{"id":1883,"date":"2017-08-18T21:10:24","date_gmt":"2017-08-19T01:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2017-08-18T21:10:24","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T01:10:24","slug":"a-wasted-day-thats-entirely-my-own-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=1883","title":{"rendered":"A Wasted Day That’s Entirely My Own Fault"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally I had booked my “bobsled” ride for today and intended to take most of yesterday to enjoy the scenic delights of Banff NP<\/em>. However, I had done all the waterfall walks I needed and the scenery was not revealing itself so I rescheduled the ride and drove to Calgary early. This left me with this morning completely open and, rather than searching for something to do in Calgary, I decided I would use the time to prepare to document the upcoming solar eclipse on my way to Pincher Creek, AB. Every detail of the trip, so far, was timed so that I will arrive under the shadow of the moon on Monday morning and, after Monday, I revert to my normal day-by-day planning..<\/p>\n

They say that “failing to plan is planning to fail” and that really summarizes my day. There’s really no need for anyone else to read further but I am going to briefly recount the failure so my future self remembers where the day went. The map and road video are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since it was back in June that I experimented with getting good photos and video of the sun using solar filters, I thought it would be worth a trial run of setting everything up from the back of the car and testing it out. I assumed that, during today’s journey, I would pass a rest area or a park where I would be able to do this but didn’t bother to plan a location. Of course, no opportunity came up and I ended up in Pincher Creek around 2 PM. Even if I couldn’t check in, I thought, I could ask at the motel office where to find a local park – but the office was not yet open. I consulted my GPS unit’s POIs and found Oldman Dam Provincial Recreational Area<\/em> just 6 km away so I drove there. The dam was 6 km away but the signs indicated that the actual recreational areas and parking were another 20 km away on dirt roads so, after taking a couple of photos of the dam, I returned to Pincher Creek. As I drove into town I came across a local park but by now the sky was mainly cloudy so I gave up, went for a beer, and returned to the motel to check in having achieved nothing except travel.<\/p>\n

A view of Oldman Dam<\/em> near Pincher Creek.\"Pinchers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally I had booked my “bobsled” ride for today and intended to take most of yesterday to enjoy the scenic delights of Banff NP. However, I had done all the waterfall walks I needed and the scenery was not revealing itself so I rescheduled the ride and drove to Calgary early. This left me with … Continue reading A Wasted Day That’s Entirely My Own Fault<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,3],"tags":[72],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1883"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}