Saturday, February 27, 2016

February 27, 2016. Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. Grande Prairie, Alberta.

 The Scotties Curling Championship is being played at Grande Prairie, Alberta.  The facility looks lovely and the stands are full for each game.   You can tell from listening to the crowds that the fans are knowledgable about curling.   But Grande Prairie is 285 mies northwest of Edmonton which means it is cold.

Several years ago, I was in a hot tub at Paradise Village.  Several other folks sitting in the hot tub with me were from Grande Prairie so I asked them what was good about living in Grande Prairie.   In my mind, there were no reasons to live that far north, unless you had no choice,  but these folks set me straight.  They told me all the reasons why Grande Prairie was a wonderful place to live and to raise children.   Since that time, I had never again thought about Grande Prairie, until now.

Tonight while watching the semifinals of the curling, I looked up Grande Prairie.  I now know enough about the town to make a speech, or to bore my friends and relatives.   Trumpeter swans stop by on their way north so the city is often called the Swan City.  It is flat and it is cold.   The area surrounding the city has the furthest north agricultural area of any place in the world.  They have only 17 inches of precipitation along with 315 days of measurable sunshine in each year.  And they have a College.  The city is on the south side of The Peace River Region.

Clearly, this is an interesting place.  Now I want to go and look at it, but not in the winter.

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