Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Cheating or Convenience?

Through the wonders of a Flickr-friend's holiday pictures, I've had an Aha! moment.

I must admit, this picture did not surprise me, instead it made me think: "Of course!!"


Of course there are professional teepee-makers. Why wouldn't there be?

My meeting-addled brain can't think of any parallels in other cultures at the moment...Please help below in the comments!

Lori

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Random Questions

...arising from a roadtrip.

In this day'n'age, with the Internet always so there, able to be referenced at a moment's notice, you feel its absence when on the road, in a car. (No, I don't have an iPhone/Blackberry/what-have-you to do this on the road...plus we were traveling in areas without service!)

On our last road trip (this last weekend actually, the pictures are here), Metro and I had a number of questions/speculations. This time, we wrote them down. And now, I'm going to share them with you, because perhaps you'll enjoy them too.

Some were generated purely from the geography:
  • Anarchist Mountain in BC's Boundary Country...were there really anarchists there? What's the story?
  • Boundary Creek Provincial Park in Greenwood. Check it out. Looks nice.
  • Why is the town of Salmo called Salmo? Was there a Mr. Salmo? What did he do?
Some were generated from roadside observations:
  • No Tresspassing signs -- does putting one up an prerequisite for being able to actually shoo people from your land? If you don't have one up, can you still oust people you don't want?
  • Roadside crosses -- there was an anthropological study done on these (at least one). Look it up. What a weird phenomenon. When/Where did the practice start?
  • Fudge as a tourist attraction -- This one has always bothered me. Hell's Gate for years had nothing to do once you got over to the other side other than to buy and eat fudge. Is this just a Canadian tourist stop/trap phenomenon, or do other countries subject their tourists to it as well?
Others just arose from the depth of (mostly) Metro's brain:
  • Are there such things as grasshopper breeders?
  • What is the difference between an alpaca and a llama?
  • What is the story behind the zuccamelon again?
More questions came up, but not when we had paper and pen available. C'est la vie!

We've not gotten around to looking any of these up, so feel free to offer up any resources. Or regale us with your own questions that niggle...

Lori