We started the day off with a small breakfast (we've found it best to eat small for breakfast and lunch, to give us half a chance of finishing our evening meal), then checked out of our hotel in Edmonton, before walking about 50 yards to the gathering crowd of people lining the road ready for the procession at the start of the Capital Ex, Edmonton's annual 10 day summer festival.
As processions go, it was okay, similar to the procession at the start of the Calgary Stampede so many days ago (a lot of the same people and groups were in this procession too). It was initiated by a fly past from two of the jets from the Canadian Airforce (or maybe that was the Canadian Airforce, haha). The weather was good, and we topped up our "face and arms" tan, which is all we're getting this year (still got a pale, white belly, yum yum).
It took a couple of hours for the procession to pass, and then we got into H and drove for an hour or so to Vegreville to see the largest Easter Egg in the world. Actually this is a Ukrainian "pysanka", almost 26 feet long, and it was constructed to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's a fantastic sight, but what I didn't realise, despite having seen many photographs of this structure, is that it actually moves in the wind, like a weather vane. In fact, by reaching up above my head and pushing hard, I could get it to move myself. Despite all the reading and research I did about Alberta before I came out here, this province still keeps throwing little surprises at me.
We ate our lunch in the sunshine in Vegreville, and then began the drive back to Calgary (about 260 miles, no big deal). Sandra was navigating because the sat nav kept wanting to take me down township roads that were mostly dirt tracks...
Me: "What's the number of the road between Vegreville and Camrose?"
Sandra: "38."
Me: "Are you sure?"
Sandra: "Yes, look."
Me: "Sandra... that's the number of miles between two locations."
What with that and the sat nav, it's a wonder we got to any of our destinations.
We stopped off at Tim Horton's just past Red Deer for coffee and a donut (our first and last Timmy's of the holiday!), then completed the last stretch of our enormous journey around Alberta with the Rockies appearing on our right, and Calgary pushing up out of the prairies as we approached the airport... where we promptly got lost trying to find our hotel (its location wasn't built into the sat nav). We drove round the airport twice, got stuck in the short term car park, then asked the guy on the car park exit if he knew where the Sandman Airport Hotel was. "It's huge, you can't miss it," he assured us. "I'm doing the best I can," I quipped.
It was getting on for 8pm by the time we'd checked into our final hotel. We emptied all our tat out of H and then took him back to the airport to drop him off at the National rental centre. Leaving that car behind hit me harder than I expected. He's been our companion for the last 16 days, and we've travelled almost 2700 miles with him (some of it in the right direction). It was quite awful getting a taxi back to the hotel ("no luggage?" "no, no luggage... this is the end of our holiday, not the start"), staring out at the Rockies in the distance, seeing Calgary city centre almost within touching distance, knowing it was all over bar the shouting.
And so we found ourselves in the Moxie's Classic Grill attached to the hotel, me eating Mexican food served by a chirpy, friendly girl, in an echo of our first meal in Canada almost three weeks ago, when we were jet-lagged and unsure of this country ("Canada Day? Oh, mostly we just party").
It's been a real experience. I was worried it was going to be a disaster. I was worried it was just going to be a box-ticking exercise, as we travelled around all the things I'd read about. I was worried Sandra wasn't going to enjoy it. But all of those worries have proved groundless. It's been an absolutely brilliant time, and I wouldn't change a single thing.
We fly back home tomorrow, so this is my last entry. Thanks for reading.
Jeff, get out here, Mr. Gonk is waiting for you to bring him home.
Happy trails.
This is Alberta, signing off.
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Day 18 - Thunder
Today began with the end of the world. Or that's how it sounded. The biggest clap of thunder I've ever heard woke us both, set off car alarms blockwide, and caused a huge cheer from the workmen on the building site opposite (probably because it meant they could stop working for a while). Like a lot of things in Canada, it was r-sum.
We had known it was going to be a dodgy day weather-wise from the forecasts, but even so it was disappointing when first thing this morning was dark, wet and thundery. We ate breakfast and watched it rain outside, then decided we would go back up to our room and read for a while and see if the weather cleared up.
It didn't really.
But we still had one place we wanted to visit, and that was the Fort Edmonton Park, a kind of theme park that has been created to guide people through the early days of the creation of this provincial capital city. In the end we bit the bullet and drove through the rain to the park. It was only slightly drizzling when we got there, so we boarded the steam train - the very same one that features near the start of the film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" - that took us to the far end of the park (and thus, back in time almost 200 hundred years), and hoped the weather would pick up.
Fort Edmonton Park is populated with people dressed in period costume, and acting in a period manner. And they do it really well. At first I thought it might be cheesy and embarrassing, but no, these people know their characters well, and they know their facts well too. We discussed with two traders the merits of badger pelts, the cost of range hats (half a year's salary) and top hats (ten year's salary), and the origins of the term "mad as a hatter" (it's to do with the mercury oxide used in pelt preparation). We moved on to the main house in the original Fort (not a military fort, but a trading post), and were invited to sit by a warm and welcoming fire while the head of the house discussed his trading policies with the Indians and with the trappers who came to the settlement. Further discussions with a trapper in the married men's quarter revealed just how tough a life the original settlers had here, often dying before the age of 30, mostly through drowning on the rivers as they took their trade to the giant Hudson Bay (for the Hudson Bay Company controlled much of early Canada), others dying through strangulated hernias from carrying huge heavy loads of pelts, and only a relative few dying through hunting and wildlife-related accidents.
The journey through the park takes you through four distinct sections of Edmonton's history, through the trader years, early settlements, and into the first boom years in the early 1900's (before the Depression at the start of the First World War). It's a fascinating place, and we spent most of the day there.
By the end of our trip the weather had greatly improved, and so we drove out to the odd-looking Muttart Conservatories, a series of glass pyramids and greenhouses holding a vast array of plants from arid, temperate and tropical climates (they were closed for renovation, so we just took a bunch of pictures and left).
This part of the holiday is a bit calmer and low-key after the enormous vistas of the Rockies I suppose, but no less interesting and no less informative for all that. Tomorrow is our last full day in Canada. We intend to take in a bit of the Capital Ex festival, then head out to Vegreville to catch a sight of the biggest Easter Egg in the world, before our 3 to 4 hour journey back down to Calgary from where we started this whole adventure.
Sad? You betcha.
We had known it was going to be a dodgy day weather-wise from the forecasts, but even so it was disappointing when first thing this morning was dark, wet and thundery. We ate breakfast and watched it rain outside, then decided we would go back up to our room and read for a while and see if the weather cleared up.
It didn't really.
But we still had one place we wanted to visit, and that was the Fort Edmonton Park, a kind of theme park that has been created to guide people through the early days of the creation of this provincial capital city. In the end we bit the bullet and drove through the rain to the park. It was only slightly drizzling when we got there, so we boarded the steam train - the very same one that features near the start of the film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" - that took us to the far end of the park (and thus, back in time almost 200 hundred years), and hoped the weather would pick up.
Fort Edmonton Park is populated with people dressed in period costume, and acting in a period manner. And they do it really well. At first I thought it might be cheesy and embarrassing, but no, these people know their characters well, and they know their facts well too. We discussed with two traders the merits of badger pelts, the cost of range hats (half a year's salary) and top hats (ten year's salary), and the origins of the term "mad as a hatter" (it's to do with the mercury oxide used in pelt preparation). We moved on to the main house in the original Fort (not a military fort, but a trading post), and were invited to sit by a warm and welcoming fire while the head of the house discussed his trading policies with the Indians and with the trappers who came to the settlement. Further discussions with a trapper in the married men's quarter revealed just how tough a life the original settlers had here, often dying before the age of 30, mostly through drowning on the rivers as they took their trade to the giant Hudson Bay (for the Hudson Bay Company controlled much of early Canada), others dying through strangulated hernias from carrying huge heavy loads of pelts, and only a relative few dying through hunting and wildlife-related accidents.
The journey through the park takes you through four distinct sections of Edmonton's history, through the trader years, early settlements, and into the first boom years in the early 1900's (before the Depression at the start of the First World War). It's a fascinating place, and we spent most of the day there.
By the end of our trip the weather had greatly improved, and so we drove out to the odd-looking Muttart Conservatories, a series of glass pyramids and greenhouses holding a vast array of plants from arid, temperate and tropical climates (they were closed for renovation, so we just took a bunch of pictures and left).
This part of the holiday is a bit calmer and low-key after the enormous vistas of the Rockies I suppose, but no less interesting and no less informative for all that. Tomorrow is our last full day in Canada. We intend to take in a bit of the Capital Ex festival, then head out to Vegreville to catch a sight of the biggest Easter Egg in the world, before our 3 to 4 hour journey back down to Calgary from where we started this whole adventure.
Sad? You betcha.
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Day 17 - Again Edmonton
We've travelled nearly two and a half thousand miles in Canada, and encountered two roundabouts, one in Canmore and one here in Edmonton. There's no two ways about it, going around a roundabout "the wrong way" does your head in. Stick with the grid system is what I say.
Today we travelled out to the West Edmonton Mall, or WEM. The guide book says that there's no place quite like it in Canada. There's a place a little like it in Manchester, and it's called the Trafford Centre, but the Trafford Centre doesn't have its own pirate ship, nor its own whale, nor its own sea with a beach. WEM is truly enormous. At first it just seems like any other shopping mall, but as you get deeper into it it seems to get bigger and bigger. It's amazing what they've created.
We spent the morning there, then travelled back to the hotel, stopping only to visit the largest cowboy boot in the world. We dropped H off, had a small snack at a place across the road, then headed out to Old Strathcona, a section of Edmonton south of the North Saskatchewan River. This is a place of contradictions, containing some of the oldest buildings in Edmonton, as well as the famous (?) Whyte Avenue, where a lot of the bars and live music places are. It was a beautiful day as we crossed the High Level Bridge into the south part of Edmonton. This bridge has a fountain built into it that is activated on special occasions, producing a waterfall that has a longer drop than the Niagra Falls.
We had a beer on Whyte Avenue, then realised we'd missed the last tram back from Strathcona to the Legislature Building near to our hotel (this building is the capital of the provincial government, equivalent to our own Houses of Parliament I guess). So we had to walk all the way back, a distance of, ooh... miles.
Tonight we ate at the Madison Grill, and it's the first time we've had what I would call "sensible portions", i.e. something we could actually finish off. It was a beautiful meal too. Then we came back to the hotel and started trying to finish off all the booze we've bought since we got out here... it may be a late start tomorrow.
Today we travelled out to the West Edmonton Mall, or WEM. The guide book says that there's no place quite like it in Canada. There's a place a little like it in Manchester, and it's called the Trafford Centre, but the Trafford Centre doesn't have its own pirate ship, nor its own whale, nor its own sea with a beach. WEM is truly enormous. At first it just seems like any other shopping mall, but as you get deeper into it it seems to get bigger and bigger. It's amazing what they've created.
We spent the morning there, then travelled back to the hotel, stopping only to visit the largest cowboy boot in the world. We dropped H off, had a small snack at a place across the road, then headed out to Old Strathcona, a section of Edmonton south of the North Saskatchewan River. This is a place of contradictions, containing some of the oldest buildings in Edmonton, as well as the famous (?) Whyte Avenue, where a lot of the bars and live music places are. It was a beautiful day as we crossed the High Level Bridge into the south part of Edmonton. This bridge has a fountain built into it that is activated on special occasions, producing a waterfall that has a longer drop than the Niagra Falls.
We had a beer on Whyte Avenue, then realised we'd missed the last tram back from Strathcona to the Legislature Building near to our hotel (this building is the capital of the provincial government, equivalent to our own Houses of Parliament I guess). So we had to walk all the way back, a distance of, ooh... miles.
Tonight we ate at the Madison Grill, and it's the first time we've had what I would call "sensible portions", i.e. something we could actually finish off. It was a beautiful meal too. Then we came back to the hotel and started trying to finish off all the booze we've bought since we got out here... it may be a late start tomorrow.
Monday, 14 July 2008
Day 16 - Edmonton
It was with some regret, and with a little wrench (no not that sort of wrench) that we left Peace River this morning. In fact we left it twice, because the sat nav got all confused and initially took us out on the Henry Fuller Davis gravesite road, believing we could drive from there, along a train track for a while, and onto Highway 2 south.
No.
So we drove back into Peace River and found our own way onto Highway 2.
Before we came away to Canada there was a semi-serious joke with the guys I work with that we would park near one of the Alberta roadcams and see if they could see us on that camera. So round about 10am I pulled H into Township Road 810, just south of Nampa (20 minutes south of Peace River). We waited 15 minutes, then drove on, wondering if we'd been photographed. Check out the Flicker site to see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27605180@N06/
We then drove a little further south to the town of Falher, known as the honey capital of Canada, and home of the world's largest bee. Another photo op, and another added to my collection of "big things in Alberta".
After that it was a long drive, a lot of the times in the rain, that we shared down to Edmonton. We stopped a number of times at places we hoped would offer fuel (I'm starting to think of "fuel" as "gas") and toilets. Most of them seemed to be places where people only stopped to turn their vehicles around. We finally found somewhere that offered both, and was open, about an hour from Edmonton.
As we approached Edmonton, the sat nav finally proved its worth again, directing us easily to our hotel. And here was a wonderful surprise. I must have figured - when I was booking this hotel - that we would be tired and worn out after two very long drives, and a weekend in the middle of relatively nowhere. So I guess I thought I'd book us something a little more luxurious. And that's what this hotel is. We actually have a suite, three rooms (bathroom, bedroom, and sitting room). There are two TVs, it's fantastic. As I write this, Sandra is in the sitting room, fast asleep on the sofa (haha, it's like being at home).
We unpacked, and then went for a quick walk around to try and get our bearings. First impressions of Edmonton are that, even though population-wise it's smaller than Calgary, it's physically a much bigger and busier city. It's amazing to think that most of the development here has only happened in the last 100 years.
The weather looks like it's going to be pants tomorrow, so we'll most likely head out to the West Edmonton Mall, which is a must-see according to our guide book. It's one of the largest shopping centres in the world. Can't wait...
No.
So we drove back into Peace River and found our own way onto Highway 2.
Before we came away to Canada there was a semi-serious joke with the guys I work with that we would park near one of the Alberta roadcams and see if they could see us on that camera. So round about 10am I pulled H into Township Road 810, just south of Nampa (20 minutes south of Peace River). We waited 15 minutes, then drove on, wondering if we'd been photographed. Check out the Flicker site to see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27605180@N06/
We then drove a little further south to the town of Falher, known as the honey capital of Canada, and home of the world's largest bee. Another photo op, and another added to my collection of "big things in Alberta".
After that it was a long drive, a lot of the times in the rain, that we shared down to Edmonton. We stopped a number of times at places we hoped would offer fuel (I'm starting to think of "fuel" as "gas") and toilets. Most of them seemed to be places where people only stopped to turn their vehicles around. We finally found somewhere that offered both, and was open, about an hour from Edmonton.
As we approached Edmonton, the sat nav finally proved its worth again, directing us easily to our hotel. And here was a wonderful surprise. I must have figured - when I was booking this hotel - that we would be tired and worn out after two very long drives, and a weekend in the middle of relatively nowhere. So I guess I thought I'd book us something a little more luxurious. And that's what this hotel is. We actually have a suite, three rooms (bathroom, bedroom, and sitting room). There are two TVs, it's fantastic. As I write this, Sandra is in the sitting room, fast asleep on the sofa (haha, it's like being at home).
We unpacked, and then went for a quick walk around to try and get our bearings. First impressions of Edmonton are that, even though population-wise it's smaller than Calgary, it's physically a much bigger and busier city. It's amazing to think that most of the development here has only happened in the last 100 years.
