Alberta road trip, Post 1: Burnaby to Edmonton

**Please read the important note at the end of this post about our new way of sharing our travel photos.**

Our 12-day Alberta road trip started after we finished work on Thursday, 9th July. That evening, we drove the 5 hours from Burnaby to Sicamous, BC, where we stayed in a gorgeous B&B beside Shuswap Lake (Shuswap is pronounced like "shoe swap"). Already this was further away from home than we had yet been since arriving in Canada in January!

Our bedroom at The Artist's House B&B perched practically on top of the train line that runs alongside the Shuswap shoreline. It was dark by the time we arrived, but on Friday morning we awoke to an amazing panoramic view of the lake... pine-covered mountains rising out of the water, their tips hidden by fluffy white clouds, and a convoy of houseboats making their way across the picture.

After a scrumptious breakfast of apple pancakes with assorted fruit, conversation with the other couple who'd stayed overnight, and a tour by the proprietor of her artwork around the house, we set off to drive the remaining 9 hours to Edmonton, Alberta. We were headed to Megan and Justin's new place of residence, which they'd just arrived at a few days earlier after roadtripping through the US since leaving our place in May.

On the way, still in BC, we stopped at The Last Spike. This is where, in 1885, the final spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven in. The site has explanatory signs, a stone monument, a painting of the event, a red caboose, and a gift shop.



The scenery on this drive was incredibly beautiful. As we got closer to the BC-Alberta border, the mountains got rockier and there was still snow on top of many. After crossing into Alberta, we entered Banff National Park and drove along part of the 230km-long Icefields Parkway, the scenic Rocky Mountains drive that travels through Jasper National Park and Banff National Park. We were to spend a day enjoying this drive in full later in our trip. On this day, we paid a $20 national park day entry fee (toll), but later upgraded this to a $136 annual pass.

Along the way, we passed some brilliant turquoise lakes, and stopped to take photos at one of them, Bow Lake...



After we left the national park and headed further north, the landscape became flatter and we saw many small towns, farms, oil wells, and wooden barns. I am quite a fan of rickety old wooden barns and have seen many since arriving in Canada and the US, but am not usually able to get a good photo of one. However, I did manage to this day...

We arrived at Megan and Justin's house sometime around 9:30pm (Alberta being an hour later than BC), and were met by their house exchange lady, Sharon, who had not yet left for NZ, and her friend Des. After sitting around chatting to them for a while, we stayed up incredibly late with Megan and Justin, doing online personality tests and generally having a fantastic time! The next day, it was STAMPEDE TIME...

**Important note about photos**

We are going to trial a new way of sharing photos with you. The above photos are only a sample of the best photos from our trip, and I have uploaded the rest to the website Picasa. In each blog entry, I will provide the link to the photo album on Picasa, so that if you are interested in seeing the full selection of photos, you can look through them without the interruption of reading paragraphs of writing or having the photos enlarge bigger than your screen when you click on them.

So, when you click the below link, the "Alberta road trip" album will immediately open up in Slideshow mode. You can either press the "Play" button to sit back and enjoy the show (you can select how many seconds you want each photo to linger for), OR use the arrows to click through the photos at your own pace. Either way, we definitely recommend using Slideshow mode, as then the photos are just the right size (or you can press F11 to enter and exit full-screen viewing). However, you can exit Slideshow mode to see an overview of the album and/or leave comments on individual photos if you so desire.

The other thing to note is that up to 500 photos can fit in each album, so ALL of our Alberta trip photos will be accessed via the same link. I have already uploaded the photos from the next three days after where this blog entry leaves off, so if you are viewing them before I continue writing about the trip... happy sneak peeking!

We hope you enjoy this new way of viewing our travel photos, and look forward to your feedback. If you experience any problems, PLEASE let us know. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

CLICK HERE to view our Alberta road trip photos.