Fort McMurray

We arrived late last night, we left literally, right after ZLC.

We picked up McDonald's for dinner and checked into 

our hotel room.  We found the church the next morning

and had a wonderful meeting with them.  It was good

to see a few familiar faces in the audience and of 

course our elders.  I have one talk that I am using

for Edmonton North Stake, ward sacrament meetings

and so far it has been successful, well at least I think so.

We drove around the city and took a few pictures, tomorrow

we plan to take the tour of the oil museum.

There was this little random park, on the one end of town.

It had train cars,

tug boats

and a really cool playground.  But not a soul playing

on it.  Cute train

and ship.

We took a Sunday drive out to Syncrude.  This is

a really big deal up here.

There is a lot of money up here, about 5 hours

north of Edmonton and a lot of people move their

families up here so the husband can work in the oil fields.

(oil sands)

But there is really nothing up here, there's a town

but not much for the members.

The money rules up here, because it can.

Fast food meals range from $6-$10, what you pay

$4-$7 in Edmonton.

Their whole selling point is that they are

taking the oil out of the ground and leaving

pretty much, desolation.

Then they go in and beautify, rebuild,

replant and introduce wildlife back.

I don't know, just from driving around and seeing the 

devastation and desolation, I can't see that it's a good thing.

But of course that's what they are selling, that they are

putting it all back as they found it.  The problem is,

it takes years to get it all back.  They are just now seeing

what has taken years to do.

We stopped at this park to take pictures and I could

hear gun shots going off.  It really frightened me.  It sounded

like there were dozens of hunters and they were shooting 

right at us.  We inquired about it from a gentleman that 

had been running along the trail.  He explained that it was just

speakers planted around the area to make if sound like

gun shots so that the water fowl wouldn't land on the water,

because it's TOXIC, hello!  Does that sound right to you?

Sorry, my opinion only.

This is the first area that they have restored, Crane Lake.

The birds don't even look natural, just kidding.

Here's the lake, it's safe now to inhabit, but . . . 

I don't see anything living around here.

There's supposed to be all these different waterfowl.

I still don't see it.

They make it all look so nice,

but I don't think so.  The park we stopped at with the gun shots,

it was supposed to be loaded with bison, we didn't see a one.

I took this out the car window, but huge, huge, machinery.

And I guess this is small, compared to some.

It's good to finally see what everyone is talking about. 

Fort McMurray is all the buzz with our missionaries and 

the people around Edmonton.  Like I said before,

I don't get it.