The weather looks like it's going to be pants tomorrow, so we'll most likely head out to the West Edmonton Mall, which is a must-see according to our guide book. It's one of the largest shopping centres in the world. Can't wait...
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Day 15 - Peace River
The Peace River itself is so named because of a peace treaty signed between the Cree and Beaver Indians in 1782. The town of Peace River came into existence as Fort Fork in 1792, renamed as Peace River in 1916 (yes I'm getting this off wikipedia). I became aware of the town of Peace River about 12 months ago, and developed a kind of romantic notion about the place, purely based on its name and its location in the far north west of Alberta, miles from anywhere (you have to remember, though, as far north as Peace River is, there are still another 250 miles from here to the border with the North West Territories; we're only two-thirds of the way up this enormous province).
I was perhaps expecting a cute, quaint little town. Peace River is not cute. It has loads of character, but it's not cute. It's very functional. It needs to be, it's the biggest town in these parts. I reckon 80% of the vehicles we saw were trucks or jeeps, and most of them looked like working vehicles rather than the show-piece machines we've seen in other parts of Alberta. People have their vehicles jacked here because you don't have to go far before the roads vanish and you're left with real off-road tracks. There is every kind of shop and facility here that you can imagine. Cinemas, bars, restaurants, takeaways, community care, dance classes, video stores, furniture shops, garages, computer shops... everything you would expect to find in a decent-sized town back in England, all here for this community of 6,400 people, and the people in the surrounding villages.
We started our day off driving up to the grave of Henry Fuller "Twelve Foot" Davis. This guy was a real character. He was a trader and prospecter in the 1800s, who, during the gold rush, staked a claim 12 feet wide between two other claims, and made $12,000 (which was a lot of money in those days). He moved to the Peace River area and set up a number of trading posts. Apparently he was renowned for his hospitality (the inscription on his grave states "He was Every Man's Friend and Never Locked his cabin Door"). When he died he was buried overlooking the Peace River. (He really was a fascinating character, and you can read more about him here: http://www.calverley.ca/Part03-Transportation/3-023.html)
Having surveyed the view and taken pictures, we then tried to find the statue of the man himself. My gosh, for a tiny town it's easy to get lost! We drove around for ages, eventually giving up on the statue (for the time being), and drove up to the Sagitawa Lookout on Judah Hill to take more pictures. We then drove across the river and down the Shaftesbury Trail for a while, before returning to the hotel, dropping H off, and walking into the town itself in search of that statue, and also the museum.
At this point it started raining a little, so we ducked into the City Music Book Store (from where I'd ordered my PeaceFest tickets), looked around in there for a while, then went back to the edge of the river because it was 1pm and I thought the jet boats would be coming back for the end of the Gold Cup race.
Well I was two hours early, they weren't due until 3pm. But we did find the statue of Henry Fuller Davis. Then we had lunch, then we set off to find the museum again... but before we had gone more than a few paces we heard an engine roaring from the river; it was the first of the jet boats coming back. So we watched them for a while (it was a little disappointing, just single jet boats arriving back at the end of their trip around the Peace and Smokey Rivers, not really much racing going on), then, because the sun was out, we had a go on the crazy golf (to make up for not playing frisbee golf in Lethbridge!).
Then once again we set off to find the museum... and found it... and it was shut!
By then it was getting on for 4pm, so we came back to the hotel room, I had a sleep and Sandra read for a bit, then we went for something to eat at TJ's Canadian and Chinese restaurant. The guide book recommends choosing from the Chinese menu. We did this, and asked for small bowls of soup to start with. My gosh, I'm glad we asked for small bowls, we would most likely have drowned in large bowls. We had two different main courses, and each one would have been enough for the two of us. That's been a continuing theme throughout our travels, the portion sizes are enormous. And when you can't finish everything off, they offer to box it up for you to eat later. I have to say the guy in the restaurant was very cordial and courteous, we're still finding the Canadian people to be so friendly.
So tomorrow another long drive, 6 hours, back to civilisation and our seventh hotel, this time in the provincial capital, Edmonton. I'm glad I came to visit Peace River. I wanted to experience a part of Canada that was off the beaten trail, and we've done that for the last couple of days. Would I ever come back here? Well... there's a Beaver Indian legend that says, "drink the water of the Peace River and you will return". As I hunkered down on the bank of this mighty river today, and saw the colour of it, I realised that drinking from it would most likely give me the almighty squits... but I've drunk from it all the same.
I was perhaps expecting a cute, quaint little town. Peace River is not cute. It has loads of character, but it's not cute. It's very functional. It needs to be, it's the biggest town in these parts. I reckon 80% of the vehicles we saw were trucks or jeeps, and most of them looked like working vehicles rather than the show-piece machines we've seen in other parts of Alberta. People have their vehicles jacked here because you don't have to go far before the roads vanish and you're left with real off-road tracks. There is every kind of shop and facility here that you can imagine. Cinemas, bars, restaurants, takeaways, community care, dance classes, video stores, furniture shops, garages, computer shops... everything you would expect to find in a decent-sized town back in England, all here for this community of 6,400 people, and the people in the surrounding villages.
We started our day off driving up to the grave of Henry Fuller "Twelve Foot" Davis. This guy was a real character. He was a trader and prospecter in the 1800s, who, during the gold rush, staked a claim 12 feet wide between two other claims, and made $12,000 (which was a lot of money in those days). He moved to the Peace River area and set up a number of trading posts. Apparently he was renowned for his hospitality (the inscription on his grave states "He was Every Man's Friend and Never Locked his cabin Door"). When he died he was buried overlooking the Peace River. (He really was a fascinating character, and you can read more about him here: http://www.calverley.ca/Part03-Transportation/3-023.html)
Having surveyed the view and taken pictures, we then tried to find the statue of the man himself. My gosh, for a tiny town it's easy to get lost! We drove around for ages, eventually giving up on the statue (for the time being), and drove up to the Sagitawa Lookout on Judah Hill to take more pictures. We then drove across the river and down the Shaftesbury Trail for a while, before returning to the hotel, dropping H off, and walking into the town itself in search of that statue, and also the museum.
At this point it started raining a little, so we ducked into the City Music Book Store (from where I'd ordered my PeaceFest tickets), looked around in there for a while, then went back to the edge of the river because it was 1pm and I thought the jet boats would be coming back for the end of the Gold Cup race.
Well I was two hours early, they weren't due until 3pm. But we did find the statue of Henry Fuller Davis. Then we had lunch, then we set off to find the museum again... but before we had gone more than a few paces we heard an engine roaring from the river; it was the first of the jet boats coming back. So we watched them for a while (it was a little disappointing, just single jet boats arriving back at the end of their trip around the Peace and Smokey Rivers, not really much racing going on), then, because the sun was out, we had a go on the crazy golf (to make up for not playing frisbee golf in Lethbridge!).
Then once again we set off to find the museum... and found it... and it was shut!
By then it was getting on for 4pm, so we came back to the hotel room, I had a sleep and Sandra read for a bit, then we went for something to eat at TJ's Canadian and Chinese restaurant. The guide book recommends choosing from the Chinese menu. We did this, and asked for small bowls of soup to start with. My gosh, I'm glad we asked for small bowls, we would most likely have drowned in large bowls. We had two different main courses, and each one would have been enough for the two of us. That's been a continuing theme throughout our travels, the portion sizes are enormous. And when you can't finish everything off, they offer to box it up for you to eat later. I have to say the guy in the restaurant was very cordial and courteous, we're still finding the Canadian people to be so friendly.
So tomorrow another long drive, 6 hours, back to civilisation and our seventh hotel, this time in the provincial capital, Edmonton. I'm glad I came to visit Peace River. I wanted to experience a part of Canada that was off the beaten trail, and we've done that for the last couple of days. Would I ever come back here? Well... there's a Beaver Indian legend that says, "drink the water of the Peace River and you will return". As I hunkered down on the bank of this mighty river today, and saw the colour of it, I realised that drinking from it would most likely give me the almighty squits... but I've drunk from it all the same.
Saturday, 12 July 2008
Day 14 - The Trees
We woke early and were on the road by 9:30 (that would be a holiday "early", then). I had estimated 7-8 hours for the journey to Peace River, hoping to arrive about 5pm.
We encountered several more of those car gaggles (an elk, some goats, some deer), before leaving the Jasper National Park. We were following Highway 16 east, which, had we continued to follow it, would have taken us to Edmonton. Instead, just before Hinton, we turned left onto Highway 40, the Big Horn Highway.
The landscape slowly changed as we left the Rockies behind. Trees began to appear, great forests of pine stretching as far as the eye could see. The road was quiet, but not as quiet as I was expecting. It's a logging route, and there were a number of industrial lorries, as well as touring motorcycles, the ubiquitous trucks, and tourists, like us. The road was for the most part a basic two-lane highway, with a wide hard shoulder, and clear grass areas before the treeline (this may have been deliberate, to help visibility for drivers with wildlife crossing the road - nevertheless we saw a number of dead deer/elk/moose?? either by the side of the road, or in one instance right in the middle of the road).
We arrived at Grande Cache, really not much more than a wide place in the road, and filled up with fuel (as well as emptying out with, well, what you need to empty out with after two hours on the road). Grande Cache is so named because a French trapper stored his "big cache" of pelts there. Simple as that.
Sandra took over the driving at this point, and took us to the next town, Grande Prairie. While most of the places in this area came into existence as trading posts, Grande Prairie was a town that developed because of the grasslands around it that were needed to grow grain to support the surrounding trading posts. We reached Grande Prairie after driving for 3 hours through the most immense forest (and this is only part of the enormous boreal forest land that covers northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba). What on earth possessed the original European settlers in this country to traipse through that entire wilderness to get to this prairie, I can't imagine. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I would have let someone else tame this country.
We ate lunch in the parking lot of the Grande Prairie visitor centre, opposite the biggest sundial in the world, before continuing our journey on to Peace River. The landscape changed again, the trees fading into the background, and field upon field of yellow rapeseed filling the foreground. With no trees to hide the horizon, you are again reminded that you are in the prairies, even this far north, with the road stretching endlessly out before you in a straight line that makes your eyes hurt.
And then, with Sandra just stirring from sleep in the passenger seat beside me, something amazing happened. The ground folded away like creases in a quilt, and we came upon Dunvegan. A bridge here crosses the Peace River, and so it was that we caught our first glimpse of that mighty river. They estimate that 85% of the fresh water in Alberta is contained in the Peace River. It's huge, originating in the Rockies in BC, and draining into Slave River over a thousand miles later.
But we still weren't at our destination. It's over 60 miles from Dunvegan to the town of Peace River.
Those last 60 miles were quite tiring. We'd been driving for about 6 hours, the landscape was flat and uninspiring for the most part, and we just wanted to get to our hotel.
Peace River, heading east from Highway 2, is reached down a long, slow slope. The road is very wide, and you start to see signs of civilisation, a welcome relief after miles of fields. Car dealerships, truck dealerships, the new Walmart, the Golden Arches (is nowhere sacred?), and then finally, and at long last, that bridge I've seen so many pictures of, and looked at on Google Maps. It's ENORMOUS! I never realised how big it would be. But then the river is so wide at this point.
The town isn't very big, but we still managed to get lost once before we found our hotel. It was a relief to check in, and also to find out that the PeaceFest tickets I'd booked a few weeks previously were there waiting for us.
After checking out the room (it's pretty decent, nice flatscreen TV), we dragged our weary bodies down to 12 Foot Davis Ball Park, got searched more thoroughly than we were at the airport when we flew out here, spread out on the blanket that we'd "borrowed" from the hotel (sorry, Sawridge), and, well, I promptly fell asleep.
First act on was Shane Yellowbird. Who? Country and Western newbie. Decent enough performer, but really not my style of music. Second up, Kim Mitchell. Now this band did rock, but by now fatigue was setting in. It was 10:30 pm, getting cold, and basically we were done in. We made our way back, put the "do not disturb" sign on the door, and once I've finished typing these last few words, I'm going to bed.
Tomorrow we'll explore Peace River a little. And not do a lot of driving.
We encountered several more of those car gaggles (an elk, some goats, some deer), before leaving the Jasper National Park. We were following Highway 16 east, which, had we continued to follow it, would have taken us to Edmonton. Instead, just before Hinton, we turned left onto Highway 40, the Big Horn Highway.
The landscape slowly changed as we left the Rockies behind. Trees began to appear, great forests of pine stretching as far as the eye could see. The road was quiet, but not as quiet as I was expecting. It's a logging route, and there were a number of industrial lorries, as well as touring motorcycles, the ubiquitous trucks, and tourists, like us. The road was for the most part a basic two-lane highway, with a wide hard shoulder, and clear grass areas before the treeline (this may have been deliberate, to help visibility for drivers with wildlife crossing the road - nevertheless we saw a number of dead deer/elk/moose?? either by the side of the road, or in one instance right in the middle of the road).
We arrived at Grande Cache, really not much more than a wide place in the road, and filled up with fuel (as well as emptying out with, well, what you need to empty out with after two hours on the road). Grande Cache is so named because a French trapper stored his "big cache" of pelts there. Simple as that.
Sandra took over the driving at this point, and took us to the next town, Grande Prairie. While most of the places in this area came into existence as trading posts, Grande Prairie was a town that developed because of the grasslands around it that were needed to grow grain to support the surrounding trading posts. We reached Grande Prairie after driving for 3 hours through the most immense forest (and this is only part of the enormous boreal forest land that covers northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba). What on earth possessed the original European settlers in this country to traipse through that entire wilderness to get to this prairie, I can't imagine. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I would have let someone else tame this country.
We ate lunch in the parking lot of the Grande Prairie visitor centre, opposite the biggest sundial in the world, before continuing our journey on to Peace River. The landscape changed again, the trees fading into the background, and field upon field of yellow rapeseed filling the foreground. With no trees to hide the horizon, you are again reminded that you are in the prairies, even this far north, with the road stretching endlessly out before you in a straight line that makes your eyes hurt.
And then, with Sandra just stirring from sleep in the passenger seat beside me, something amazing happened. The ground folded away like creases in a quilt, and we came upon Dunvegan. A bridge here crosses the Peace River, and so it was that we caught our first glimpse of that mighty river. They estimate that 85% of the fresh water in Alberta is contained in the Peace River. It's huge, originating in the Rockies in BC, and draining into Slave River over a thousand miles later.
But we still weren't at our destination. It's over 60 miles from Dunvegan to the town of Peace River.
Those last 60 miles were quite tiring. We'd been driving for about 6 hours, the landscape was flat and uninspiring for the most part, and we just wanted to get to our hotel.
Peace River, heading east from Highway 2, is reached down a long, slow slope. The road is very wide, and you start to see signs of civilisation, a welcome relief after miles of fields. Car dealerships, truck dealerships, the new Walmart, the Golden Arches (is nowhere sacred?), and then finally, and at long last, that bridge I've seen so many pictures of, and looked at on Google Maps. It's ENORMOUS! I never realised how big it would be. But then the river is so wide at this point.
The town isn't very big, but we still managed to get lost once before we found our hotel. It was a relief to check in, and also to find out that the PeaceFest tickets I'd booked a few weeks previously were there waiting for us.
After checking out the room (it's pretty decent, nice flatscreen TV), we dragged our weary bodies down to 12 Foot Davis Ball Park, got searched more thoroughly than we were at the airport when we flew out here, spread out on the blanket that we'd "borrowed" from the hotel (sorry, Sawridge), and, well, I promptly fell asleep.
