Travel Adventures

After work on Tuesday 8/4 Angie and I walked down to the park to see the Peace Bridge.  A twenty-five million dollar pedestrian bridge.  Off in the distance, we could see a storm coming towards us. But what we couldn't tell was how quickly this storm was moving and how harsh the storm was going to be.

Angie and Trisha at the Peace Bridge

The picture above is a before picture.  We were having a great time.  The views were fabulous.  Watching the skies, we decided to begin walking back to the cities.  We weren't very far away from the bridge when we heard the thunderous pounding of the rain and hail pounding the glass panels on the bridge.  We did out best to stay ahead of the rain but it was moving fast.  At one point, I remember turning around wondering if it was a tornado heading towards us.

After....

We tried to go to a nearby apartment building to find refuge but there were no overhangs and no lobby to get into the building.  I did the one thing that you should not do and I crawled into the center of an evergreen tree.  I was already drenched by this point, but at least it kept a majority of the hail away from me.  Angie found a place up by the building to squeeze into but neither of us were able to get totally away from getting hit by the large hail.

Hail so thick it looked like snow

It was 15 minutes of heavy rain and hail in the first round.  Yes, I stopped to take a picture right before we turned and headed towards the train.  We decided not to go to our second planned stop Calgary Plus 15.  I heard on Wednesday that several people were injured as hail broke the sky-lights which came down on customers inside. 



Trisha by hail pile

On the way back to the train, we saw this huge pile of hail.  I could not pass up a photo opportunity.  We were already so drenched that the sprinkles falling from the sky no longer mattered. When we finally arrived at the train, they began making announcements that due to the weather the trains were going to be delayed.  It took us about 45 minutes to squeeze onto a train.

Are we moving yet?

We waited about 45 minutes inside before we started moving.  Then we moved on intersection and sat for over 5 minutes.  It was hot and steamy inside of the train.  Despite that Angie and I continued to joke around.  We had two options; laugh or cry.  We chose to laugh and help those around us laugh in a difficult situation too.

Laugh or Cry

Wednesday at lunchtime we walked through the park.  This section of trees were the ones that I crawled into.  Notice the nice lawn around it?  It was almost like the winds and hail had a lesser impact in this area.  

Trisha's hiding place

Ashley took some photos on her way into work from the area near the park.  These trees were just around the corner from the path that Angie and I were walking.  In other words, if we would have taken a left instead of a right, we would have walked right into falling trees instead of evergreens.  (My allergies are not happy with my choice, but that too shall pass.)

Downed trees on walking path

Seeing the damage that had been done not too far down the walking path from where Angie and I were at, I had a feeling of peace that God was watching over us.  It was so symbolist of life.  Even when you get caught in the middle of the storm being pelleted by hail and rain, God's hand is covering us protecting us from something worse.

Parts of the park still flooded

The morning after the storm, there was still areas of sever flooding .  The weather reporters this morning mentioned that they were proud because they were able to get warning in place "early" but in the next breath they mentioned how many people were taken by surprise by the storm including the severity of the storm.  After hearing the two comments I wondered it that meant they did not have an effective warning system.  Come to think of it, there were no warning sirens that went off.