Moody Monday's challenge for today is Artistic. This photo was taken inside the lobby of the magnificent hotel Chateau Lake Louise at Banff National park. One needs a load of cash to spend a night there, and this photo gives a hint why. The place is terribly luxurious, and the view is just the most wonderful a visitor can experience!

Artistic

It came to be @ 09:23 AM MT

i-gizmo challenge for February 26, 2005, is Two. This little mermaid looks like the one who sits on a rock in Copenhagen harbor... the national symbol of Denmark. Actually, it seems like the exact copy. She sits just outside the Glenbow museum here in the city, and behind her... a huge mirror.

Interesting story about the original statue of the little mermaid: A Danish brewer, Carl Jacobsen, was very interested in ballet, and visited the Royal Theatre often. At one time Jacobsen, together with sculptor Edvard Eriksen, got the idea to grant the Danish corps de ballet some kind of monument!

At first, it was supposed to be a fountain, but when the ballet " The Little Mermaid" was put up on the Royal Theatre, Jacobsen became so excited when he saw the female solo dancer Ellen Price, that he asked Edvard Eriksen to make a draft for a sculpture modeled by her.

Eriksen had created a graceful little sculpture, with the mermaid captured before the transformation and with the fish tail intact! Eriksen meant that the little mermaid should be on land, but Jacobsen said it should be sitting on a rock at the seashore. So The Little Mermaid was put up at Langelinie shore on August 23rd, 1913!

The story also tells that Ellen Price didn't really modeled for the sculpture. It is said, that she didn't want to pose naked, and Eriksen had to ask his own wife to pose. But the head is surely the reflection of Ellen Price!

The little mermaid is the most vandalized national symbol out there. It went through being painted red, she lost her head twice, she lost her right arm, and she was also knocked down from her stone into the water. Makes you wonder why anyone wants to harm her, no?

Two

It came to be @ 07:38 PM MT

• Lake Minnewanka (24 kilometers long and 142 metres deep) lies in the heart of the Canadian Rockies in Banff National Park, just a short 15 minute drive from Banff town site. This photo was taken last summer, on a hazy day, and just now found its way to the net *s*.

A bit about the lake from the above link:

"For more than 100 centuries, people hunted and camped along the original shores of Lake Minnewanka. The Stoney people called it Minn-waki or Lake of the Spirits. They respected and feared this lake for its resident spirits. The Early Europeans called it Devils Lake.

In 1886 the Beach House, a log hotel, was built along the original shores of Lake Minnewanka. By 1912, a summer village called Minnewanka Landing was established. The town site consisted of four avenues and three streets. There were hotels, wharves, restaurants and sailing tours aboard two cruise boats - Lady of the Lake, and Daughter of the Peaks.

Scuba divers are the only ones to visit Minnewanka Landing now as it is all under water. The lake was first dammed in 1895 to improve the boggy shoreline for boating. It was dammed again in 1912; this time to store water for a downstream hydro-electric plant on the Cascade River.

Construction of the final dam occurred in 1941 after a twenty-year struggle between advocates of power development and those pressing for protection of park resources. It was approved in 1940 by the Canadian government under the War Measures Act, which temporarily suspended the 1930 National Parks Act which excluded industrial development from national parks".

Lake Minnewanka

• Photo Friday challenge for today is Ghostly.

It came to be @ 07:22 PM MT

1 Comment

Sure is beautiful. I wonder why they called it devil lake? Have a good weekend!

Joe | 02.26.05 - 8:52 am |

• Few countryside landscapes combined into a triptych. Those photos were taken on two different occasions. All were taken from the van while in motion.

Countryside triptych

• Thursday Challenge for today is Motion.

It came to be @ 07:03 PM MT

1 Comment

Great, natural, photos - You have a talent for this

Joe | 02.25.05 - 8:24 am |