Alberta road trip, Post 5: Kananaskis to Red Deer

On Thursday, our only plan was to reach Red Deer by 5 or 6pm. There, we had arranged to stay 3 nights with my grade 1 teacher, Linda. She came to Australia on a 1-year teacher exchange in 1990, and has stayed in contact with my family and I ever since - including visiting us in Dalby when I was 13. So, this was to be a very exciting day, but I'll start at the beginning...

After moving out of our tipi, we drove into Kananaskis Village for breakfast. Check out the photo below of the "Warning: Bear in Area" signs we saw on the way! After this, we still had a few hours to fill in, so we stopped in at an activity ranch we came across, where they had a restaurant, shop, trail rides, teepee, busload of tourists, etc.





In the shop there, we found a book about hikes to do in the local area, so we decided to do a short one. This ended up to be quite an anti-climax, as the walk was about 50m and the beautiful pond we'd hoped to find looked more like an Aussie dam during a drought! But I did get to see some cute little red flowers up close, having zoomed past thousands of them since entering Alberta. (Anyone know what they are? I thought they were wild roses since Alberta is "Wild Rose Country", but just discovered they aren't.)





A little later, we stopped in at a university forestry research centre and did their Forest Ecology Loop walk. This was a very pleasant meander during which we didn't see a single other person. But we did see squirrels, chipmunks, and a variety of colourful flowers. We also tried to remember to make lots of noise (as advised) to warn bears of our approach!







In the afternoon, we stopped in Calgary to quench our thirst at A&W (a burger chain), where I had my very first A&W Root Beer Float, an essential Canadian experience. "Root beer" is the softdrink we call "sars" in Australia. So mine had a big chunk of vanilla ice cream in it. Very yummy! Our car had no air conditioning and the weather during this trip was around 30 degrees, so after this refreshing break we felt able to continue. :)



This is when the carefully laid plans of Byrds and men started to go astray. As we left Calgary for the final 1.5 hours to Red Deer, our [previously] trusty Focus started complaining mightily. In fact, it spluttered and conked, demanded that Ben push it to the edge of the highway, and then insisted that we sit there for a while so it could enjoy a little sulk. After a few minutes, we continued on our way. Then it happened again. And then again. No apparent overheating, still a quarter of a tank of fuel... we had no idea what the problem was.

To cut a long story short, we called Linda to warn her we might be late, and by the time we called her again in half an hour as agreed, with the good news that we were still making progress, she had called a friend of hers and they had already made towing arrangements and were about to come and get us!! But in the end we made it all the way to her house, although after 100 kms of driving fine, the car did stall twice more in the final 25 kms. That evening we dropped the car off at a mechanic in Red Deer and settled in for a few great days with Linda.

(Due to the car issues, our 3-night stay turned into a 5-night stay and we now have a new (to us) car, but more on that later!!)

Here's a photo of our first night in Red Deer: dinner at Earls Restaurant with Linda...



Next post: dinosaurs and hoo doos!

To view our Alberta road trip photo album in Picasa:
Click here to go to the album overview page.
Click here to start the slideshow where this blog post begins (Thursday).

Alberta road trip, Post 4: Icefields Parkway

We've just returned today from a wonderful 4 nights in Las Vegas, Nevada, but I have a lot more to get you up to date on before I can start telling you about it! We have also just signed up to pay Google a small annual fee to increase our photo/video storage limit for the blog, as we had reached 100%. Our new limit is 10 times as much as we have used in the last 2 years!!!

On Wednesday, we drove the 340 km from Jasper to Kananaskis... along the 230 km of the Icefields Parkway through Jasper National Park and Banff National Park, and on into Kananaskis Country south of the Rockies. This was an incredible drive with stunning scenery, frequent wildlife sightings, and the opportunity to see places I have been hearing about for years. I had heard about Banff and Lake Louise from my Canadian grade 1 teacher (who will shortly feature on this blog!), and Ben had done most of this drive when he lived in Canada 6 years ago.


The most exciting and memorable moment of the day was definitely our first ever wild bear sighting! As we were driving along a straight stretch of highway, speed limit 90 km/hr, we noticed a brown furry thing in the grass beside the road, just as we passed it. We quickly realised it was a bear, which then started crossing the road, and as Ben turned the car around and drove slowly back towards it, I thrust the camera out of the window and took the following shot:


I got a few other photos as well, but this was the best one as the bear quickly reached the edge of the road. We were very excited to see a bear AND be the first ones on the scene! (The oncoming car in the photo had cameras poking out its windows by the time it got level with us.) Getting this photo actually turned out to be quite a saga, as that evening when I transferred my photos onto my laptop, I discovered that 60 photos from Wednesday morning had disappeared off my camera for an unknown reason. Over the next two days, Ben downloaded and ran photo recovery programs from the Internet until he was eventually able to recover this precious photo and the others as well. Thank goodness for a geeky husband!!! :D

We also saw two more bears - black ones - later on in the day, but these we found because both times we came across a crowd of cars and camera-wielding tourists lining the sides of the road. Yes, this is exactly what all the brochures say NOT to do. But we figured that with only one bear and so many people, chances are we could outrun at least one of the others should it come to that... ;) Kidding!! The bears were both a way back in the trees and seemed completely oblivious to their audience. But our first bear sighting was by far the highlight.