First act on was Shane Yellowbird. Who? Country and Western newbie. Decent enough performer, but really not my style of music. Second up, Kim Mitchell. Now this band did rock, but by now fatigue was setting in. It was 10:30 pm, getting cold, and basically we were done in. We made our way back, put the "do not disturb" sign on the door, and once I've finished typing these last few words, I'm going to bed.
Tomorrow we'll explore Peace River a little. And not do a lot of driving.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Day 13 - Jasper and surrounding area
Today, after the snow of yesterday, I was determined to wear my shorts. Peeking out of the window first thing this morning it looked like blue skies, so the shorts went on. You have to remember we are at about 4,000 feet here, going up to over 6,000 feet in some places... it gets quite fresh around the ankles.
We started the day off at the Athabasca Falls. This is a place where the Athabasca River, flowing from the glacier we visited yesterday, drops down 23 metres in a startling show of turbulence and power. From here the river continues on an amazing journey, up through the north west of Alberta (where it is used in the tar sands, two barrels of water being needed in the manufacture one barrel of oil), before finally spilling out into the Arctic Ocean.
From the falls we then travelled to Mount Edith Cavell (named for a World War 1 nurse who was executed by the Germans for helping allied soldiers escape). The foot of the mountain is reached along a narrow and twisty road, possibly the worst maintained road we've travelled so far in Alberta. But then, the roads hereabouts receive such punishment, baking hot sun in one season, sub-zero temperatures in the next. The road to the mountain is stunning, with amazing (yes, r-sum) views available on all sides. Sometimes I could feel my vertigo kicking in when faced with the enormity of some of the mountains, the sheer, dreadfull drops so intimidating.
We ate lunch at the foot of the mountain, me all the while scanning the trees for signs of bears. The only scavenger we saw, however, was a large crow. It looked pretty vicious though.
Our next stop was Maligne Lake, on the other side of Jasper, about 40 miles to the north. Maligne Lake is the largest lake in the Canadian Rockies. On our way there we rounded a corner and beheld the amazing Medicine Lake. Canada - well, Alberta - keeps doing this to us, throwing up surprises that we hadn't expected. The view over Medicine Lake is nothing short of stunning. And it has a wonderful story to tell. Every year, the waters of Medicine Lake just dry up. The First Nations people thought that evil spirits were taking the water away, and thought there was "bad medicine" at work. It turns out that beneath the lake are a series of microscopic drainage holes, and the whole lake just drains away like water in a sink when you pull the plug out. Over the winter snow falls in the mountains, it melts and fills the lake up again. During the summer, it drains away.
Between Medicine Lake and Maligne Lake we encountered another of the gaggles of cars. Bear? Elk? Moose?
This time it was three bears, a mother and her two cubs. Yes the cubs were cute, but my gosh these are WILD ANIMALS, so I was appalled to see a number of people out of their cars, photographing and videoing the trio, from as little as twenty feet away. I was even more appalled when my wife of 11 years, who has been listening to me recount tales of horror from my "Bear Attacks" book, left the safety of H and joined the ranks of congenital idiots to take a photograph of the mother bear no better than the one I took through the open window of our vehicle. When she returned we had a short discussion of the "these aren't little people in bear costumes" nature.
It was amazing and special to see this mother bear and her two cubs. But the more "habituated" those bears become around humans, the more likely they are to enter areas where humans congregate. And a bear like that is dangerous, and may have to be killed. So approaching bears in order to take photographs is dangerous not only for the person taking the photographs, but also dangerous for the bear. Here endeth the lesson.
Sandra did get a pretty good photo though.
Maligne Lake itself was decent looking from the shore, but we also took one of the (overpriced?) boat tours. It was an interesting and informative tour, with plenty of photo opportunities, and also a chance to stop off at an island (with a $200,000 eco-friendly toilet, yowzer) and look out at one of the most amazing views we've seen so far. Maybe it wasn't an overpriced boat tour after all.
Today was a day that went mostly according to the script, and regular followers of this blog might think it was a little... well... ordinary. Be assured it wasn't. A day when you see an amazing waterfall, a stunning mountain or three, at least two amazing lake views, plus sheep, deer, and a bear and her cubs, is not ordinary.
Tomorrow is a day I've long looked forward to. We're travelling almost 400 miles further north to the town of Peace River. To get things in perspective, Peace River is about as far north as Fort William in Scotland. It has a population of about 6,400 (Jasper has a population of about 4,000). It has its own airport, its own museum, and its own hero - Henry "12 foot" Davis. And when we get there it will be entering its second day of its annual Peacefest music festival, plus World Championship Jet Boat racing.
Should be pretty interesting.
We started the day off at the Athabasca Falls. This is a place where the Athabasca River, flowing from the glacier we visited yesterday, drops down 23 metres in a startling show of turbulence and power. From here the river continues on an amazing journey, up through the north west of Alberta (where it is used in the tar sands, two barrels of water being needed in the manufacture one barrel of oil), before finally spilling out into the Arctic Ocean.
From the falls we then travelled to Mount Edith Cavell (named for a World War 1 nurse who was executed by the Germans for helping allied soldiers escape). The foot of the mountain is reached along a narrow and twisty road, possibly the worst maintained road we've travelled so far in Alberta. But then, the roads hereabouts receive such punishment, baking hot sun in one season, sub-zero temperatures in the next. The road to the mountain is stunning, with amazing (yes, r-sum) views available on all sides. Sometimes I could feel my vertigo kicking in when faced with the enormity of some of the mountains, the sheer, dreadfull drops so intimidating.
We ate lunch at the foot of the mountain, me all the while scanning the trees for signs of bears. The only scavenger we saw, however, was a large crow. It looked pretty vicious though.
Our next stop was Maligne Lake, on the other side of Jasper, about 40 miles to the north. Maligne Lake is the largest lake in the Canadian Rockies. On our way there we rounded a corner and beheld the amazing Medicine Lake. Canada - well, Alberta - keeps doing this to us, throwing up surprises that we hadn't expected. The view over Medicine Lake is nothing short of stunning. And it has a wonderful story to tell. Every year, the waters of Medicine Lake just dry up. The First Nations people thought that evil spirits were taking the water away, and thought there was "bad medicine" at work. It turns out that beneath the lake are a series of microscopic drainage holes, and the whole lake just drains away like water in a sink when you pull the plug out. Over the winter snow falls in the mountains, it melts and fills the lake up again. During the summer, it drains away.
Between Medicine Lake and Maligne Lake we encountered another of the gaggles of cars. Bear? Elk? Moose?
This time it was three bears, a mother and her two cubs. Yes the cubs were cute, but my gosh these are WILD ANIMALS, so I was appalled to see a number of people out of their cars, photographing and videoing the trio, from as little as twenty feet away. I was even more appalled when my wife of 11 years, who has been listening to me recount tales of horror from my "Bear Attacks" book, left the safety of H and joined the ranks of congenital idiots to take a photograph of the mother bear no better than the one I took through the open window of our vehicle. When she returned we had a short discussion of the "these aren't little people in bear costumes" nature.
It was amazing and special to see this mother bear and her two cubs. But the more "habituated" those bears become around humans, the more likely they are to enter areas where humans congregate. And a bear like that is dangerous, and may have to be killed. So approaching bears in order to take photographs is dangerous not only for the person taking the photographs, but also dangerous for the bear. Here endeth the lesson.
Sandra did get a pretty good photo though.
Maligne Lake itself was decent looking from the shore, but we also took one of the (overpriced?) boat tours. It was an interesting and informative tour, with plenty of photo opportunities, and also a chance to stop off at an island (with a $200,000 eco-friendly toilet, yowzer) and look out at one of the most amazing views we've seen so far. Maybe it wasn't an overpriced boat tour after all.
Today was a day that went mostly according to the script, and regular followers of this blog might think it was a little... well... ordinary. Be assured it wasn't. A day when you see an amazing waterfall, a stunning mountain or three, at least two amazing lake views, plus sheep, deer, and a bear and her cubs, is not ordinary.
Tomorrow is a day I've long looked forward to. We're travelling almost 400 miles further north to the town of Peace River. To get things in perspective, Peace River is about as far north as Fort William in Scotland. It has a population of about 6,400 (Jasper has a population of about 4,000). It has its own airport, its own museum, and its own hero - Henry "12 foot" Davis. And when we get there it will be entering its second day of its annual Peacefest music festival, plus World Championship Jet Boat racing.
Should be pretty interesting.
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Day 12 - Whiteout
As we pulled out of the car park of the Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge this morning, having checked out of our fourth hotel, Sandra got that blasted sat nav out and started to program in "Jasper". I said to her, "we don't need that today, it's a totally straight road from here to Jasper". Laughing, she put the sat nav away, and we set off.
40 minutes past Lake Louise I began to suspect that something was wrong. The "Welcome to British Columbia" sign a number of miles back should have given me a clue, but I was so convinced that there was only one route out of Canmore that I'd ignored it. It was the signs counting down the number of miles to Golden that got me wondering. We stopped at a place called Field for a pee break, then continued on. "Revelstoke" said another sign... Revelstoke... hmmm... Revelstoke is in BC... as is Golden... hmmm... I asked Sandra to get a map out and have a look. She found Field down Highway 1, inside British Columbia, heading west. The route to Jasper, Highway 93, was some miles back. We were in Yoho National Park, BC. Yoho indeed. Jeff and I had talked a little about nipping into BC or Saskatchewan, just to say we'd been in two Canadian provinces. I hadn't really planned on it, but, well, we've done it now, and it feels pretty good!
It put about an extra 90 minutes onto our day. Nuisance or fortunate? Read on to find out.
We made our way back to Highway 93 as the clouds rolled back in. The weather forecast had said it was going to be cloudy and rainy today. So far we'd had rain and then brilliant sunshine, but the rain was coming back.
Our first few miles up the Ice Field Parkway were dark and sullen. The guide book recommended stopping at Bow Lake and then later at Peyto Lake for photo opportunities. At Bow Lake it started sleeting, so we moved on. We pulled into the car park at Peyto Lake hoping the sleet would stop. Instead it turned into snow. I've never been on a summer holiday when it snowed before. As we sat and ate our sandwiches, it started thundering. Snow and thunder, another first. We decided to give Peyto Lake a miss.
A little disappointed, we moved on. Our true goal was the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Ice Field. We decided that, if the weather was still pants, we'd drive on past it, and come back again tomorrow, when the forecast was for better weather. However, as we drove on, the sun broke through again. We even stopped a few times for r-sum photo opportunities. It was looking good.
When we got to the Glacier, the visibility was pretty good. I thought we'd have an age to wait (the Ice Field Centre is compared, in our guide book, to an airport departure lounge), but we bought our tickets and were told it was only 30 minutes until the next departure. Just time to buy a toque and a scarf from the gift shop! (For the uninitiated, a toque - pronounced "took" - is a Canadian woolly bob-hat.)
We stood at our "departure gate", waiting to get on board the coach that would take us to the glacier where we would board one of the odd-looking Ice Field Explorer vehicles. A woman in the queue in front of me remarked upon my toque, sarcastically asking if she could borrow it. When it started hailing a few minutes later, and I was all warm and toasty, I could see her eating her words.
We were dropped off at a little shelter, and herded onto one of the gigantic Ice Field Explorer buses. This thing then drove down the most ludicrous incline I've ever seen (37 degrees, we were told), and then set off at 18 mph for the glacier itself.
In all the brochures, you see a picture of a solitary red and white huge-wheeled bus parked on a brilliant white glacier with a beautiful blue sky as backdrop. When we parked up, alongside about another 5 buses of all colours, it was snowing again. You couldn't see more than a few tens of yards. We off-loaded, and took a few gratuitous pictures of each other, before Sandra retired, along with many others, back to the bus. I stayed outside as long as I could, but man alive it was cold, and not long later I went back inside myself. I only went back outside a few minutes later because someone said the snow was lifting. Granted, you could just about make out the side of the mountain nearby, but then the snow came back harder so I gave up.
Disappointing? A little. But then, how many other people have stood on a glacier in the middle of summer and been snowed on? It's an experience I'll never forget.
We then continued our drive onto Jasper. The sat nav (back in service after my earlier fateful cockiness) told us we had about an hour or so still to drive. Coming up over a ridge, another of those gaggles of cars by the side of the road. I said to Sandra, "are we stopping?", she said, "yes!". I pulled in, and we both looked to the right, into the trees... elk? Moose? Bear? Deer? And then, Sandra's cry, "it's a bear, it's a bear!!" And sure enough it was, a black bear, just visible through the trees, ambling along so slowly... and yet still too fast for either of us to get a picture of it. I scrambled out of the car with my video camera, keeping H between myself and the bear, even though it was a good 100 feet or more away. Too late, it had vanished into the forest.
Both of us knew we'd seen a bear, against all odds, and it made the day special. We hadn't been able to photograph it, and that kinda jarred, but we'd seen one, and that's what mattered. It made up for the snow and sleet through the Ice Field Parkway.
Further on, the sat nav instructed us to turn left off the main highway, onto 93A instead of 93. I agreed reluctantly, then cursed as I realised it was taking us down some crazy country road. "Why, oh WHY is she taking us down here?" I asked. Sandra made some joke about there being a bear round the next corner. I was still laughing cynically when we rounded the next corner, and there was a bear. I'm not joking, that's how it happened.
I tried to put my foot on the clutch, but of course H is an automatic and doesn't have a clutch, so I just succeeded in applying the parking brake. The bear was just scrambling down a rise about 40 feet from us. I pulled into the side of the road (there was nothing behind us at all, and never was during the encounter), trying to grab my video camera at the same time as stop H a safe distance from the bear without startling it.
The bear - it was a black bear, about 5 feet long I guess - got to the bottom of the rise and slowly ambled (there is no other word for it) across the road. It seemed completely oblivious to us. It foraged a little in the undergrowth on our side of the road while I tried to video it and Sandra tried to photograph it through the windscreen (I'd already told her in no circumstances was she to wind the passenger side window down!). Two of the better pictures are on the Flickr site. The bear vanished behind a bush, and I waited a little while, then eased H forward. The last we saw of the bear was its back, about 10 feet away, before it disappeared down the incline.
We were both shaking a little, and so pleased that this was our bear, and not shared by other road users. Weatherwise the day hadn't gone as we'd hoped, but the few tens of seconds we'd shared on that back road with that black bear more than made up for it.
When we checked into our hotel room about 40 minutes later, and saw how huge it was (two double beds, I mean, come on), we both agreed it was just icing on the cake of another fun day's adventuring in Alberta. Ah gosh, I even picked Sandra up and swung her around.
Wonder what delights tomorrow will bring...
40 minutes past Lake Louise I began to suspect that something was wrong. The "Welcome to British Columbia" sign a number of miles back should have given me a clue, but I was so convinced that there was only one route out of Canmore that I'd ignored it. It was the signs counting down the number of miles to Golden that got me wondering. We stopped at a place called Field for a pee break, then continued on. "Revelstoke" said another sign... Revelstoke... hmmm... Revelstoke is in BC... as is Golden... hmmm... I asked Sandra to get a map out and have a look. She found Field down Highway 1, inside British Columbia, heading west. The route to Jasper, Highway 93, was some miles back. We were in Yoho National Park, BC. Yoho indeed. Jeff and I had talked a little about nipping into BC or Saskatchewan, just to say we'd been in two Canadian provinces. I hadn't really planned on it, but, well, we've done it now, and it feels pretty good!
It put about an extra 90 minutes onto our day. Nuisance or fortunate? Read on to find out.
We made our way back to Highway 93 as the clouds rolled back in. The weather forecast had said it was going to be cloudy and rainy today. So far we'd had rain and then brilliant sunshine, but the rain was coming back.
