Dauphin's Monkey Trails

Growing up in Dauphin, Manitoba, we had a beautiful hidden gem located behind Vermillion Park. A sizeable chunk of barely tamed woods, on the east side of the snaking Vermillion river, full of overgrown trees and barely navigable walking paths. As kids, my friends and I spent hours in there.

Often, we were the only people in the woods. It was this fantastic, hidden world, right in behind the houses on Wellington Crescent. I'm not sure how or why, but it was known as the "Monkey Trails". We didn't come up with the name. It was passed down to us from who knows where. Some of my best childhood memories happened on that wonderful patch of nature, just outside our back doors.

No matter the season, it is a place of beauty.

A few years ago, the City of Dauphin ran a bulldozer through the middle of it, and put a huge, gravel walking path in. There's still a few of the side trails that look relatively close to when they did when I was young. Narrow trails. Underbrush. Trees on every side. Sort of like this...

Compare that to this photo of the recently installed main, paved trail.

The formerly dark woods is now dotted with street lights.

Now let me make it clear. I LOVE my hometown. I want it to have attractions for everyone. And it's clear that I LOVE the Monkey Trails.

But for me, a giant lit and paved path sort of took a vacuum to the Monkey Trails and sucked out the magic that made it special for me.

Now, it just seems like an extension of Vermillion park, which coincidentally enough also has wide gravel paths and street lights.

The woods where I used to escape are now fully lit at night, impossible to get lost in, and is dotted with benches sponsored by Dauphin Countryfest, complete with beer bottles littering the ground just feet away from trash cans.

I guess I'm now old enough to yell at kids to get off of my lawn. I am happy that my hometown has this.

I'm also saddened that the Monkey Trails as I knew them don't exist anymore.

Here's a few photos from the parts of the Monkey Trails that haven't been paved over yet. It holds a special place in my heart.

Currently playing: Glass Tiger - My Town
Currently colouring: Spacepig Hamadeus versus the Spectre General
Proudly in my seventh Cola free year!

Jupiter's moons through binoculars

I got quite the thrill in the night sky last night.

A nice, relatively warm night, free from mosquitos, no clouds, no bright moon in the sky. Finally. A perfect night to pull out my new pair of 20x80 binoculars my wife got me for my birthday and check out the stars.

SkyView, my go to iPhone app good for checking out the night sky, informed me that the big bright light rising overhead was Jupiter. So, I set up the tripod, attached the binoculars, and got ready for my first view of solar system's largest planet. This was the first time I'd had the chance to see Jupiter through the binoculars since I got them.

Seconds after looking through the eyepiece, my heart broke. Sure, Jupiter was huge. Bright. Beautiful! But trailing off up and to the right were three tiny dots of light.; some sort of artifacts or refraction caused by bad or misaligned lenses.

I readjusted the tripod. Fiddled with the focusing rings. The three dots of light were still there.

Then it hit me.

Those tiny dots of light were Jupiter's moons. I'm not smart enough to know what moons they were, but there they were. Three tiny pricks of light, unseen by the naked eye, but readily apparent through the lens.

Another quick check of SkyView confirmed my suspicions. The angle at which the moons extended out from Jupiter was the same angle as the ecliptic, or the path it takes across the sky.

Here's a quick sketch of what I'd seen. The spacing of the moons should not be considered accurate.

Here is a photo I tried to take of Jupiter by pointing my iPhone through one of the binoculars lenses. It's really blurry, and nowhere near as clear or breathtaking as the real view, but you can almost get a hint of two of the moons above and to the right of Jupiter.

I'm actually amazed that I could get ANY photo to even partially turn out using this method. What you see above is NOTHING compared to the beauty of seeing it the planet and it's moons in focus through the binoculars, but it gives enough for one to imagine what it was like.

It really was a breathtaking site to see.

Currently playing: Pink Floyd Astronomy Domine
Currently colouring: Spacepig Hamadeus versus the Spectre General
Proudly in my seventh Cola free year!