist (the first ever allowed to compete as a soloist). I came in third and might have done even better if I hadn't taken a couple of boneheaded "shortcuts". You can read about the race here!

3. The Yukon Adventure Magazine
Dogsled Stacie has started an online "Yukon Adventure Magazine". I've contributed a couple of our short family adventures. You can read about hiking up to the Grey Mountain caves here and picnicking and paddling on Chadburn lake here. Here are a few pictures from the trips:

Naughty little monsters.

Is it just me, or is there something very... wrong about this?

Oh, Tim Hortons. There's so much I'd like to say right now, but it's just not appropriate for this blog.

I paca, you paca, we alpaca!

Last weekend, Midnight Sun Alpacas had a "Farm Fair". I was single parenting (Fawn was at Breakout West) and it seemed like it would be a fun activity to do with the girls, so I took them. I'm glad we went!

We were allowed to get up close and personal with the alpacas, who seemed to be as curious about the kids as the kids were about the alpacas. We were even allowed into the alpaca pens and got to pet some of them.

Some of the alpacas were used for more than their wool. Like horses, they had little bridles on their faces. Jade really wanted to visit the one with the reddish bridle. As you can see, she was very excited...

... but it was the greyish one that really made her laugh with its little, bleating "aaah!"

The roosters were noisy and fun to watch. They looked big with their pouffy winter feathers, but nowhere near as big as the...

...turkeys! They were puffing themselves up and coming to visit the girls, putting on a great display.

We all agreed that the turkeys were our favourite. I don't know why - there's just something about them that's cool! Maybe it's that weird skin on their head or how they like to strut around all puffy-chested.

Finally, the girls got to go for a carriage ride behind one of the alpacas! How many people can say they've been pulled by an alpaca? Check that one off the bucket list!

I'll be keeping my eyes open for this one when they host the Midnight Sun Alpaca Farm Fair again next year - and this time I'll bring some cash to buy one of their nice sweaters!

Going bananas!

My humblest apologies. I know it has been a long time since I posted last. You see, I have been going bananas - for bananas. Bananas fried in rice paper, that is.

Its super-easy to make and if I tried to tell you how delicious it all is you would think I'm spewing the most ludicrous hyperbole ever invented. And that's not hyperbole.

Instead, make it yourself and try it and then tell me if I'm going overboard!

It takes about 10-15 minutes, depending on how many you make.

Here are the instructions (and sorry that the pictures aren't great; I've been using my mobile device a lot lately):

1) Peel some bananas. If they're big, cut them into quarters.

2) Put some brown sugar into a deep plate with some warm water. Place a sheet of rice paper into the sugary, warm water for about 30 seconds (or until the rice paper is pliable but not fragile).

3) When the rice paper is ready, wrap your banana like you might a burrito. Tuck in those ends!

They should look like this when you're done.

4) Heat up some oil (I use corn oil). Get it good and hot. You don't want to try frying your wrapped bananas until the oil is ready. When it is, fry! You might want to use a splatter guard since there might be a bit of water on your wrapped bananas and hot oil and water don't like each other.

The frying doesn't take long - and you don't want it to, otherwise your bananas will get too mushy.

5) When your wrapped bananas are nice and crispy, place them on a paper towel or other clean, absorbent surface.

6) You can sprinkle all sorts of things on top. Cinnamon, cocoa, icing sugar, maple syrup... the opportunities abound! My favourite is just a touch of maple syrup and icing sugar.