Our first few miles up the Ice Field Parkway were dark and sullen. The guide book recommended stopping at Bow Lake and then later at Peyto Lake for photo opportunities. At Bow Lake it started sleeting, so we moved on. We pulled into the car park at Peyto Lake hoping the sleet would stop. Instead it turned into snow. I've never been on a summer holiday when it snowed before. As we sat and ate our sandwiches, it started thundering. Snow and thunder, another first. We decided to give Peyto Lake a miss.
A little disappointed, we moved on. Our true goal was the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Ice Field. We decided that, if the weather was still pants, we'd drive on past it, and come back again tomorrow, when the forecast was for better weather. However, as we drove on, the sun broke through again. We even stopped a few times for r-sum photo opportunities. It was looking good.
When we got to the Glacier, the visibility was pretty good. I thought we'd have an age to wait (the Ice Field Centre is compared, in our guide book, to an airport departure lounge), but we bought our tickets and were told it was only 30 minutes until the next departure. Just time to buy a toque and a scarf from the gift shop! (For the uninitiated, a toque - pronounced "took" - is a Canadian woolly bob-hat.)
We stood at our "departure gate", waiting to get on board the coach that would take us to the glacier where we would board one of the odd-looking Ice Field Explorer vehicles. A woman in the queue in front of me remarked upon my toque, sarcastically asking if she could borrow it. When it started hailing a few minutes later, and I was all warm and toasty, I could see her eating her words.
We were dropped off at a little shelter, and herded onto one of the gigantic Ice Field Explorer buses. This thing then drove down the most ludicrous incline I've ever seen (37 degrees, we were told), and then set off at 18 mph for the glacier itself.
In all the brochures, you see a picture of a solitary red and white huge-wheeled bus parked on a brilliant white glacier with a beautiful blue sky as backdrop. When we parked up, alongside about another 5 buses of all colours, it was snowing again. You couldn't see more than a few tens of yards. We off-loaded, and took a few gratuitous pictures of each other, before Sandra retired, along with many others, back to the bus. I stayed outside as long as I could, but man alive it was cold, and not long later I went back inside myself. I only went back outside a few minutes later because someone said the snow was lifting. Granted, you could just about make out the side of the mountain nearby, but then the snow came back harder so I gave up.
Disappointing? A little. But then, how many other people have stood on a glacier in the middle of summer and been snowed on? It's an experience I'll never forget.
We then continued our drive onto Jasper. The sat nav (back in service after my earlier fateful cockiness) told us we had about an hour or so still to drive. Coming up over a ridge, another of those gaggles of cars by the side of the road. I said to Sandra, "are we stopping?", she said, "yes!". I pulled in, and we both looked to the right, into the trees... elk? Moose? Bear? Deer? And then, Sandra's cry, "it's a bear, it's a bear!!" And sure enough it was, a black bear, just visible through the trees, ambling along so slowly... and yet still too fast for either of us to get a picture of it. I scrambled out of the car with my video camera, keeping H between myself and the bear, even though it was a good 100 feet or more away. Too late, it had vanished into the forest.
Both of us knew we'd seen a bear, against all odds, and it made the day special. We hadn't been able to photograph it, and that kinda jarred, but we'd seen one, and that's what mattered. It made up for the snow and sleet through the Ice Field Parkway.
Further on, the sat nav instructed us to turn left off the main highway, onto 93A instead of 93. I agreed reluctantly, then cursed as I realised it was taking us down some crazy country road. "Why, oh WHY is she taking us down here?" I asked. Sandra made some joke about there being a bear round the next corner. I was still laughing cynically when we rounded the next corner, and there was a bear. I'm not joking, that's how it happened.
I tried to put my foot on the clutch, but of course H is an automatic and doesn't have a clutch, so I just succeeded in applying the parking brake. The bear was just scrambling down a rise about 40 feet from us. I pulled into the side of the road (there was nothing behind us at all, and never was during the encounter), trying to grab my video camera at the same time as stop H a safe distance from the bear without startling it.
The bear - it was a black bear, about 5 feet long I guess - got to the bottom of the rise and slowly ambled (there is no other word for it) across the road. It seemed completely oblivious to us. It foraged a little in the undergrowth on our side of the road while I tried to video it and Sandra tried to photograph it through the windscreen (I'd already told her in no circumstances was she to wind the passenger side window down!). Two of the better pictures are on the Flickr site. The bear vanished behind a bush, and I waited a little while, then eased H forward. The last we saw of the bear was its back, about 10 feet away, before it disappeared down the incline.
We were both shaking a little, and so pleased that this was our bear, and not shared by other road users. Weatherwise the day hadn't gone as we'd hoped, but the few tens of seconds we'd shared on that back road with that black bear more than made up for it.
When we checked into our hotel room about 40 minutes later, and saw how huge it was (two double beds, I mean, come on), we both agreed it was just icing on the cake of another fun day's adventuring in Alberta. Ah gosh, I even picked Sandra up and swung her around.
Wonder what delights tomorrow will bring...
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Day 11 - "Lake Louise will take your breath away"
That's what it said in my Moon Alberta guidebook, anyway. "Lake Louise will take your breath away". Well I've seen mountain lakes before, they can be spectacular, and I've seen pictures of Lake Louise (there's a black and white one in that very guide book). It looked very pretty, and I was looking forward to seeing it for real.
This whole part of our trip, being in the Rockies, was for Sandra. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going to come to Alberta and not visit the Rockies, but I wanted to see other stuff as well, I didn't just want to do only the tourist trail. This whole week in the Rockies is pure tourist trail, and I threw it together without much thought. Three days in Canmore to visit Banff, Moraine Lake, and Lake Louise, two days in Jasper to take in the glaciers, Maligne Lake, and Mount Edith Cavell. I thought they'd be nice to see, because lakes and mountains can be pretty spectacular.
We drove out to Lake Louise along the Trans Canada Highway through Banff. It took us about an hour or so to get there, and I was quite shocked at how busy the place was. This is easily the busiest place we've been to, the multi-stepped carpark (patrolled by incredibly efficient and wide-smiling ushers) being almost full when we arrived.
You arrive at Lake Louise itself by walking from the carpark down a short forest path which opens out into what can only be described as an unashamed viewing platform. And why not? Tourist attractions become tourist attractions because people want to go and see them. And 10,000 people per day visit Lake Louise during the summer.
I've seen a number of sights during my life that have made my bottom jaw physically drop. The Space Shuttle flying over the halls of residence on the back of that specially adapted Jumbo Jet when I was at University was one of them. The total solar eclipse on August 11th 1999 was another. Dare I say the fish stalls at the English Market in Cork, Ireland were another. And confronted by the magnificence and size of the Pyramids at Giza, I was left speechless.
Lake Louise is the only place that has ever had me tearing up. Quite simply I've never seen a sight of such perfect, awesome beauty. As I stared at it in total wonderment, I heard a man next to me say to his companion, in a quiet voice, "it could make you turn to religion". I'm a Christian already, so that's not a decision I have to make, but I know what he meant. I could almost see God carving that bowl out of the mountains with his hands, and stepping back, and smiling to himself knowing that he'd made something extra special.
The scale of it is quite simply staggering, and it's that which takes your breath away. But then the colours, and the composition, and the detail, and the contrast between water, snow, stone, tree, ice, rock, all just combine to overwhelm you. After a while I tore my gaze away from it to watch other people emerge from the forest path, and saw them stumble a moment, and gawk at the view, and well, I envied them that they were seeing it for the first time, as I had only moments before. Sandra came up to me and said, "let's get someone to take our picture in front of it", and I had to tell her, "not just yet". It took me a while to compose myself, that's for sure.
I've put a picture of the view up on the Flickr site, but it doesn't do it any justice whatsoever. Photographing it truly is a waste of time. It's one of those places that you just have to see for yourself.
We walked a little way around the lake, and then the clouds rolled over and it started raining a little, so we decided to move on to Moraine Lake, a few miles away. As we drove the rain stopped, and the day became bright again. I didn't think that Moraine Lake would have anything to offer us after Lake Louise, but I was pleasantly surprised. In a world where Lake Louise didn't exist, Moraine Lake might reign supreme. It's a beautiful, stunning location, with crazy blues that shouldn't exist out of Photoshop. We ate our lunch there, the mundanity (is that a word?) of pre-made sandwiches that we'd bought in a Safeway in Canmore contrasting with a landscape straight out of Narnia.
Could the day get any better?
We drove back to Canmore not down the Trans Canada Highway, but down an adjacent road, the Bow Valley Trail. Much quieter, slower, and more scenic. Once we came upon a group of vehicles stopped, so we stopped too. People hanging out of their car windows, cameras at the ready. Bear? Moose? Something else? A car drove slowly past us, and a woman shouted, "what are people looking at?" Quick as a flash I shouted, "it's a spaceship!", but too late, the car was already past us. Damn my comedic timing. We saw nothing, and after a few minutes drove on.
Not long after, we came upon a similar gaggle of cars, so we stopped again. There were people crossing the road, and trailing up into the forest to our left. So it wasn't a bear then, unless these were very, very stupid people. Then something brown, moving through the trees... and something else... two of them... no three, four... more! Moose! Fantastic! We got out of H, Sandra with her camera at the ready. "It's a group of elk," said some wise-ass moose-dream destroyer. I got my video camera and shamefacedly followed the rubber-neckers into the forest. It was a party (herd??) of at least four or five unconcerned elk, lying down, eating grass and branches. They didn't seem bothered about all the people watching them and taking photographs and videos of them... but you always have to be careful, you have to remind yourself that these are not little people wearing elk costumes, they're real wild animals and they have antlers with at least a four foot span. In the deer family, only the moose is larger.
It's been a day of surprises. Our meal tonight at the Sage Bistro, a stone's throw from our hotel, was another one, lovely fine dining as recommended in my Moon Alberta book (my gosh that book was money well spent!). Now we're all packed up again, ready for our next trip and our next hotel. Tomorrow we make our way up the Icefields Parkway, stopping to "do" the glacier thing, before booking into our hotel in Jasper. I think it's got internet access, but I'm not sure, so if I go quiet for a few days you'll know why.
If it's anything like today has been, it's gonna be a real treat.
This whole part of our trip, being in the Rockies, was for Sandra. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going to come to Alberta and not visit the Rockies, but I wanted to see other stuff as well, I didn't just want to do only the tourist trail. This whole week in the Rockies is pure tourist trail, and I threw it together without much thought. Three days in Canmore to visit Banff, Moraine Lake, and Lake Louise, two days in Jasper to take in the glaciers, Maligne Lake, and Mount Edith Cavell. I thought they'd be nice to see, because lakes and mountains can be pretty spectacular.
We drove out to Lake Louise along the Trans Canada Highway through Banff. It took us about an hour or so to get there, and I was quite shocked at how busy the place was. This is easily the busiest place we've been to, the multi-stepped carpark (patrolled by incredibly efficient and wide-smiling ushers) being almost full when we arrived.
You arrive at Lake Louise itself by walking from the carpark down a short forest path which opens out into what can only be described as an unashamed viewing platform. And why not? Tourist attractions become tourist attractions because people want to go and see them. And 10,000 people per day visit Lake Louise during the summer.
I've seen a number of sights during my life that have made my bottom jaw physically drop. The Space Shuttle flying over the halls of residence on the back of that specially adapted Jumbo Jet when I was at University was one of them. The total solar eclipse on August 11th 1999 was another. Dare I say the fish stalls at the English Market in Cork, Ireland were another. And confronted by the magnificence and size of the Pyramids at Giza, I was left speechless.
Lake Louise is the only place that has ever had me tearing up. Quite simply I've never seen a sight of such perfect, awesome beauty. As I stared at it in total wonderment, I heard a man next to me say to his companion, in a quiet voice, "it could make you turn to religion". I'm a Christian already, so that's not a decision I have to make, but I know what he meant. I could almost see God carving that bowl out of the mountains with his hands, and stepping back, and smiling to himself knowing that he'd made something extra special.
The scale of it is quite simply staggering, and it's that which takes your breath away. But then the colours, and the composition, and the detail, and the contrast between water, snow, stone, tree, ice, rock, all just combine to overwhelm you. After a while I tore my gaze away from it to watch other people emerge from the forest path, and saw them stumble a moment, and gawk at the view, and well, I envied them that they were seeing it for the first time, as I had only moments before. Sandra came up to me and said, "let's get someone to take our picture in front of it", and I had to tell her, "not just yet". It took me a while to compose myself, that's for sure.
I've put a picture of the view up on the Flickr site, but it doesn't do it any justice whatsoever. Photographing it truly is a waste of time. It's one of those places that you just have to see for yourself.
We walked a little way around the lake, and then the clouds rolled over and it started raining a little, so we decided to move on to Moraine Lake, a few miles away. As we drove the rain stopped, and the day became bright again. I didn't think that Moraine Lake would have anything to offer us after Lake Louise, but I was pleasantly surprised. In a world where Lake Louise didn't exist, Moraine Lake might reign supreme. It's a beautiful, stunning location, with crazy blues that shouldn't exist out of Photoshop. We ate our lunch there, the mundanity (is that a word?) of pre-made sandwiches that we'd bought in a Safeway in Canmore contrasting with a landscape straight out of Narnia.
Could the day get any better?
We drove back to Canmore not down the Trans Canada Highway, but down an adjacent road, the Bow Valley Trail. Much quieter, slower, and more scenic. Once we came upon a group of vehicles stopped, so we stopped too. People hanging out of their car windows, cameras at the ready. Bear? Moose? Something else? A car drove slowly past us, and a woman shouted, "what are people looking at?" Quick as a flash I shouted, "it's a spaceship!", but too late, the car was already past us. Damn my comedic timing. We saw nothing, and after a few minutes drove on.
Not long after, we came upon a similar gaggle of cars, so we stopped again. There were people crossing the road, and trailing up into the forest to our left. So it wasn't a bear then, unless these were very, very stupid people. Then something brown, moving through the trees... and something else... two of them... no three, four... more! Moose! Fantastic! We got out of H, Sandra with her camera at the ready. "It's a group of elk," said some wise-ass moose-dream destroyer. I got my video camera and shamefacedly followed the rubber-neckers into the forest. It was a party (herd??) of at least four or five unconcerned elk, lying down, eating grass and branches. They didn't seem bothered about all the people watching them and taking photographs and videos of them... but you always have to be careful, you have to remind yourself that these are not little people wearing elk costumes, they're real wild animals and they have antlers with at least a four foot span. In the deer family, only the moose is larger.
It's been a day of surprises. Our meal tonight at the Sage Bistro, a stone's throw from our hotel, was another one, lovely fine dining as recommended in my Moon Alberta book (my gosh that book was money well spent!). Now we're all packed up again, ready for our next trip and our next hotel. Tomorrow we make our way up the Icefields Parkway, stopping to "do" the glacier thing, before booking into our hotel in Jasper. I think it's got internet access, but I'm not sure, so if I go quiet for a few days you'll know why.
If it's anything like today has been, it's gonna be a real treat.
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Day 10 - It's pronounced "MinNEY-wonkah"
We started today off (relatively) early, driving up to Banff for breakfast. Except all the breakfast places seemed to be either shut, or full (full because the other places were shut, no doubt), so we eventually settled into this little toastie place that did toast and toasties. I dunno what they did to Sandra's cup of tea, it was quite unspeakable.
