Mount Rushmore National Memorial

At once I decided to continue to post photos from our trip at the end of March, 2014. We visited a place located in South Dakota with sculptures of  famous faces of US's presidents. There are four faces of following presidents on Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. It was a nice weather that day as you see from pics and without snow.

Yellowstone National Park: Mammoth Hot Springs

We were moving back to British Columbia from Ontario and visited on our way a few places in US. One of the interesting places that recently caught attention thousands of people is Yellowstone National Park. Although we were not so lucky with the weather, it was pretty nice to see different colorful formations.

We were there at night on March 29-30. That day in the morning it was earthquake magnitude 4.8 and we were sleeping when it happened. I read that this earthquake was the strongest one since 1980.

The pass ticket to the park costs $25.

I was surprised that many bison walk near buildings in Mammoth Country. It is supposed to be wild animal anyway and I don’t how local people deal with this.  There are also many elks and mule deer. Also we saw bighorn sheep.

In this time of year there are many parts of roads closed at the park and it is understandable. You would see the weather!  The visibility was very bad because of the snow. One of the opened ones was Hot Springs in Mammoth.

There is many discussion about this place lately because of the supervolcano located right there. Especially after some video with running animals that was posted on the internet in the middle of March.  As you can see my photos, animals go nowhere.  If you have some comments related to this topic, please feel free to leave them.

London, Ontario

As I mentioned before, in summer I moved to London, Ontario from Vancouver, British Columbia because of my husband's studies. This city is not so big and have about 360,000 people, but it is a pretty and comfy place that located on the east of Canada. Some old apartment buildings are similar to Russian ones. For me it is difficult to compare London with Vancouver; they are both interesting and absolutely different in architecture, culture, environment, and of course weather. This winter is cold in London; I would say it is kind of similar to Russian winters, but local people told me that this winter is the coldest for the last 20 years. In Vancouver the snow is usually once a year during a week or two; all other time it rains a lot that is sometimes could be kind of depressing. It depends on the person; what you prefer the most: snow but mostly sunny or rain but mostly foggy in winter.

Vancouver and Toronto are the most expensive cities in Canada to live in. If you want to buy an apartment or a house in Vancouver,  it will cost you a lot of money. For a example, the apartment with one bedroom in Burnaby, Great Vancouver area, my friend bought  for $550,000 a few years ago. The real estate in London is much cheaper. However, the car insurance in Ontario is more expensive than in British Columbia. The same thing is many squirrels and different kinds of birds that I like and even try to feed them on my balcony.  In short, every city has its own pros and cons, and only we themselves can decide what we want for our life,what we can accept, and what we can sacrifice with. Every place has its own beauty, magnificence, and interesting history.

There is a very good educational institution called University of Western Ontario that is one of the top universities in Canada and has a good reputation around the world . Ivey Business School of Western University is one of the top business school in the world according to rankings from Businessweek, Financial Times, and QS Top MBA. Also, one of the largest colleges in Ontario is Fanshawe College located in London. I would say the equivalent in British Columbia is British Columbia Institute of Technology where I studied. If you have any questions regarding to London or Vancouver, please ask me. I will be happy to answer them if I can.

And, of course, I would like to share photos the city of London to give you an idea what it is about in summer, fall, and winter times. In winter the city seems a little dark because of the snow, but it is not every day :)

Cardinals (Bird)

During this winter I decided to feed birds on my balcony, and I discovered for myself new beautiful creatures. One of the examples is the cardinal. The bird has a such rich red colour and an interesting cirrus on its head. Here some pictures of the bird.