Hi, I’m back. And I already have things to write about for my blog.
A few weeks we (the class), went on a field trip to Calgary Alberta, and I’m going to tell you all about it.

Why we went

One of the main reasons that we went to Calgary, was to go to beakerhead. Beakerhead is an interactive mash up of science math and art. There are multiple exhibits, for you to visit and explore. 
Beakerhead was only one day though, we went on a seven day trip. So, what did we do for the other six days you ask, and I’m here to tell you. We drove. It was a lot of driving, but other than that, we did a lot of fun things.

Videos

This year our theme is finding and telling stories, in the form of videos. So on this trip, we had a lot of videos to make, as I go through, talking about different parts of the trip, I will talk about the different videos that we made.

The last spike at Craigellachie

This was our first stop of our entire trip (unless you count lunch). The last spike, is where the last spike was driven in 1885, completing the Canadian pacific railway. We posed with the famous driving the last spike photo *to the left* multiple times. When we were there, we actually tot to see a train go by, (on the train tracks, obviously).

Three Valley Gap Heritage Ghost Town

This was our first stop where we got to make a video. We were told about this video a few days before we left, so we had time to prepare. We were told that we were going to a ghost town and that we would be making a fictional video there. We were split into group of 5 and 4, and got to work. My group decided to make it a horror/mystery film, about the ghost of the old train man. You can watch the video below.

We could’ve done better, but we planned on having two hours to film and edit, however, we were running behind that day, so we only got one hour. We also could’ve planned ahead better, but overall I’m pretty happy with how our video turned out. Our group worked well together. Even under the time constraints, there was practically no yelling at each other!

My group:

Logan

Marshall

Maggie

Kailey

Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre

This was my favourite stop of the entire trip for multiple reasons.
First we ate our lunch (along with a very yummy brownie). Then once we were done our lunch, we went over to the wolves to learn about why they were there and a bit more about their lives. We got the wolves to howl by howling ourselves, then stopped so we could listen to the wolves. Once they were done their ‘song’, we got to meet one of the wolves and pet them! Before we did that we posed for a photo with the wolf, he was on a leash so he would stay still. So as we arranged ourselves into “photo formation”, I tried to make sure that I was in the front, so I could be closer to the wolf. What I didn’t expect, was that I’d be holding the wolf! I mean, yeah, it was on a leash, but still. I got to hold a wolf, and it almost sat on me a few times. He also licked Kailey’s face, a couple times, I’m sure you can read more about that on her blog. Kailey’s blog

Drumheller

We spent all day at Drumheller (minus the driving and eating). While we were there we did a lot of cool things, but the main thing I’m going to talk about is the video that we made when we were there. Unlike the ghost town video, we did not know about this assignment beforehand. It was a surprise assignment, in other words, we were only told about it when we were at Drumheller. Once the teachers were done explaining what we had to do, we got to work. We had already been through the museum, so we didn’t have to spend all of our time looking through it to see what we wanted to make our video on. For the video, our instructions were to find a dinosaur in the museum, and make a one minute video about its story. I chose to make my video about the Regaliceratops. You can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/SoUUfFQrSBE

Beakerhead

Now I’ll tell you about beakerhead, the main reason we came here. Surprisingly enough, beakerhead only took up one day of our trip. One very long, tiring and exciting day, but still only one day. I’m not going to talk about the whole day, because that would probably be long enough to be a post of its own. I’m just going to talk about the highlights. My favourite parts of the day were both after dinner. The first thing I’m going to talk about is the serpent mother. We technically saw the serpent mother earlier in the day, but it was a lot cooler at night. We went back at 9:00 (pm) to see the serpent mother on fire. It was on purpose of course. It was really cool, figuratively speaking of course, it was actually very warm there which was nice, because we were all cold by that point. After about 15 minutes of us just standing around looking at the art, they decided to “activate the egg”. We had to move away from the serpent mother, for safety reasons. Once everyone was a safe distance away from the egg, it opened up. After about one minute of workers setting everything up, and making sure nothing would go wrong, they backed up and *POOF*. The egg shot colourful fire up into the air. Everyone was instantly warmed from this sudden burst of flames. It shot fire for quite a while before we had to go, but it was nice while it lasted. The egg shot up pink and green coloured fire. Once we all got back on the bus we headed to my second favourite stop. It wasn’t necessarily what we did when we were there, but that was fun too. It was what we saw. We were all taking a quick break down by the river, in our groups of friends, when Kailey noticed something that looked like a plant, moving up the river, against the current. TAMARA KAILEY EMILY JAMIE and I were all looking at it, when it just poked it’s head above the water. That moving plant thing was actually a beaver carrying branches back to his dam. Now that his head was above water, the branches looked more like a cape. He also looked very happy. That beaver definitely made my day, and now I can officially say that I’ve seen a live beaver in person.

Lake Minnewanka

When we stopped here, the first thing I did was feel the temperature of the water, because we were told that it was one of the coldest lakes in Canada. It was very cold. Once we were done admiring the lake from the shore, we went over to the tour boat and, yep you guessed it, went on a boat tour. While we were on the tour, we learned a lot of different facts about the animals around the lake and its history. We learned about how the lake was a lot smaller before, and there used to be a town, but now it’s underneath the lake. We learned about the story of the lake monster that parents would tell their kids, to make sure that they wouldn’t go into the lake. They told their kids this story, because if they went into the lake they could get frostbite, because that lake is and was so cold. We also learned about the *slightly disgusting* way that they collected their data on approximately how many berries the bears by the lake eat. Basically, a group of students went out to collect bear… waste, and took it back to the lab. The point of this was so they count the number of seeds that they found in it, because that was the only part of the berry that didn’t digest in the bear’s digestion system, and (as I’ve already said) they wanted to know how many berries on average a bear ate each day. On the cruise we also got to see a bald eagle. Fun fact, there are more bald eagles in Canada then in America, but there are more Canadian geese in America then in Canada. Our tour guide told us that when we were looking at the eagle. There were lots of fun stories with this lake, if I were to ever go back to Calgary, I would definitely come back to Lake Minnewanka, and see how the stories have changed, and if there are any new ones.

Lake Louise

At this stop I made another video! What a shock. Unlike the other videos I’ve talked about, this was not a stop where the entire class made a video. Only three people, including myself, made a video here. This time, we didn’t have specific guidelines on what we were doing for the video, we were just told to tell a story about the place. Everyone chose a place to make a video about. I didn’t actually choose Lake Louise, I chose Johnston canyon, but we didn’t have time to go there that day, so I had to make my video on Lake Louise instead, without any previous research. But I think my video turned out pretty well, even without research beforehand.

https://youtu.be/tDjDKynZJdI

Enchanted forest

This is the last stop I’m going to talk about. The enchanted forest was on our last day, and it was another video stop! This was the last place in Calgary where the entire class made a video. This video was also a surprise. So we had to think on the spot. Our challenge was to find a place in the enchanted forest, and make a video, we could put a spin a classic fairytale, or just create our own. My group decided to create our own fairytale, using the castle as our main setting. The video definitely could’ve used a better ending, and we probably could’ve normalized the audio better. Overall, I would say it definitely isn’t the best video I’ve ever made, but I wouldn’t say that it’s the worst.

This trip was really fun, and it was an awesome way to start off the year. I enjoyed every day of the trip (even when I was sick) because of all the fun things we did. It was a wide range of activities, which was nice, because if you didn’t like what we were doing, it would change pretty soon anyway. I would definitely come back to Calgary again if I was given the chance. It was a good chance to get to know some of my friends better, and I feel like I’m a lot closer to some people then I was before.