We then walked around Banff for a bit, it's nice enough but a lot of gift shops as you would expect. You know you're in serious bear country, all the bins are bear-proof (by dint of having handles that are too small for a bear's hands to operate). Then we drove to Lake Minnewanka and bought tickets for the 1.5 hour lake cruise. It was a pretty good cruise, entertaining and informative, though I thought it was a tad overpriced. At one point one of the passengers reckoned he'd seen a bear ("What colour?" "Brown!"... I could almost hear the "shyeah, right" in the guide's voice). It turned out to be a wooden outside toilet (for the record, they estimate there are only about 700 brown (grizzly) bears in the whole of Alberta).
After the lake cruise we drove back into Banff, searching for two things: firstly the hideous "merman" that Jeff and I had discovered on the internet at some point last year, and secondly the famous Fairmont Banff Springs hotel. We found them both, and the hotel was the more attractive.
We then drove around the Lake Minnewanka loop, which had some excellent scenery and we also saw a deer.
Then it was back to the hotel early to get ready for another of the events I'd booked us into, the "Oh Canada, eh?" show. Billed as "delightfully cheesy", it featured 6 main entertainers who also helped woop up the crowd as well as serve the 5 course meal. Walking down to the place where the event was held, I could tell that Sandra was getting nervous. I asked her why. "They'll pick on me, they always pick on me at these kind of things." I assured her that she wouldn't be picked on, that there was going to be a room full of people, and there was no way she was going to be singled out.
There was a room full of people.
She was singled out.
I would have taken a picture of it, but I was too busy crying with laughter at her predicament. The poor girl. This bloke singer, posing as a fisherman, was singing about girls he'd left behind or something. Straight out into the audience, wandering through the tables, Sandra was the first person he zoomed in on. It was hilarious, she was bright red.
Oh how we laughed about it. Afterwards, at least. We both agreed it made a very special night that little bit more special. I can't recommend that show enough. Yes it's cheesy, but the food's okay, and what a brilliant night's entertainment. We chatted it up with a couple from Whitecourt (we'll be driving through there next week), and three people from Edmonton. And none of them said "eh?" the whole night.
On the way back to the hotel I spotted a house for sale... I wonder how much?
Tomorrow, the famous Lake Louise...
We then walked around Banff for a bit, it's nice enough but a lot of gift shops as you would expect. You know you're in serious bear country, all the bins are bear-proof (by dint of having handles that are too small for a bear's hands to operate). Then we drove to Lake Minnewanka and bought tickets for the 1.5 hour lake cruise. It was a pretty good cruise, entertaining and informative, though I thought it was a tad overpriced. At one point one of the passengers reckoned he'd seen a bear ("What colour?" "Brown!"... I could almost hear the "shyeah, right" in the guide's voice). It turned out to be a wooden outside toilet (for the record, they estimate there are only about 700 brown (grizzly) bears in the whole of Alberta).
After the lake cruise we drove back into Banff, searching for two things: firstly the hideous "merman" that Jeff and I had discovered on the internet at some point last year, and secondly the famous Fairmont Banff Springs hotel. We found them both, and the hotel was the more attractive.
We then drove around the Lake Minnewanka loop, which had some excellent scenery and we also saw a deer.
Then it was back to the hotel early to get ready for another of the events I'd booked us into, the "Oh Canada, eh?" show. Billed as "delightfully cheesy", it featured 6 main entertainers who also helped woop up the crowd as well as serve the 5 course meal. Walking down to the place where the event was held, I could tell that Sandra was getting nervous. I asked her why. "They'll pick on me, they always pick on me at these kind of things." I assured her that she wouldn't be picked on, that there was going to be a room full of people, and there was no way she was going to be singled out.
There was a room full of people.
She was singled out.
I would have taken a picture of it, but I was too busy crying with laughter at her predicament. The poor girl. This bloke singer, posing as a fisherman, was singing about girls he'd left behind or something. Straight out into the audience, wandering through the tables, Sandra was the first person he zoomed in on. It was hilarious, she was bright red.
Oh how we laughed about it. Afterwards, at least. We both agreed it made a very special night that little bit more special. I can't recommend that show enough. Yes it's cheesy, but the food's okay, and what a brilliant night's entertainment. We chatted it up with a couple from Whitecourt (we'll be driving through there next week), and three people from Edmonton. And none of them said "eh?" the whole night.
On the way back to the hotel I spotted a house for sale... I wonder how much?
Tomorrow, the famous Lake Louise...
Monday, 7 July 2008
Day 9 - Bear Country!
A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but today we moved into an area where, if we are going to see bears or any of the larger mammalian wild life, it's going to be here.
We ate breakfast at Denny's in the Sandman Hotel in Lethbridge. My goodness these people eat enormous breakfasts. I'm not talking about "full English breakfast" enormous, I'm talking "full English breakfast with extra eggs, toast, rosti potatoes, coffee with triple sugar triple cream can I get you folks anything else?" enormous. I estimated that, during our 6 day stay in Calgary, I ate 14 eggs in 4 days, before my body caved in and I resorted to cornflakes and toast. But that's by the by.
We then drove west, west, west, on Highway 3, through Fort MacLeod, Pincher Creek and Lundbreck, before turning north on Highway 22. At Longview we turned west again and took Highway 541 which becomes Highway 40, into Kananaskis Country (think how the Americans say "banana", knock off the "b" at the front and replace it with a "k", and add "sskiss" at the end... "Kananaskis"). There was a warning as entered Highway 40 that there would be Bighorn Sheep on the road, and sure enough, round the next bend, there was a group of them. A bit mottley looking it has to be said, and female (without the distinctive big horns of the males), but Bighorn Sheep all the same.
Sandra was driving at this point - she took over today for a while, first time she's driven this holiday. She did good, too, and it gave me a break. At some point during today's drive we hit the one thousand miles marker. We saw a couple of deer later on too... well, I did, Sandra was concentrating on driving, which apparently doesn't include looking left and right for potential "deer-throwing-themselves-in-front-of-the-car" hazards.
We stopped by a stream for lunch, me panicking all the while that a grizzly might come tearing out of the trees and maul us (I needn't have worried - despite the warnings on the picnic site toilets ("avoid smells, keep the toilet seats down!"), the place was near a relatively busy road, and I doubt any bear would hang around that sort of area). We made sure to take all our leftovers with us, and drove on to Canmore, and our fourth hotel of this holiday, the Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge. It's okay here, and will be our base for the next couple of days as we visit various lakes and mountains in Banff National Park.
Sandra found us a nice French restaurant in town, and we had a good meal there before retiring and planning out the next couple of days.
The Rockies are enormous. We've been driving through them for at least half of our journey today, and that's really only scratching the surface. They're huge, high, contorted, twisted, jagged and seemingly endless. The fact that they stretch from here deep into British Columbia, and down south into New Mexico, a length of over 3,000 miles, is staggering. We have 4 more days in the Rockies; you could spend a lifetime here and still only scratch the surface of what this mountain range has to offer.
Tomorrow - Lake Minnewanka. Stop laughing at the back.
We ate breakfast at Denny's in the Sandman Hotel in Lethbridge. My goodness these people eat enormous breakfasts. I'm not talking about "full English breakfast" enormous, I'm talking "full English breakfast with extra eggs, toast, rosti potatoes, coffee with triple sugar triple cream can I get you folks anything else?" enormous. I estimated that, during our 6 day stay in Calgary, I ate 14 eggs in 4 days, before my body caved in and I resorted to cornflakes and toast. But that's by the by.
We then drove west, west, west, on Highway 3, through Fort MacLeod, Pincher Creek and Lundbreck, before turning north on Highway 22. At Longview we turned west again and took Highway 541 which becomes Highway 40, into Kananaskis Country (think how the Americans say "banana", knock off the "b" at the front and replace it with a "k", and add "sskiss" at the end... "Kananaskis"). There was a warning as entered Highway 40 that there would be Bighorn Sheep on the road, and sure enough, round the next bend, there was a group of them. A bit mottley looking it has to be said, and female (without the distinctive big horns of the males), but Bighorn Sheep all the same.
Sandra was driving at this point - she took over today for a while, first time she's driven this holiday. She did good, too, and it gave me a break. At some point during today's drive we hit the one thousand miles marker. We saw a couple of deer later on too... well, I did, Sandra was concentrating on driving, which apparently doesn't include looking left and right for potential "deer-throwing-themselves-in-front-of-the-car" hazards.
We stopped by a stream for lunch, me panicking all the while that a grizzly might come tearing out of the trees and maul us (I needn't have worried - despite the warnings on the picnic site toilets ("avoid smells, keep the toilet seats down!"), the place was near a relatively busy road, and I doubt any bear would hang around that sort of area). We made sure to take all our leftovers with us, and drove on to Canmore, and our fourth hotel of this holiday, the Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge. It's okay here, and will be our base for the next couple of days as we visit various lakes and mountains in Banff National Park.
Sandra found us a nice French restaurant in town, and we had a good meal there before retiring and planning out the next couple of days.
The Rockies are enormous. We've been driving through them for at least half of our journey today, and that's really only scratching the surface. They're huge, high, contorted, twisted, jagged and seemingly endless. The fact that they stretch from here deep into British Columbia, and down south into New Mexico, a length of over 3,000 miles, is staggering. We have 4 more days in the Rockies; you could spend a lifetime here and still only scratch the surface of what this mountain range has to offer.
Tomorrow - Lake Minnewanka. Stop laughing at the back.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Day 8 - Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You can't wash your hands in a buffalo!
Woohoo! 4000 miles I've flown to make that joke. And let's get one thing straight, the North American buffaloes are in fact bison. But we won't dwell on it, eh? Nor will we dwell on the fact that the plural of buffalo can be buffaloes, buffalos, or just plain buffalo.
Okay.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is one of two places I wanted to visit because initially I was attracted by the name of the place (the other being Peace River). Buffalo jumps are cliffs which the North American Indians used to drive herds of bison over in order to kill them. So they're not really "buffalo jumps", they're "bison fall horribly to their bone-crunching deaths". It's one of many methods the North American Indians used to kill bison before the advent of guns and the eventual almost annihilation of the great bison herds.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump allegedly got its name because on this one occasion a young Blackfoot Indian wanted to see the buffalo falling over the cliff first hand (I'm going to use "buffalo" and "bison" interchangeably, okay?). At the end of the hunt they found the poor chap underneath all the buffalo, with, you guessed it, his head smashed in.
We set off from Medicine Hat this morning and headed back west on Highway 3, another dauntingly straight road ("continue for... one hundred and two miles"). I got stuck behind a lorry! I couldn't believe it! As we got further west the Rockies reappeared, looking more and more like the Mountains of Shadow on the edge of Mordor (in the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the Rings). Black and brooding with clouds massing over the top of them like a threat (it was supposed to thunder today - so far it hasn't, but the day ain't over yet).
We made it to Head-Smashed-In just after 1pm, and ate a quick snack in the car park, before walking around the outside of the Buffalo Jump, taking in the cliff face itself as well as the prairies stretching back out to the east. After a hunt, when the final surviving (but still horribly wounded) bison had been despatched (probably via repeated blows to the head from a rock tied to a stick), the animals were skinned and rudimentally butchered at the base of the cliff, then the different parts of the carcass taken away down the prairie for further "processing".
The site itself features an incredibly well set up interpretive centre which takes you through the whole process of the buffalo jump, and also describes how the North American Indians made use of virtually the whole animal; the hide for clothing, shields, tepee covers, furniture (the brains and livers of the animals were used in the tanning process)... the bones for tools... the sinews for "string"... and of course the meat for eating (they would dry strips of the meat out in the sun, then pound them into a powder which was mixed with fat and berries to create "pemmican", which sustained them through the lean winter months; I've not seen any for sale yet). It really is a very impressive centre, and describes the whole process of the hunt, and the dependancy of the North American Indians on the vast buffalo herds. Archeological evidence suggests that they hunted buffalo in this way for at least 6000 years, finally ceasing only about 150 years ago, and never dented the buffalo population during the whole of that time. It was only when the Europeans arrived in the 19th Century, bringing guns and a desire for buffalo pelts, that the huge herds were devastated (going from an estimated 30-40 million down to a few thousand in just two or three decades... you want to take a few moments to let that sink in).
We spent the whole afternoon at Head-Smashed-In, then drove back to Lethbridge and checked into our hotel, where the clerk was so impressed with our cheery demeanours that he upgraded our hotel room for free. I'm loving this country to bits!
Tomorrow sees us driving through Kananaskis Country, up Highway 40 (which only opened after the winter on June 15th!) and on up to Canmore in the Rockies. Bears and cougars, here we come...
Woohoo! 4000 miles I've flown to make that joke. And let's get one thing straight, the North American buffaloes are in fact bison. But we won't dwell on it, eh? Nor will we dwell on the fact that the plural of buffalo can be buffaloes, buffalos, or just plain buffalo.
Okay.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is one of two places I wanted to visit because initially I was attracted by the name of the place (the other being Peace River). Buffalo jumps are cliffs which the North American Indians used to drive herds of bison over in order to kill them. So they're not really "buffalo jumps", they're "bison fall horribly to their bone-crunching deaths". It's one of many methods the North American Indians used to kill bison before the advent of guns and the eventual almost annihilation of the great bison herds.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump allegedly got its name because on this one occasion a young Blackfoot Indian wanted to see the buffalo falling over the cliff first hand (I'm going to use "buffalo" and "bison" interchangeably, okay?). At the end of the hunt they found the poor chap underneath all the buffalo, with, you guessed it, his head smashed in.
We set off from Medicine Hat this morning and headed back west on Highway 3, another dauntingly straight road ("continue for... one hundred and two miles"). I got stuck behind a lorry! I couldn't believe it! As we got further west the Rockies reappeared, looking more and more like the Mountains of Shadow on the edge of Mordor (in the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the Rings). Black and brooding with clouds massing over the top of them like a threat (it was supposed to thunder today - so far it hasn't, but the day ain't over yet).
We made it to Head-Smashed-In just after 1pm, and ate a quick snack in the car park, before walking around the outside of the Buffalo Jump, taking in the cliff face itself as well as the prairies stretching back out to the east. After a hunt, when the final surviving (but still horribly wounded) bison had been despatched (probably via repeated blows to the head from a rock tied to a stick), the animals were skinned and rudimentally butchered at the base of the cliff, then the different parts of the carcass taken away down the prairie for further "processing".
The site itself features an incredibly well set up interpretive centre which takes you through the whole process of the buffalo jump, and also describes how the North American Indians made use of virtually the whole animal; the hide for clothing, shields, tepee covers, furniture (the brains and livers of the animals were used in the tanning process)... the bones for tools... the sinews for "string"... and of course the meat for eating (they would dry strips of the meat out in the sun, then pound them into a powder which was mixed with fat and berries to create "pemmican", which sustained them through the lean winter months; I've not seen any for sale yet). It really is a very impressive centre, and describes the whole process of the hunt, and the dependancy of the North American Indians on the vast buffalo herds. Archeological evidence suggests that they hunted buffalo in this way for at least 6000 years, finally ceasing only about 150 years ago, and never dented the buffalo population during the whole of that time. It was only when the Europeans arrived in the 19th Century, bringing guns and a desire for buffalo pelts, that the huge herds were devastated (going from an estimated 30-40 million down to a few thousand in just two or three decades... you want to take a few moments to let that sink in).
We spent the whole afternoon at Head-Smashed-In, then drove back to Lethbridge and checked into our hotel, where the clerk was so impressed with our cheery demeanours that he upgraded our hotel room for free. I'm loving this country to bits!
Tomorrow sees us driving through Kananaskis Country, up Highway 40 (which only opened after the winter on June 15th!) and on up to Canmore in the Rockies. Bears and cougars, here we come...
