Ah Declayuh!

I declare that the hobby du jour in Saskatoon is river watching. After work today I went for a nice little walk by the river. I walked from City Hospital to the boat launch at the Mendel Art Gallery. From there I walked along the Meewasin Trail to the weir. Now there's a busy place! There was quite the throng of onlookers there. From there I crossed the bridge to get a good look at the river from above the weir on the east side of the river. I took 20 pictures on my little tour. I still have a film camera, so I can't show you any pictures at this point.

I have never seen the river so high before! It's quite impressive. Apparently the river has about four to five times its normal flow right now. It looks like the drop over the weir is only a couple feet high (more on the east side than on the west). To see a wonderful chart about how the water flow in the river is compared to normal, read this news item.

The pelicans are loving it! I had the opportunity many times to take some pictures of them flying majestically over the tumultuous current below. It was fun to watch them come from the island sanctuary near the university, float down the river in the speedy current, then just blip over the weir like it was nothing! Mind you they weren't all that brave. Some would start flying a few feet from the edge.

I had a quite surprising experience on the east side of the river. I was sitting on one of the lovely benches overlooking the weir and talking to my friend Jay on my phone. Suddenly this huge white dog rushed out of nowhere and made a giant leap! I thought it was going to jump off the cliff there! However, what it was really doing was chasing down a gopher. By the time the owner caught up, the gopher was dead. Then she threw the dead gopher in the garbage can - ew! Pretty exciting though!

All in all it was a very nice walk, and I shall have to soon repeat it!