The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City

While I'm not a religious person myself, I do find extreme religion interesting, and really enjoyed my stay in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I'll have lots of photos to show you of my trip, mostly of hikes, but to start off, here are some of the Temple downtown, taken on a couple of different days.

This building below is called an annex and entrance to the temple- the temple is not open for tours and non-Mormons are not allowed to enter, so I am guessing they keep the doors locked and church members enter underground through this annex building.

While people can't tour the temple, they do have a nice model of it in one of the visitor's centre.  I find it interesting how the temple is divided up into several rooms and levels, rather than having one main room as most churches do.  The temple is used mostly for baptisms and weddings, while services are held at the Tabernacle next door (which I'll show you later).

The east and west sides of the temple have many smaller rooms... you can see my reflection in this one:

This is a close-up of the room in the basement where they do full-immersion baptisms.

Lots more Salt Lake City to come... stay tuned...

Aerial photo of my neighborhood

As my flight was taking off for Chicago last week, where I was connecting to Salt Lake City, the plane circled north over Ottawa as it gained altitude.  I got this photo of my new neighborhood:

I'm in Salt Lake city right now, doing some hiking.  Stay tuned, photos of my stay here to follow...

Felzen South, Nova Scotia

I was there a couple of weeks ago, and took a few photos.  Felzen South is the village my Mom was born in, and her Mom grew up there.  My grandmother was a Spindler, and the Spindlers were in Felzen South since the foreign protestants from Germany settled there in the 1750's.

Here's the beach at Spindler's cove, which is right in Felzen South.  The sand there is black.  They get lots of sea glass washing up there, pieces of broken glass that have been smoothed by the movement of the ocean.  You can see Lunenburg and Blue Rocks on the distant shore.

Here's the cemetery, it's right on the water.

Lunenburg Harbour panorama

Here is a panorama I pasted together of Lunenburg harbour.  This is from October 7.

Mahone Bay Scarecrow Festival

A couple of weekends ago I was in Nova Scotia with my brother.  Driving through Mahone Bay, we felt like we were being watched from the side of the road... we pulled over to investigate.

It was the scarecrow festival... we went for a little walk and had a look at some of them, here's a small sampling:

Mud Lake / Britannia conservation area

Yet another good thing about the location of my condo is that it's a 10 minute walk to one of the trailheads for the Mud Lake / Britannia conservation area.  This is a pond right beside the Ottawa River, surrounded by forest and a trail that goes around it.

One of the best kept secrets of the trail... a forest monster!

Here are some pics from my hike around the lake.  It was an overcast day, and the fall colours aren't quite as glorious this year as they could be, but it's still a very nice hike.

At the north end of the conservation area you come out to a little channel of the Ottawa river:

I love how Ottawa has these little bits of semi-wilderness tucked into the city.  This trail was around a 1-hour hike.  There are lots of small side trails to explore, I didn't do all of them, saved a few for another day.

Goodbye, old house

I sold my house at the end of September.  I'd owned it since 1999, although it had mostly been rented out since 2004.  I sure bought at a good time- best investment I ever made, house prices more than doubled in those 12 years.  It was 103 years old, built in 1908.

Mine is the right hand side of the brick semi below:

I'll miss the house- it was very small, but it sure had character.  For those who knew it, come take a last look through...

Here's the living room- I loved the stained glass windows.

The kitchen...

This was the bike room, I didn't have a garage or shed so I kept them in this back room off the kitchen:

Let's go upstairs...

A contender for the skinniest bathroom in the world... loved the claw-foot tub though.  It was a small one, very cosy.

That's a stained-glass mirror over the sink, too.  The house had some charming touches like that.

The back bedroom.  It had french doors to open up the bathroom into it.

The middle bedroom- it faces south so it's very bright.

The front bedroom, it's the only normal-ishly (but still small) sized bedroom in the place:

The upstairs hall:

The back yard.  My most recent tenant was a gardener wannabe, which meant she got as far as removing my raspberry and other fruit bushes and all my perennials, and then lost steam and let it go to weeds.  Sigh.  For a house in my price range though, this is a very nice, deep back yard, with parking (that lower part of the patio is the parking space.)

I'll miss the atmosphere and the charm, and the wonderful natural light.  I won't miss the maintenance, the lawn mowing or shovelling, the thermostat that didn't do the "stat" part very well, the current foot-stomping and guitar-strumming neighbors on the other half of the semi, sharing a driveway with a madman on the other side, or the relentless insurgence of the local herd of very determined mice.  I also won't miss being a landlord... the tenant who razed the fruit bushes was also not too reliable with paying her rent.

My house... cloud and silver lining, all wrapped up together.  The neighbor who owns the other half of the semi bought it, so she can find someone now to rent it to who can put up with Strummy and Stompy.  I was on the brink of insanity from the noise, which I guess is a good thing, made it much easier to leave an otherwise really nice little house.