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Day 7 - Medicine Hat
I was glad to leave Calgary today for one reason and one reason only; I won't have to listen to that stupid sat nav trying to direct me out of the city ever again (unless we come back...). It seems to struggle with acquiring satellite signals, possibly because of the high buildings. "In 200 yards, turn right, then, turn right... recalculating...recalculating...", all this while we're sitting at traffic lights not going anywhere.
It eventually got us onto the Trans-Canada Highway (largely as a result of me ignoring it and driving most of the way by memory until it could figure out where we were), then it gleefully announced, "continue for one hundred... seventy four... miles". That was it, really. It's pretty much a straight road from Calgary to Medicine Hat. Maximum speed 110 kmh, road and flatness. There are other vehicles on the road. Sometimes you have to overtake one of them, not because it's going any slower than you, but just because you're bored of staring at the back of the same car for mile after mile. Like as not that same car will come past you half an hour later.
I watched two motorbikes at one point, one slowly creeping past the other. That's got to be a weird experience. "Hey dude, you're doing 115." "Yeah, but dude, you're doing 109."
I wanted to come to Medicine Hat because it has the largest Teepee in the world (spellings of the word "teepee" seem to vary, I'm going with that one). We pulled into the Medicine Hat visitor centre at about 2:30pm. I went to the desk and asked if admission was free. "To what?" asked the girl behind the desk. Yanno, when your town is only internationally famous for one thing, you really ought to know about it.
The Teepee is enormous, 215 feet high, and there are lots of informative notices inside it. I'm gaining a real interest in Canadian First Nations culture. When you think of the Wild West, and cowboys and indians, you tend to think of the USA, but it was all going on in Canada too. When we were driving through the plains today I tried to imagine them full of bison, thousands upon on thousands of them, as far as the eye could see... I couldn't do it. I just can't imagine whatever possessed the first settlers in this land... faced with the immensity of it, I would have turned around and gone home.
We booked into our hotel after that visit to the teepee ("are you guys English? Is that, like, the same as German?"), then took a walk into Medicine Hat itself. It's a town of 56,000, and I think most of them were on holiday somewhere else. Everywhere is so quiet! When we were at the teepee the only other person there was a girl walking her dog.
After our walk we had our main meal at a restaurant just across from our hotel, and I had my first Alberta steak (12oz rib eye). It was pretty decent, I have to say.
Tomorrow we move on again, back west, to Lethbridge, prior to our trip into the Rockies. Join us for the next exciting installment...
(By the way, here's the Flickr www again, cos the original one has rolled off the bottom of the page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27605180@N06/)
It eventually got us onto the Trans-Canada Highway (largely as a result of me ignoring it and driving most of the way by memory until it could figure out where we were), then it gleefully announced, "continue for one hundred... seventy four... miles". That was it, really. It's pretty much a straight road from Calgary to Medicine Hat. Maximum speed 110 kmh, road and flatness. There are other vehicles on the road. Sometimes you have to overtake one of them, not because it's going any slower than you, but just because you're bored of staring at the back of the same car for mile after mile. Like as not that same car will come past you half an hour later.
I watched two motorbikes at one point, one slowly creeping past the other. That's got to be a weird experience. "Hey dude, you're doing 115." "Yeah, but dude, you're doing 109."
I wanted to come to Medicine Hat because it has the largest Teepee in the world (spellings of the word "teepee" seem to vary, I'm going with that one). We pulled into the Medicine Hat visitor centre at about 2:30pm. I went to the desk and asked if admission was free. "To what?" asked the girl behind the desk. Yanno, when your town is only internationally famous for one thing, you really ought to know about it.
The Teepee is enormous, 215 feet high, and there are lots of informative notices inside it. I'm gaining a real interest in Canadian First Nations culture. When you think of the Wild West, and cowboys and indians, you tend to think of the USA, but it was all going on in Canada too. When we were driving through the plains today I tried to imagine them full of bison, thousands upon on thousands of them, as far as the eye could see... I couldn't do it. I just can't imagine whatever possessed the first settlers in this land... faced with the immensity of it, I would have turned around and gone home.
We booked into our hotel after that visit to the teepee ("are you guys English? Is that, like, the same as German?"), then took a walk into Medicine Hat itself. It's a town of 56,000, and I think most of them were on holiday somewhere else. Everywhere is so quiet! When we were at the teepee the only other person there was a girl walking her dog.
After our walk we had our main meal at a restaurant just across from our hotel, and I had my first Alberta steak (12oz rib eye). It was pretty decent, I have to say.
Tomorrow we move on again, back west, to Lethbridge, prior to our trip into the Rockies. Join us for the next exciting installment...
(By the way, here's the Flickr www again, cos the original one has rolled off the bottom of the page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27605180@N06/)
Day 6 - Cowtown
Today was always only ever going to be about one thing... The Calgary Stampede. It's an annual festival that lasts ten days, totally rodeo-based. The city goes Stampede-crazy. Cowboy hats abound. Yeah, I bought one. You feel out of place not wearing one.
I wasn't sure what to expect really.
It started off really early this morning. I'd set the alarm for 7:30am, but prior to that I'd woken up to cheering and sirens. By the time we staggered out of the hotel at about 9:15am and about 30 yards up the street to where the parade was fast approaching, the crowd was already about 6 deep and growing.
The parade lasted for two hours, and consisted of horse riders, marching bands, First Nations groups, random city departments and their floats, and - joy of joys - the Canadian army, along with three armoured vehicles, one of which was a tank (I think it was an M1 Abrams, Carl, I can't be sure). I did quip to Sandra that that was the entire Canadian Army, haha.
I have to say, though, after about an hour and a half of being told to "... one... two.. three... YAHOO!!!!", I was getting a bit weary, and it was with some relief that the end of the parade came. We then walked through town, with thousands of other people, to the Stampede Arena. My goodness it's huge. Acre after acre of rides, amusements, crap food (oh my body is crying out for fish or salad), and live music stalls.
We eventually found the Grandstand Arena, and made our way to our seats. I had to smile; I'd booked those seats in September 2007, working from home so that I would be able to book them as soon as they came available online (note to my boss: those seats were available from 10am Mountain Time, or 5pm GMT, I didn't skive). We'd got front row seats, right in the middle of the auditorium. Couldn't have been any better.
At this point it should be obvious that you have to make a choice. You either say to yourself, "my gosh, this is so cheesy, so tacky, I hate it"... or you say, "yanno what? I'm here, these guys are all loving this up, so I'm gonna love it up too". I decided to go with the latter. So yeah, you have good ole boys all around you, and we had to stand while the American national anthem was sung (it was July 4th, after all), and then remain standing while the Canadian national anthem was sung, and yeah, it brought a lump to my throat.
Then the rodeo started. Now I've only ever seen rodeos on TV, and never really been taken with them. But to see these guys (and girls) for real, doing what they do, fighting these wild horses and these huge bulls, well, it was pretty impressive.
After two hours and more of entertainment it was over, so we came back to the hotel to rest and freshen up. Then we caught the C-train back into the city centre (it's free as long as you don't go past City Hall... I love this country for free stuff), and back to the Grandstand Arena. Our seats this time were one row back from the front, but still impressive for all of that. Again national anthems were sung, and I was okay until a helicopter flew past with a huge Maple Leaf flag dangling from the bottom of it... American and Canadian patriotism seems so clean and simple and pure compared to the battered and cynical and world-weary patriotism we Brits have.
Then followed 9 heats of chuck wagon racing. It's okay for 6 heats, then you start watching the clock. Now this is belittling for the guys doing the racing, because it really is an impressive and dangerous thing. But after 6 heats, it gets a little samey. Sorry, Calgarians, that's just my view.
And then onto the final event of the day, the musical entertainment, with fireworks.
I was expecting something quite cheesy. And yes, in places it was cheesy. But you'd have to be some kinda heard-hearted cynical old fool not to sit back and enjoy that show for what it was.
It was a celebration of everything Canadian. There were stunts, there were acrobats, there were lights and smoke and fireworks, there were dancing girls and dancing guys, there was a comedian, there was more music and dancing and more fireworks... and to end it all there was MORE music and MORE fireworks, more than either Sandra or I have ever seen... jaw-dropping fireworks, incessant, over the top, mind numbing fireworks...
Neither of us had ever seen a show quite like it. It truly was... r-sum.
What a day. We've enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Calgary - Cowtown - has been all I wanted it to be, and then some more on top of that. It's been an amazing adventure so far.
But tomorrow the true adventure begins. This has all been just preparation. 14 days, 1500 miles, an exploration of at least some of Alberta. Some of it deliberately touristy, some of it deliberately un-touristy.
As long as I can get an internet connection in the middle of nowhere, I'll share it with you.
one... two... three... YAHOO!!!
I wasn't sure what to expect really.
It started off really early this morning. I'd set the alarm for 7:30am, but prior to that I'd woken up to cheering and sirens. By the time we staggered out of the hotel at about 9:15am and about 30 yards up the street to where the parade was fast approaching, the crowd was already about 6 deep and growing.
The parade lasted for two hours, and consisted of horse riders, marching bands, First Nations groups, random city departments and their floats, and - joy of joys - the Canadian army, along with three armoured vehicles, one of which was a tank (I think it was an M1 Abrams, Carl, I can't be sure). I did quip to Sandra that that was the entire Canadian Army, haha.
I have to say, though, after about an hour and a half of being told to "... one... two.. three... YAHOO!!!!", I was getting a bit weary, and it was with some relief that the end of the parade came. We then walked through town, with thousands of other people, to the Stampede Arena. My goodness it's huge. Acre after acre of rides, amusements, crap food (oh my body is crying out for fish or salad), and live music stalls.
We eventually found the Grandstand Arena, and made our way to our seats. I had to smile; I'd booked those seats in September 2007, working from home so that I would be able to book them as soon as they came available online (note to my boss: those seats were available from 10am Mountain Time, or 5pm GMT, I didn't skive). We'd got front row seats, right in the middle of the auditorium. Couldn't have been any better.
At this point it should be obvious that you have to make a choice. You either say to yourself, "my gosh, this is so cheesy, so tacky, I hate it"... or you say, "yanno what? I'm here, these guys are all loving this up, so I'm gonna love it up too". I decided to go with the latter. So yeah, you have good ole boys all around you, and we had to stand while the American national anthem was sung (it was July 4th, after all), and then remain standing while the Canadian national anthem was sung, and yeah, it brought a lump to my throat.
Then the rodeo started. Now I've only ever seen rodeos on TV, and never really been taken with them. But to see these guys (and girls) for real, doing what they do, fighting these wild horses and these huge bulls, well, it was pretty impressive.
After two hours and more of entertainment it was over, so we came back to the hotel to rest and freshen up. Then we caught the C-train back into the city centre (it's free as long as you don't go past City Hall... I love this country for free stuff), and back to the Grandstand Arena. Our seats this time were one row back from the front, but still impressive for all of that. Again national anthems were sung, and I was okay until a helicopter flew past with a huge Maple Leaf flag dangling from the bottom of it... American and Canadian patriotism seems so clean and simple and pure compared to the battered and cynical and world-weary patriotism we Brits have.
Then followed 9 heats of chuck wagon racing. It's okay for 6 heats, then you start watching the clock. Now this is belittling for the guys doing the racing, because it really is an impressive and dangerous thing. But after 6 heats, it gets a little samey. Sorry, Calgarians, that's just my view.
And then onto the final event of the day, the musical entertainment, with fireworks.
I was expecting something quite cheesy. And yes, in places it was cheesy. But you'd have to be some kinda heard-hearted cynical old fool not to sit back and enjoy that show for what it was.
It was a celebration of everything Canadian. There were stunts, there were acrobats, there were lights and smoke and fireworks, there were dancing girls and dancing guys, there was a comedian, there was more music and dancing and more fireworks... and to end it all there was MORE music and MORE fireworks, more than either Sandra or I have ever seen... jaw-dropping fireworks, incessant, over the top, mind numbing fireworks...
Neither of us had ever seen a show quite like it. It truly was... r-sum.
What a day. We've enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Calgary - Cowtown - has been all I wanted it to be, and then some more on top of that. It's been an amazing adventure so far.
But tomorrow the true adventure begins. This has all been just preparation. 14 days, 1500 miles, an exploration of at least some of Alberta. Some of it deliberately touristy, some of it deliberately un-touristy.
As long as I can get an internet connection in the middle of nowhere, I'll share it with you.
one... two... three... YAHOO!!!
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Day 5 - R-sum
There are two words that are bandied about a lot here. One is "r-sum", as in, "you're going to the Stampede? Ohmigosh that's like totally r-sum", and the other is "broodle", as in, "oh man, the chuck wagon races are just like totally broodle".
Well driving on the prairies of Alberta is r-sum and broodle. In fact, it's almost punishing. You feel so exposed, for one thing, like you're the only bump on the landscape for miles and miles. I've caught a glimpse of the Rockies, but they're totally put to shame by the miles and miles and MILES of flatness you get on the prairies. I've taken photos and put them up on the Flickr site, but they really don't do it justice. Imagine being on a road that's as straight as a ruler as far as you can see. The sat nav (which I've had some arguments with today) says things like, "continue for the next 72 miles, then turn right". Imagine looking forward, left, right, and back, and seeing nothing but fields until the curve of the earth takes the ground away from you. If, perchance, you come to a slight dip in the road, then you breast the next rise with some excitement... only to be faced with more of the same... fields and flatness. But it doesn't depress you. Instead it knocks the wind out of you, and makes you go... "wow". It really is totally r-sum.
A bend in the road is exciting. Something to do. And a lot of the bends are 90 degrees; So many of the roads conform to this easy-to-navigate grid pattern (d'you hear that, sat nav? EASY-TO-NAVIGATE). You see a junction coming up from 10 miles away. Sometimes, as you approach it, you see another vehicle coming up to that junction, and having to give way to you. You can just about hear the driver thinking, "dang, it sure as heck is busy today".
The maximum speed limit can be as much as 110 km/h. Often I look down and see I'm doing 140. You just have no concept of how fast you're going, you're just aware that there's this long, straight road ahead and behind you, often without another vehicle in sight, often the only reminder of the existence of other people being the fact that the road you are on is tarmac and not just packed dirt. No wonder your speed drifts up and up.
It's not like driving in Norfolk. This flatness takes the flatness of Norfolk and multiplies it up many times. It's not just flat, it's empty. You come across a farmhouse, and wonder how on earth the family there ever get to meet anyone and mix up the gene pool... and then you stop wondering about that because you don't like the path those thoughts take you down.
Today we drove out to Drumheller. Eventually. The sat nav seems to have a bit of a bug when it comes to highway exit ramps. This is not me making excuses, Sandra was watching it at the same time and she agrees.
Still, once we got out of Calgary it was fairly plain sailing. My gosh though, this place is flat. And empty. It took us a couple of hours to get to Drumheller. We drove past the town centre, catching a quick glimpse of "the biggest dinosaur in the world" as we headed out to the Royal Tyrell Museum. It seems that there have been an incredible number of dinosaur fossils found in that stretch of Alberta over the years, and a huge amount of research is concentrated in that area. And the Royal Tyrell Museum is a collection of interesting fossils and artefacts and reconstructed dinosaurs. Well worth a visit.
Then back to Drumheller town centre and that dinosaur. My goodness it's enormous. 85 feet tall, with a staircase inside it so you can climb up it and stand inside its mouth and look out over the rest of the town. Dinosaurs are what Drumheller is all about. Apparently there used to be some sort of park here with loads of model dinosaurs in it. For one reason or another the park closed down, so they just spread the models all over the town. It's weird, you're driving down the road and there's a dinosaur staring at you from outside a shop... and then another by a builders' merchant, and then another just randomly by the side of the road.
