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.

Jazz Festival

Last Saturday Ben and I met up with Shonna at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival for a few hours. We sat in on a free performance by The Unsupervised, which was pretty strange... but not as weird as some of the "music" Shonna had already witnessed before we arrived, apparently! And we ate a disgusting (in my opinion, re the concept not the taste) huge bucket of chips with gravy and cheese, a delicacy known as "poutine". Then we sat on a blanket and listened to an open air performance by a South American group (salsa type music), which was definitely the best music we heard there!

The most exciting thing we witnessed was a long-haired guy getting escorted off the field by two security guards, but then trying to make a run for it, struggling with the security guards in a pile-up on the ground, some random guys from the audience joining the fray to help the guards, audience members filming and taking photos and being told not to by other audience members, someone calling the police, the guy eventually ending up face-down in the dirt and shouting "help, help", an off-duty policeman from the audience reading him his rights from a little card, and then two police officers arriving, handcuffing him, and leading him away. By the way, this all happened about 5 metres away from our blanket; we kind of forgot about the music for a while...

Here are the photos of the festival!

Canada Day

Last Wednesday, July 1st, was a public holiday for Canada Day. This day celebrates the July 1st 1867 joining together of four provinces into a single country, Canada. The variety of ways in which it is celebrated are very similar to Australia Day celebrations - BBQs, parades, concerts, fireworks, citizenship ceremonies etc.

For Canada Day, we had brunch in a park at Peace Arch, by the Canada-US border. This is about 40 minutes' drive from where we live. The most dramatic incident of the day occurred when, instead of parking on the road beside the Duty Free shop, we pulled into its carpark. Due to various barricades, we were unable to drive back out, and instead had to join the 90-minute line-up of cars waiting to cross the border into the USA (and without our passports too!). The line-up happened to be very close to the park where our friends were setting up the BBQ, so Lisa and I went over and joined them, and a few others went over to provide advice to Ben!! Here's Ben in line...


And here's the eventual solution - driving over the curb and parking on the grass beside the border queue, and later driving across the grass to the proper carpark!


For brunch, we enjoyed pancakes, waffles, strawberries, blueberries, whipped cream, maple syrup, bacon, sausages and eggs. Yummy!!

Cooks at work...


Digging in to the tucker...


Taking it easy...


Playing bocce (a game like boules), which the kids from a neighbouring BBQ quite enjoyed too!!...


Before leaving, we walked over to the nearby Peace Arch (which the area is named after) - this stands on the border of the US and Canada, with a space of "no man's land" on either side. We didn't go over to the US side, but from others' photos I can tell you that the US side of the arch says "Children of a common mother". The Canada side says "Brethren dwelling together in unity". Each side also had an awesome flower garden forming that country's flag. Here we are in front of the Canadian flag garden (the photographer didn't quite manage to capture Ben and I in midair...):


Happy Canada Day!

Berry bliss

Last Saturday, we went to a "work day" (aka preps) at the nearest convention grounds, 45 minutes' drive from where we live. This was a working bee specifically for people from our area. It was great to meet some more locals and see the grounds where we'll be going mid August.

Ben was working in the dorms and doing some construction on a shed. Lisa and I started off cleaning things in the nursery and then were given the fun task of stuffing foam cushions and mats (apparently called "ticks") into cotton cases that were only just big enough for them. Shonna and Janelle were doing the same with mattresses next to us, which was highly entertaining! By lunch time most of the jobs were finished, so after lunch we ended up with lots of ladies helping with the tick stuffing, and it was done in no time and with lots of hilarity. It was a very enjoyable day!

On the way home, we stopped at Krause Berry Farm in Langley with Lisa, Angharad, Shonna and Juanita. It was a gorgeous day and lots of people were out picking their own strawberries. We were not so energetic, but the others bought some pre-picked berries and other goodies, and we all enjoyed some berry smoothies and shakes on "The Porch"...


Juanita's take-home berry and custard pie - something the farm seems rather famous for...


Lisa's berry burger...