Around the middle of the Icefields Parkway, where Jasper National Park connects up with Banff National Park, is the Columbia Icefield. The icefield has eight glaciers, and the Athabasca Glacier is the one in the photo below (it's the sweep of ice down the middle), as seen from the highway. In summer, tourists can take a tour over it in a "snow coach", a funny-looking raised bus with huge tyres. Ben actually did the tour 6 years ago, but we didn't do it on this trip - just took a couple of photos and drove on. It's a pretty impressive chunk of ice though, even though it's receding! Look for the people and cars at the bottom of the photo below for a sense of scale.


Our main non-driving activity of the day was a short hike up to Bow Summit to see down over Lake Peyto, which Megan and Justin had just done and recommended to us. What a view!!!


We also stopped briefly at Lake Louise, which was quite crowded and we didn't stay long. It was very pretty though! Near the lake we saw a number of relatively tame squirrels and chipmunks, and this was another highlight of the day for me! I had never seen a chipmunk before and I have decided that I love them even more than I love squirrels (which is really saying something). They are only about half the size of a squirrel, with stripes along their bodies, and they are so soooooo adorable!!!!! My photo of a chipmunk is not that great, so if you are keen on sweet tiny creatures, click here to see a really cute photo courtesy of Wikipedia. :)


After lunch at a Mexican cantina in Banff, we reached Kananaskis Country mid-afternoon. We stopped for a while at a pretty lake, and in the late afternoon we checked in to our accommodation for the night, which was... a teepee!!! Yes, we stayed in a large (4-person) "tipi" at Sundance Lodges and Campground near Kananaskis Village - they also have trappers' tents and 2-person tipis, but didn't have the latter available when I booked.


Staying in a tipi was quite fun! It had wooden floorboards, four beds with plastic-coated mattresses (we had our sleeping bags and pillows), a gas lamp, and a kerosene heater. Our tipi was in its own little clearing, a short distance from the neighbouring campsites and surrounded by trees. We were given precise instructions on the precautions to take to ensure bears would not come knocking (i.e. lock food and toiletries in car, NOT in tent - in fact, there was no way to lock or even secure the tent flap!). That night we went to sleep unusually early, slept very soundly, and were not troubled by any bears. :)

CLICK HERE to view our Alberta road trip photos.

Alberta road trip, Post 3: Edmonton and Jasper

On Monday we had a big sleep-in, and in the afternoon the four of us went to the West Edmonton Mall. At the time I thought it was the world's largest mall, but have just discovered via Wikipedia that it lost that title in 2004 and is now only the fifth largest! Anyway, it is certainly rather sizeable: over 6 million square feet... more than 800 stores... and parking for 20 000+ vehicles!

First we went to Galaxyland, which is the mall's amusement park and home to the world's largest indoor triple-loop rollercoaster. I was coerced into going on this rollercoaster by peer pressure. :P After the first 10 seconds (during which the carriage climbed right up to the roof), I didn't open my eyes until the ride was over! But I was happy afterwards that I could say I'd been on it. :) (Having since discovered that three people were killed when it came off the track in the mid-80s, I am extremely glad I did not know that before going on it!!!)



We must have only seen a small corner of the mall, but we came across an ice skating rink, waterpark with wave pool and bungy jumping, pirate ship, seal show, lagoon with motorised tire tubes for rent, a section with European-style storefronts, and a Chinatown area!





We didn't spend much time actually shopping at the mall, and our only purchase was a pink frisbee ring!

That night Justin and Ben whipped up a delicious roast lamb dinner, and while it cooked we tried out the frisbee ring in the park across from Megan and Justin's house. The ring spent about half of the time either hiding in the bushes or dangling from trees. Luckily we'd had the foresight to buy a pink one!!





The following afternoon, Tuesday, Ben and I left Edmonton, "City of Champions" (yes, that's really on the welcome sign...) and set off on our 4-hour drive to Jasper, the main town in Jasper National Park. It was another beautiful drive with rugged mountains on either side of us. Jasper is at the top end of the Icefields Parkway, the scenic drive we were going to do the next day.



That night we stayed at a B&B and ate dinner at a restaurant recommended to us by our host. Very yummy! Afterwards we had a little wander along Jasper's main street, and this is where I met my first bear (...but there'll be real ones in the next blog entry!!).







To be continued...

CLICK HERE to view our Alberta road trip photos.

Alberta road trip, Post 2: Calgary Stampede and High River

**Please read the important note at the end of Alberta road trip, Post 1 about our new way of sharing our travel photos.**

On Saturday morning, after quite a sleep-in, the four of us eventually emerged and set off around lunchtime on the 3-hour drive to the Calgary Stampede. We didn't have directions to the actual location, which turned out to be a bit of an oversight. You'd think they'd have lots of signs to it...