Our final stop today was to look at the hoodoos, which I'd read about and seen pictures of. You get a rock on top of some limestone, the elements wash away the limestone except that bit that's sheltered by the rock, and you get these odd mushroom-shaped things called hoodoos. It took us a while to find them because the sat nav was having a total fit and kept sending us the wrong way. Eventually we drove past the hoodoos without realising it, because basically they are so SMALL. Only about 10-15 feet tall really. I thought they were going to be much bigger.
We've already been through one tank of fuel so far this holiday, done about 500 miles. This car eats fuel. We're going to have to watch that when we head out into the boonies I guess. Mind you, fuel here is about half what we pay in England.
Tomorrow, though, we're not driving anywhere. Tomorrow is the start of the Calgary Stampede, which runs for the next 10 days. It bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth". It starts with a parade through the streets of the city, and then we've got tickets to the afternoon and evening shows.
Should be mint.
Oh, by the way... yesterday, when we went out to 1720 Bow Trail trying to find our rental vehicle, the guy (Chris) who wrote out the address of National Car Rental for us did so on the back of his business card. His email address was on the front of the card, so I dropped him a line to let him know how we'd got on. He replied back today: "Awesome Dave, I'm glad it all worked out for you folks." Heh... r-sum.
Well driving on the prairies of Alberta is r-sum and broodle. In fact, it's almost punishing. You feel so exposed, for one thing, like you're the only bump on the landscape for miles and miles. I've caught a glimpse of the Rockies, but they're totally put to shame by the miles and miles and MILES of flatness you get on the prairies. I've taken photos and put them up on the Flickr site, but they really don't do it justice. Imagine being on a road that's as straight as a ruler as far as you can see. The sat nav (which I've had some arguments with today) says things like, "continue for the next 72 miles, then turn right". Imagine looking forward, left, right, and back, and seeing nothing but fields until the curve of the earth takes the ground away from you. If, perchance, you come to a slight dip in the road, then you breast the next rise with some excitement... only to be faced with more of the same... fields and flatness. But it doesn't depress you. Instead it knocks the wind out of you, and makes you go... "wow". It really is totally r-sum.
A bend in the road is exciting. Something to do. And a lot of the bends are 90 degrees; So many of the roads conform to this easy-to-navigate grid pattern (d'you hear that, sat nav? EASY-TO-NAVIGATE). You see a junction coming up from 10 miles away. Sometimes, as you approach it, you see another vehicle coming up to that junction, and having to give way to you. You can just about hear the driver thinking, "dang, it sure as heck is busy today".
The maximum speed limit can be as much as 110 km/h. Often I look down and see I'm doing 140. You just have no concept of how fast you're going, you're just aware that there's this long, straight road ahead and behind you, often without another vehicle in sight, often the only reminder of the existence of other people being the fact that the road you are on is tarmac and not just packed dirt. No wonder your speed drifts up and up.
It's not like driving in Norfolk. This flatness takes the flatness of Norfolk and multiplies it up many times. It's not just flat, it's empty. You come across a farmhouse, and wonder how on earth the family there ever get to meet anyone and mix up the gene pool... and then you stop wondering about that because you don't like the path those thoughts take you down.
Today we drove out to Drumheller. Eventually. The sat nav seems to have a bit of a bug when it comes to highway exit ramps. This is not me making excuses, Sandra was watching it at the same time and she agrees.
Still, once we got out of Calgary it was fairly plain sailing. My gosh though, this place is flat. And empty. It took us a couple of hours to get to Drumheller. We drove past the town centre, catching a quick glimpse of "the biggest dinosaur in the world" as we headed out to the Royal Tyrell Museum. It seems that there have been an incredible number of dinosaur fossils found in that stretch of Alberta over the years, and a huge amount of research is concentrated in that area. And the Royal Tyrell Museum is a collection of interesting fossils and artefacts and reconstructed dinosaurs. Well worth a visit.
Then back to Drumheller town centre and that dinosaur. My goodness it's enormous. 85 feet tall, with a staircase inside it so you can climb up it and stand inside its mouth and look out over the rest of the town. Dinosaurs are what Drumheller is all about. Apparently there used to be some sort of park here with loads of model dinosaurs in it. For one reason or another the park closed down, so they just spread the models all over the town. It's weird, you're driving down the road and there's a dinosaur staring at you from outside a shop... and then another by a builders' merchant, and then another just randomly by the side of the road.
Our final stop today was to look at the hoodoos, which I'd read about and seen pictures of. You get a rock on top of some limestone, the elements wash away the limestone except that bit that's sheltered by the rock, and you get these odd mushroom-shaped things called hoodoos. It took us a while to find them because the sat nav was having a total fit and kept sending us the wrong way. Eventually we drove past the hoodoos without realising it, because basically they are so SMALL. Only about 10-15 feet tall really. I thought they were going to be much bigger.
We've already been through one tank of fuel so far this holiday, done about 500 miles. This car eats fuel. We're going to have to watch that when we head out into the boonies I guess. Mind you, fuel here is about half what we pay in England.
Tomorrow, though, we're not driving anywhere. Tomorrow is the start of the Calgary Stampede, which runs for the next 10 days. It bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth". It starts with a parade through the streets of the city, and then we've got tickets to the afternoon and evening shows.
Should be mint.
Oh, by the way... yesterday, when we went out to 1720 Bow Trail trying to find our rental vehicle, the guy (Chris) who wrote out the address of National Car Rental for us did so on the back of his business card. His email address was on the front of the card, so I dropped him a line to let him know how we'd got on. He replied back today: "Awesome Dave, I'm glad it all worked out for you folks." Heh... r-sum.
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
Day 4 - Driving on the right... left... right... watch out!!!
I feel like today threw just about everything it could at us... but we came through it okay.
I'd booked the rental vehicle through Wheelsabroad.com in February of this year. I'd deliberately booked the pick-up point at "1720 Bow Trail SW, Calgary", because it was about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. Upon arriving at or near to 1720 Bow Trail (hard to tell, nothing is as easy as Google Maps makes it look), we couldn't see anything but a Chrysler dealership. We went inside and asked the girl at the reception desk if she knew where 1720 Bow Trail was. She scowled a little at the print off I'd carried with me in our "Canadian Fun" folder, and said she didn't. She called her boss over, who informed her that 1720 Bow Trail was the address of the building in which we were standing. Having chortled a little at that, he examined our rental booking and saw that the wheelsabroad.com website had pointed us to National Car Rental... who no longer operated out of that address. He pointed us further down the building to their in-house car rental, which was run by Enterprise Car Rental.
They had never heard of us.
By now it had started to rain outside.
The helpful chap at the rental desk (Chris) spent a goodly time trying to track down our rental vehicle, but was defeated, mainly because it wasn't booked through his company. In the end he gave us the address of the National Car Rental office in Calgary, and called us a cab.
I wasn't expecting NCR to have heard of us when we got there, and I wasn't disappointed. The chap at the desk, though helpful, spent so long with a furrowed brow that I was starting to become convinced that here was our first smeg up of the holiday.
But then, a breakthrough. He took the printed off instructions I was carrying through to some guy in the back, who managed to track down our booking. Thankfully! Overjoyed, I asked if we could rent a sat nav system (yeah, I know I bought one before we came away, but I cunningly left it at home -scowls-). They told us to go and wander around for an hour, and they'd sort everything out for us.
So we wandered around to the EPCOR centre for performing arts, which is a retail outlet for TicketMaster, and picked up our tickets for the Stampede on Friday. It was raining quite hard now, just like being in England unfortunately. We slowly made our way back to the car rental place, stopping only to buy some extra strong bug spray (we've both been bitten a little), by which time the car, the sat nav, and everything was ready.
We must have sat in the car for 15 minutes getting used to it. It's huge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Edge
I couldn't even work out how to go from Park to Drive. But eventually... we made our way off the carpark, and onto 10th Avenue, SW Calgary.
The sat nav proved its worth straight away, helping us navigate out of the city, and getting onto the road to Vulcan. I was surprised how quickly I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Granted, once out of the city and onto Highway 2 south, there was little traffic. A few turns later we were onto this road that stretched for as far as the eye could see, with nothing but flat fields surrounding us (the sat nav gleefully announced, "continue for 26 miles")... my gosh this province is flat in places.
We made it to Vulcan. It was still raining. I spotted the space ship as we were pulling up to park. Sandra's reaction was less than enthusiastic, but I wasn't bothered. I've been wanting to see that space ship for at least a year, and to see it for real had me cackling hard. We spent a good while in Vulcan, then eventually drove out through miles and miles of nothing to the Okotoks "erratics" rocks, huge deposits from the Rockies, dragged there by glaciers lots and lots of years ago.
Then we finally drove back to Calgary. It was a complex journey back, involving U-turns and diversions as I tried to figure out the vagaries of the sat nav. Not helped by one of the major routes being blocked by an accident.
I congratulated myself on a job (or jobs) well done when we finally got back to the hotel. Considered we'd had a difficult day, and won through. Felt very pleased with myself. Then checked the Canada News www and found out the reason for one of the problems on the way back to the hotel:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/07/02/deerfoot-rollover.html
Kind of puts everything into perspective, really.
I'd booked the rental vehicle through Wheelsabroad.com in February of this year. I'd deliberately booked the pick-up point at "1720 Bow Trail SW, Calgary", because it was about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. Upon arriving at or near to 1720 Bow Trail (hard to tell, nothing is as easy as Google Maps makes it look), we couldn't see anything but a Chrysler dealership. We went inside and asked the girl at the reception desk if she knew where 1720 Bow Trail was. She scowled a little at the print off I'd carried with me in our "Canadian Fun" folder, and said she didn't. She called her boss over, who informed her that 1720 Bow Trail was the address of the building in which we were standing. Having chortled a little at that, he examined our rental booking and saw that the wheelsabroad.com website had pointed us to National Car Rental... who no longer operated out of that address. He pointed us further down the building to their in-house car rental, which was run by Enterprise Car Rental.
They had never heard of us.
By now it had started to rain outside.
The helpful chap at the rental desk (Chris) spent a goodly time trying to track down our rental vehicle, but was defeated, mainly because it wasn't booked through his company. In the end he gave us the address of the National Car Rental office in Calgary, and called us a cab.
I wasn't expecting NCR to have heard of us when we got there, and I wasn't disappointed. The chap at the desk, though helpful, spent so long with a furrowed brow that I was starting to become convinced that here was our first smeg up of the holiday.
But then, a breakthrough. He took the printed off instructions I was carrying through to some guy in the back, who managed to track down our booking. Thankfully! Overjoyed, I asked if we could rent a sat nav system (yeah, I know I bought one before we came away, but I cunningly left it at home -scowls-). They told us to go and wander around for an hour, and they'd sort everything out for us.
So we wandered around to the EPCOR centre for performing arts, which is a retail outlet for TicketMaster, and picked up our tickets for the Stampede on Friday. It was raining quite hard now, just like being in England unfortunately. We slowly made our way back to the car rental place, stopping only to buy some extra strong bug spray (we've both been bitten a little), by which time the car, the sat nav, and everything was ready.
We must have sat in the car for 15 minutes getting used to it. It's huge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Edge
I couldn't even work out how to go from Park to Drive. But eventually... we made our way off the carpark, and onto 10th Avenue, SW Calgary.
The sat nav proved its worth straight away, helping us navigate out of the city, and getting onto the road to Vulcan. I was surprised how quickly I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Granted, once out of the city and onto Highway 2 south, there was little traffic. A few turns later we were onto this road that stretched for as far as the eye could see, with nothing but flat fields surrounding us (the sat nav gleefully announced, "continue for 26 miles")... my gosh this province is flat in places.
We made it to Vulcan. It was still raining. I spotted the space ship as we were pulling up to park. Sandra's reaction was less than enthusiastic, but I wasn't bothered. I've been wanting to see that space ship for at least a year, and to see it for real had me cackling hard. We spent a good while in Vulcan, then eventually drove out through miles and miles of nothing to the Okotoks "erratics" rocks, huge deposits from the Rockies, dragged there by glaciers lots and lots of years ago.
Then we finally drove back to Calgary. It was a complex journey back, involving U-turns and diversions as I tried to figure out the vagaries of the sat nav. Not helped by one of the major routes being blocked by an accident.
I congratulated myself on a job (or jobs) well done when we finally got back to the hotel. Considered we'd had a difficult day, and won through. Felt very pleased with myself. Then checked the Canada News www and found out the reason for one of the problems on the way back to the hotel:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/07/02/deerfoot-rollover.html
Kind of puts everything into perspective, really.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Day 3 - Canada Day
1st of July, every year, not matter what day it falls on, is a public holiday in Canada. And the whole country just parties. Except for those people reading the news... or working in restaurants... or... or...
Anyway, today we went over to Prince's Island in the Bow River where there were two main stages dealing out live music for most of the day. Most of it was pretty good, too... and it was free, anyway, so you can't complain too much. I even caught the sun. Everyone was sporting Canadian flags sticking out of caps, or their hair, or rucksacks... there were people just doling out these free flags everywhere. Even Mr. Gonk got one.
The first band on stage shouted out something along the lines of, "let's hear it for the best country in the world... CANADA!!!!", and there was a huge cheer. It made me wonder what would happen if someone shouted that out at a concert in England, "let's hear it for the best country in the world... ENGLAND!" They'd most likely be met with a chorus of raspberries or people tutting. Or is that just me being jaded?
After a day of live music and crap food, we came back to the hotel for a bit to freshen up, then wandered back into town for more music. But it wasn't really to our tastes, and you couldn't get in a pub anywhere to save your life, so we came back.
Just been adjusting our plans for tomorrow. We have to pick up our vehicle, and get the tickets for the Stampede, which is going to eat into our day a bit. So instead of Drumheller tomorrow, and Vulcan on Thursday, we're going to Vulcan tomorrow (we want to spend ages in the badlands and in the dinosaur museums of Drumheller). So tomorrow will be spaceship and driving arguments, woohoo!
Anyway, today we went over to Prince's Island in the Bow River where there were two main stages dealing out live music for most of the day. Most of it was pretty good, too... and it was free, anyway, so you can't complain too much. I even caught the sun. Everyone was sporting Canadian flags sticking out of caps, or their hair, or rucksacks... there were people just doling out these free flags everywhere. Even Mr. Gonk got one.
The first band on stage shouted out something along the lines of, "let's hear it for the best country in the world... CANADA!!!!", and there was a huge cheer. It made me wonder what would happen if someone shouted that out at a concert in England, "let's hear it for the best country in the world... ENGLAND!" They'd most likely be met with a chorus of raspberries or people tutting. Or is that just me being jaded?
After a day of live music and crap food, we came back to the hotel for a bit to freshen up, then wandered back into town for more music. But it wasn't really to our tastes, and you couldn't get in a pub anywhere to save your life, so we came back.
Just been adjusting our plans for tomorrow. We have to pick up our vehicle, and get the tickets for the Stampede, which is going to eat into our day a bit. So instead of Drumheller tomorrow, and Vulcan on Thursday, we're going to Vulcan tomorrow (we want to spend ages in the badlands and in the dinosaur museums of Drumheller). So tomorrow will be spaceship and driving arguments, woohoo!
Monday, 30 June 2008
Day 2 - If you don't like the weather in Alberta...
They say, "if you don't like the weather in Alberta, wait around 5 minutes and it'll change". In fact, walking back to the hotel today, I heard someone say exactly that.
And it's true.