Anyway, we eventually found the Stampede grounds, which are actually right in the city centre of Calgary! By this time it was around 4pm. For those of you not exactly sure what the Calgary Stampede is, here is Wikipedia's definition: The Calgary Stampede, which bills itself as The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, is a large festival, exhibition, and rodeo held in Calgary, Alberta for 10 days every summer from early to mid-July, attracting more than 1.2 million visitors. It is one of Canada's largest annual events, and the world's largest outdoor rodeo.

The rodeo is held daily at 1:30pm, and each evening there are chuckwagon races and the Grandstand Show. It was the latter two we had purchased tickets for online, so more about that in a minute. As soon as we'd entered the grounds, one of the first things we stumbled across was the last two songs of a performance by The Lost Fingers, a band Ben had coincidentally heard of earlier that week and really liked, without knowing they would be at the Stampede!



After this, we spent a while wandering around the Stampede Park - the midway with food stands, rides, etc, and a large pavilion full of vendor stalls. Ben and I each got a new hat of the variety that meant we fit right in with the rest of the Stampede-goers! We ate some Stampede food and watched a very amusing hypnotist show.





By 7:45pm, we were in our seats high up in the huge Grandstand, looking down over the racetrack and the much smaller grandstand on the other side. The event began with the playing of the national anthem, "O Canada", by a smart red-and-white marching band, while a helicopter circled overhead with a very large Canadian flag. I took a video of the second half of this that gives me goosebumps - click here to view it in YouTube. You can see the line of distinguished guests standing in front of the band, including four First Nations elders (Canada's native people - wearing the Indian headdresses) and an Indian princess (in blue).



Then, it was time for the chuckwagon race heats to begin. From Wikipedia: "a chuckwagon was originally a wagon that carried food and cooking equipment on the prairies of the US and Canada". Since it took me a few race heats to figure out what was actually going on, here's a description from Wikipedia as to what happens during a chuckwagon race:

Chuckwagon racing is a team event, led by a driver who commands a team of horses pulling the chuckwagon, and is supported by four outriders—each racing individual thoroughbred horses that follow the chuckwagon. Each race typically involves four teams, and begins with the outriders "breaking camp", by tossing two tent poles and a barrel representing a camp stove into the back of their wagon before mounting their horses and following the wagons as they complete a figure eight around two barrels before circling a race track. The first wagon to cross the finish line typically wins, although various time penalties are handed out if a barrel is knocked over, a tent pole or stove is not loaded, or an outrider crosses the finish line too far behind his wagon driver.







It's actually quite a fun and fast-paced sport to watch! Click here to see a video of the start of heat 6 - look out for team 2 knocking over a barrel, and one of team 4's outriders getting left behind!

After the chuckwagon races were over, it was time for the Grandstand Show (after waiting 40 minutes or so for the massive stage to be set up right on the above track!). Well... the Grandstand Show was something very hard to describe to you in words. It was an incredible spectacle featuring, at various times during the show, hundreds of children/ teenagers singing and dancing, a couple of famous Canadian singers, a Montreal comedian called Sugar Sammy, four motorbikes jumping over the stage and turning somersaults in mid-air, dancers, gymnasts, acrobats, aerial stunts above the stage/ audience, fireworks, and much more. It was AWESOME!!



Click here for a video of the motorbikes (unfortunately I didn't capture their finale, where all four of them went in quick succession and were all in mid-air at the same time!).
Click here for a video of fireworks during the song "This Is The Big Show".
Click here for a video of the aerial stunts near the end of the show.

It was after midnight by the time the show finished and we left the Stampede. Megan and Justin had previously arranged for us to stay with a Canadian friend, Karla, who had once stayed with them in NZ. However, her plans had changed, so she had given them the phone number of another couple whom none of us had met (or so we thought...). They had told Justin to call them when we left the Stampede, and they would tell us how to get to their place.

Well, it turned out that they lived almost an hour south, in the town of High River. And so they wouldn't have to get up when we arrived at 1am, they left the front door unlocked and told us to go downstairs and make ourselves at home. So there we were, sneaking into a house in the middle of the night, hoping it was the right place, and curling up in the beds we found!!!

In the morning, we woke up and met our hosts, Roscoe and Janessa and their baby girl, Brianne. We then realised that (a) Megan and Janessa had met in Wollongoong 5 years ago when Janessa was travelling in Australia, and (b) Roscoe's aunt Kathy was one of the two workers who took Ben and I around Barcelona before we left on our cruise in November!!!

So, we went to their meeting with them (conversations afterwards included: "so you know Roscoe and Janessa then?", "well, we just met them this morning", "oh, I thought you stayed with them", "yes, we did"...!), and then had lunch back at their place with another of their friends, Curtis.





We were having so much fun that we also decided to stay for dinner, and they kindly cooked us real Aussie-style burgers (beetroot, pineapple and egg on burgers is unheard of over here). Then we went around to Karla's house for dessert, and met a whole contingent of local young people... and some from closer to home: Tyler M and his bro (have forgotten his name) from Brisbane!!

Then, we drove the 3 hours back to Edmonton, so it was our third consecutive post-2am night. What a fantastic weekend!!!

*Credit goes to Megan for the photos of the Stampede track and stage used in this blog entry - her zoom's way better than mine!

CLICK HERE to view our Alberta road trip photos.

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!