Today we had glorious sunshine and 30C+ heat, then awesome thunder and lightening, then rain, then back to the 30C+ heat. Then more rain and thunder.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Today was always going to be about the Calgary Tower. It's the one thing that Sandra latched onto when I showed her pictures of Calgary. She really set her heart on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_Tower
It's 626 feet tall. There's an observation platform around 580 feet up. And I don't like heights. But what can you do? There's no point in flying 4000 miles and not going for it.
We queued for 2 hours and more. Why? Because Sandra wanted to go up it. And because we'd flown 4,000 miles, etc. In the last few yards before the lift, you get to the bit where you have to pay. I'd got it as about $25 for the two of us. No. There was no charge. Why? Because June 30, 2008, is the Tower's 40th anniversary, and admission was free. Well hey, that's gotta be worth it! So two hours of drudgery suddenly didn't seem too bad!
Stepping out of the lift at the top of the tower, for me, was kinda like a thump in the stomach. Looking down on buildings I'd only so far looked up at. But then... you can't travel 4000 miles, wait in a queue for over two hours, and then not stand on the transparent observation platform that reveals a sheer drop to the ground over 500 feet below... can you? (Check out the Flickr site to see whether I did it or not.)
Then we had some free food in the restaurant at the top of the tower, because they were just trying out some items off their new menu. Brilliant! A totally free and amazing experience.
After that we wandered around SE Calgary for a while, then stopped in a bar for a couple of beers (free Coke refills for Sandra, man alive today was a "free" day), before coming back to the hotel, getting changed, and going out for a meal (in the only Chinese restaurant I've ever been where they didn't give you chopsticks).
We're still fighting the jet lag a little (it's a bit mind-boggling to realise that, as we set down for breakfast, people in the UK are starting to think about finishing their working day). Sandra slept 14 hours last night, and still woke up feeling tired (that woman has a disease). She went to bed about an hour ago (about 10pm - or 5am body time), but I'm determined to stay up later to force my body into the new cycle.
Canada Day tomorrow, big parties and concerts on Prince's Island in the Bow River.
http://content.calgary.ca/CCA/City+Hall/Business+Units/Recreation/Events/Canada+Day+Celebrations/Canada+Day+Celebrations.htm
Free, you'll notice. Oh wow I love this country, they know how to have a good time.
And it's true.
Today we had glorious sunshine and 30C+ heat, then awesome thunder and lightening, then rain, then back to the 30C+ heat. Then more rain and thunder.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Today was always going to be about the Calgary Tower. It's the one thing that Sandra latched onto when I showed her pictures of Calgary. She really set her heart on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_Tower
It's 626 feet tall. There's an observation platform around 580 feet up. And I don't like heights. But what can you do? There's no point in flying 4000 miles and not going for it.
We queued for 2 hours and more. Why? Because Sandra wanted to go up it. And because we'd flown 4,000 miles, etc. In the last few yards before the lift, you get to the bit where you have to pay. I'd got it as about $25 for the two of us. No. There was no charge. Why? Because June 30, 2008, is the Tower's 40th anniversary, and admission was free. Well hey, that's gotta be worth it! So two hours of drudgery suddenly didn't seem too bad!
Stepping out of the lift at the top of the tower, for me, was kinda like a thump in the stomach. Looking down on buildings I'd only so far looked up at. But then... you can't travel 4000 miles, wait in a queue for over two hours, and then not stand on the transparent observation platform that reveals a sheer drop to the ground over 500 feet below... can you? (Check out the Flickr site to see whether I did it or not.)
Then we had some free food in the restaurant at the top of the tower, because they were just trying out some items off their new menu. Brilliant! A totally free and amazing experience.
After that we wandered around SE Calgary for a while, then stopped in a bar for a couple of beers (free Coke refills for Sandra, man alive today was a "free" day), before coming back to the hotel, getting changed, and going out for a meal (in the only Chinese restaurant I've ever been where they didn't give you chopsticks).
We're still fighting the jet lag a little (it's a bit mind-boggling to realise that, as we set down for breakfast, people in the UK are starting to think about finishing their working day). Sandra slept 14 hours last night, and still woke up feeling tired (that woman has a disease). She went to bed about an hour ago (about 10pm - or 5am body time), but I'm determined to stay up later to force my body into the new cycle.
Canada Day tomorrow, big parties and concerts on Prince's Island in the Bow River.
http://content.calgary.ca/CCA/City+Hall/Business+Units/Recreation/Events/Canada+Day+Celebrations/Canada+Day+Celebrations.htm
Free, you'll notice. Oh wow I love this country, they know how to have a good time.
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Day 1 - We're here, eh?
Tony picked us up as promised at 7am sharp - cheers, Toe - and we were checked in for our flight by 8:30. Then we tooled away the next two hours, and boarded on time... only to be told that there would be a slight delay while an engineer "fixed a problem with one of the engines". Now why don't they lie about stuff like that? The last thing I want to be thinking of, as we hurtle down the runway, is that half an hour before some grease monkey was doing a codge job on one of the engines. Could they just say he was fixing the windscreen wipers or something?
So we were an hour and a half late setting off. The flight was okay. 2.5 hours of looking down at cloud, then we hit the edge of Greenland (not literally)... mile after mile of jagged mountains sticking up through the snow like broken teeth; an awful yet fascinating land. This then petered out into flat plains of snow, then hour after hour of ice-packed sea. Then finally mainland Canada; the captain said we were flying in over Churchill, Manitoba (where the Polar Bears are), then over Saskatoon, then down to Calgary. The first hour or so of Canada - the Manitoba/Saskatchewan part - was just lake/swamp/lake/swamp (check it out on Google maps), and then we came in over the boreal forests of Alberta. You could almost see a line drawn on the ground where the forests became the prairies; suddenly this patchwork of square (or mostly square) fields appeared... mile after mile of them, as far as the eye could see, a seemingly unending carpet of flatness. And finally, after over 7 hours of flying, a road. Then another road. Then more nothing. Then a few more roads. Then, as we neared the centres of civilisation, you could see the roads criss-crossing like a massive noughts and crosses board. But it wasn't until we were on the last stages of our descent into Calgary that you actually saw any vehicles on those roads. It really brought home how awesomely empty the majority of this vast country is.
So we landed at 2pm local time, 9pm body time. The "White Hatters" at the airport welcomed Sandra with, "she's smiling, she must be a Spain fan" (Spain having just beaten Germany 1-0 in Euro 2008). We got our luggage, caught a taxi to the hotel, and were unpacked for 3:30.
Then we went for a bit of a wander around. Two things struck us straight away: (1) it's very clean and new-looking, and (2) it's very, very quiet. Yes, it's Sunday, and yes places are closed for the Canada Day weekend, but good grief, this is the biggest city in Alberta! We eventually came upon the Bow River, which separates downtown Calgary from... erm... the other part of Calgary, and walked along that a ways in the 30C heat (it's gorgeous weather today). Then we found an authentic Canadian Mexican restaurant (cough), ate half of the biggest plate of nachos I've ever seen, realised our body clocks thought it was now 1am, and decided to return to the room.
So far I've been walking around with a big goofy smile on my face. When we were driving in from the airport and I saw Calgary from a distance, I stupidly thought, "my gosh, it's just like on the internet!". To see something for real that I've only seen pictures of for 12 months is an awesome experience.
Everyone has been telling us that Canadians are a friendly bunch of people, and my experience so far hasn't contradicted that. The White Hatters at the airport, the guy on passport control, the taxi driver, the hotel staff, the girl who served us in the restaurant (I asked her what the city's plans were for Canada Day celebrations, she said, "oh mostly we just party")... they've all been really friendly.
My body is now telling me that it's 2am. I'm trying to stay awake as long as I can to counteract the jet lag, as it's only 6pm here (Sandra just gave up and went to bed... the bed is huge, the room is huge, I love this hotel).
I'm just gonna update the Flickr website with some pics I took today as we were walking around. Click on the link at the bottom of this blog to view them.
So we were an hour and a half late setting off. The flight was okay. 2.5 hours of looking down at cloud, then we hit the edge of Greenland (not literally)... mile after mile of jagged mountains sticking up through the snow like broken teeth; an awful yet fascinating land. This then petered out into flat plains of snow, then hour after hour of ice-packed sea. Then finally mainland Canada; the captain said we were flying in over Churchill, Manitoba (where the Polar Bears are), then over Saskatoon, then down to Calgary. The first hour or so of Canada - the Manitoba/Saskatchewan part - was just lake/swamp/lake/swamp (check it out on Google maps), and then we came in over the boreal forests of Alberta. You could almost see a line drawn on the ground where the forests became the prairies; suddenly this patchwork of square (or mostly square) fields appeared... mile after mile of them, as far as the eye could see, a seemingly unending carpet of flatness. And finally, after over 7 hours of flying, a road. Then another road. Then more nothing. Then a few more roads. Then, as we neared the centres of civilisation, you could see the roads criss-crossing like a massive noughts and crosses board. But it wasn't until we were on the last stages of our descent into Calgary that you actually saw any vehicles on those roads. It really brought home how awesomely empty the majority of this vast country is.
So we landed at 2pm local time, 9pm body time. The "White Hatters" at the airport welcomed Sandra with, "she's smiling, she must be a Spain fan" (Spain having just beaten Germany 1-0 in Euro 2008). We got our luggage, caught a taxi to the hotel, and were unpacked for 3:30.
Then we went for a bit of a wander around. Two things struck us straight away: (1) it's very clean and new-looking, and (2) it's very, very quiet. Yes, it's Sunday, and yes places are closed for the Canada Day weekend, but good grief, this is the biggest city in Alberta! We eventually came upon the Bow River, which separates downtown Calgary from... erm... the other part of Calgary, and walked along that a ways in the 30C heat (it's gorgeous weather today). Then we found an authentic Canadian Mexican restaurant (cough), ate half of the biggest plate of nachos I've ever seen, realised our body clocks thought it was now 1am, and decided to return to the room.
So far I've been walking around with a big goofy smile on my face. When we were driving in from the airport and I saw Calgary from a distance, I stupidly thought, "my gosh, it's just like on the internet!". To see something for real that I've only seen pictures of for 12 months is an awesome experience.
Everyone has been telling us that Canadians are a friendly bunch of people, and my experience so far hasn't contradicted that. The White Hatters at the airport, the guy on passport control, the taxi driver, the hotel staff, the girl who served us in the restaurant (I asked her what the city's plans were for Canada Day celebrations, she said, "oh mostly we just party")... they've all been really friendly.
My body is now telling me that it's 2am. I'm trying to stay awake as long as I can to counteract the jet lag, as it's only 6pm here (Sandra just gave up and went to bed... the bed is huge, the room is huge, I love this hotel).
I'm just gonna update the Flickr website with some pics I took today as we were walking around. Click on the link at the bottom of this blog to view them.
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Ready
Mmmkay, all packed (mostly by Sandra), got all my techno gear, cameras and whatnot packed too. Got all the leads and extensions and USB stuff and chargers and my laptop and all that great stuff sorted out. The "blokey-bloke" stuff.
Haha got the gonk too.
Kinda nervous to be honest. I was reading some old emails today I'd sent to my mate Jeff when we first started talking about holidays in Canada. We were discussing various aspects of the trips we were going to make (this was before he ended up having to cancel his plans). Our flight was booked in August last year. I booked our tickets to the Calgary Stampede, as well as our hotel in Calgary, in September. This whole undertaking has been the best part of a year in the planning, and now here we are, just a few hours away from my mate Tony picking us up and taking us to the airport.
In fact... this time tomorrow, we will be landing at Calgary.
It's an awesome thought, and I'm quite daunted by it. It's unreal. All the places I've read about, all the things I've researched, it's all just 24 hours away.
I hope it all comes together. She'll kill me if it doesn't.
You can track the weather where we are from here:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/caab0049
And you can track the roads we'll be travelling on from here:
http://www.ama.ab.ca/road_report/camera/camera_station_main.htm
Next update will be from The Great White North!
Haha got the gonk too.
Kinda nervous to be honest. I was reading some old emails today I'd sent to my mate Jeff when we first started talking about holidays in Canada. We were discussing various aspects of the trips we were going to make (this was before he ended up having to cancel his plans). Our flight was booked in August last year. I booked our tickets to the Calgary Stampede, as well as our hotel in Calgary, in September. This whole undertaking has been the best part of a year in the planning, and now here we are, just a few hours away from my mate Tony picking us up and taking us to the airport.
In fact... this time tomorrow, we will be landing at Calgary.
It's an awesome thought, and I'm quite daunted by it. It's unreal. All the places I've read about, all the things I've researched, it's all just 24 hours away.
I hope it all comes together. She'll kill me if it doesn't.
You can track the weather where we are from here:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/caab0049
And you can track the roads we'll be travelling on from here:
http://www.ama.ab.ca/road_report/camera/camera_station_main.htm
Next update will be from The Great White North!
Monday, 23 June 2008
All falling together
When I started planning this holiday, I realised that there were a lot of festivals going on in Alberta about the time we would be there. So I worked the dates and the itinerary around these festivals, trying to hit as many of them as (a) I could, and (b) was sensible. I'd booked everything over the internet with the exception of tickets to the PeaceFest in Peace River. We were half and half about getting tickets to this, because it's going to be at the end of an extremely long day's driving (our longest day's driving, actually, approx 7.5 hours, not including stops to dig moose out of the front of our vehicle). But it works out at £20 per ticket each, and in the scheme of things that's not so much.
The only way to get the tickets seemed to be to phone up, and I don't like phoning people up. But then I dug around on the PeaceFest www, and found an email address. I dropped them a mail, and bingo, tickets booked! And they're helpfully going to drop the tickets off at our hotel for us, rather than having to post them to England.
So it's all coming together, that's the last thing booked and sorted. This time next week...
The only way to get the tickets seemed to be to phone up, and I don't like phoning people up. But then I dug around on the PeaceFest www, and found an email address. I dropped them a mail, and bingo, tickets booked! And they're helpfully going to drop the tickets off at our hotel for us, rather than having to post them to England.
So it's all coming together, that's the last thing booked and sorted. This time next week...
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Dave and Sandra's "Big Things In Alberta" Tour 2008 - A week to go...
I've been bleating on about this holiday to Canada for almost a year now, and I thought I'd bored everybody witless with it. However, a number of people have asked if I'm going to be putting pictures and whatnot up on the interweb as we travel around, and also asking if I'll be keeping them up to date with our progress. So I thought I'd give it a shot, and set up this blog (ordinarily I hate blogs, but I won't hate this blog cos it's mine, it'll be ace and way better than anyone else's blog).
I've also got a picture site set up, so if you click on this link here:
you will see pictures as and when I load them up (careful because it doesn't open up a new window). I should probably be more joined up in my blog/picture arena, but I'm doing all this last minute so it's a bit pants, sorry.
Anyway, the plan is almost 3 weeks in Alberta, Canada. We fly to Calgary, spend a few days there, with day trips to Drumheller and Vulcan. Then we start our tour in earnest, heading to Medicine Hat, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Canmore (where we are going to be based for a few days, taking in Banff, Lake Louise, etc), Jasper, then all the way up to Peace River, back down to Edmonton, and finally back to Calgary. We'll be hitting four different festivals - Canada Day, the Calgary Stampede, Peace River PeaceFest and Edmonton's Capital Ex (formerly known as Klondike Days). Not to mention the "Oh Canada, eh?" show in Canmore. We'll be travelling in excess of 1500 miles, and stopping in 8 different hotels.
I have a list of "big things to see in Alberta" as long as my arm, and I'll be ticking them off as we go (much to Sandra's consternation, I'm sure). These include the T-Rex in Drumheller, the spaceship in Vulcan, a giant boot, a giant pinto bean, a huge bee, the biggest teepee in the world, and Henry "12 foot" Davis.
It's gonna be mint.
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