Western Canada

Soon after crossing the border into Alberta, Canada, we detoured to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the foothills of the Rockies (based on a recommendation from a friend).  For almost 5500 years, prior to the development of the bow and arrow, the ancestors of the Blackfoot Indians drove herds of buffalo over these cliffs in order to harvest the meat, hides, marrow and bones they needed to survive the winter months. 

The tribe would create drive lanes approximately 2 miles long with rocks and bushes that they then used to funnel the herd toward the cliff edge.  They would scare the herd into those drive lanes, strategically ‘chasing’ them wearing wolf skins, creating a stampede that forced the front of the herd over the cliff.  Those buffalo that weren’t killed in the fall, were clubbed to death by other members of the tribe at the bottom of the cliff. (The area apparently got its name not because the buffalo’s head was smashed in but because one year a younger member of the tribe wanted to watch a herd come over the cliff and was killed when the buffalo landed on him.  Possibly the first ever winner of a Darwin award??)

The visitor center was very well done with an entertaining and informative video.  The cliff itself was a lot less impressive.  It was originally 60 or so feet high but today the cumulative bones and other deposits are almost 40 feet deep. (If you don’t happen to get to the area, this method of hunting is well represented in the movie Alpha)

Our first ‘camping’ destination was Calgary, civilization after weeks of being in nature.  It was nice to be in a city with a movie theater and a decent grocery store, though it took three tries to figure out which one was best (Real Canadian Superstore in case you’re wondering).  On Saturday, we went downtown and rode our bikes around to see the main sights.  There were tons of people hanging out in the parks and at sidewalk café/bars. We saw groups of people doing a costume scavenger hunt, as well as a group of protestors carrying signs calling for Trudeau’s arrest for treason.  Bill talked to one of the guys who hated Trudeau but loves Trump, I guess the US does not have an exclusive on political nuts.  We were there for Canada Day, July 1^st, but we skipped the fireworks after a storm blew up that afternoon that tore the awning off of our neighbor’s RV as we watched.  All the storm clouds made fireworks difficult but more important to us is that it wasn’t getting dark here till almost 11pm, seriously it is still light till then.  That is a little late for us old fogies to be heading out for some entertainment.

The main reason we were here was to attend the Calgary Stampede, which is basically like the Texas State Fair (locally they call it the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth).  The Stampede is very western themed with the main entertainment being a huge week-long rodeo where pretty much everyone, except Bill, was wearing boots and cowboy hats (Although I obviously look good in a cowboy hat, I didn’t think it went with my running shoes and I definitely wasn’t going to buy cowboy boots that I’d only where once!). Those things are expensive!).  We went to the rodeo, which was awesome and watched nine different events including bull riding, bareback and saddled bronc riding, cattle roping, herding and finally groups of three kids being dragged around the muddy arena by a mini horse.  As expected they had every kind of crazy fried food they could dream up, I’m not very adventurous when it comes to food but we had good BBQ, corny dogs, and funnel cake. 

Two days later we came back for the Derby & Grandstand Show.  We watched chuck-wagon races, covered wagons pulled by a team of four horses, followed by Indian relay races, where the riders quickly changed horses after each lap. Sadly, we later learned six horses died this year in the chuck-wagon races, so there is some question about whether or not they will continue in the future.

After the races, there was a great variety show performed by 109 young Canadians that sang and danced in some awesome costumes, along with some aerial and laser entertainers, ending in a huge firework display.  There were also a variety of other free entertainment options and we saw a performance by Light Balance, a dance group that perform in the dark wearing LED suits (they came in 3^rd on America’s Got Talent in 2017), motocross, several buskers and a marching band competition.  We enjoyed all of it in spite of the chilly gray weather that threatened to rain on us both days. 

We don’t normally do this but we bought the Alberta Pass (usually the discount isn’t that great and only occurs if you go to several of the sites and we don’t like to be locked down), that allowed us to go to several tourist destinations for one fee.  One of these was Lougheed House, a mansion downtown with gardens.  The house was a major bust but the small garden was nice.  Another option was the Royal Tyrell Museum, about 100 miles east of Calgary, in the middle of nowhere, so with the continued crappy weather, we decided to make the long drive. In spite of the location, the place was packed! (I thought it was located out here because this was where the fossils were found but Dessa discovered this museum was put in the middle of nowhere thanks to a Federal and Provincial government regional development program. Frustrating but it seems to be working) The museum houses more than 130,000 dinosaur fossils from various sites in Canada and the exhibits were pretty amazing.  They had about 40 different, mostly complete, dinosaur skeletons.  We enjoyed it, just not 100% sure it was worth the long drive.

Banff was our next destination, only an hour from Calgary.  We had traveled along the Rocky Mountain range, as we drove North through Colorado, Wyoming and Montana but they are especially impressive in this part of Canada.  You can see why they are called “The Rockies”, it is one jagged, rocky peak after another.  Sometimes we wonder how the settlers must have felt when they came to such impassable barriers. 

We stayed in Canmore, about three miles from the entrance to Banff National Park.  The RV park assigned us the absolute worst spot they had, fully shaded by trees, so no satellite TV (even though we specifically asked for an open sky site when we made the reservations in January) and since it was so shady, the rain made it a muddy mess. Knowing how much I hate muddy sites, Bill tried twice to get them to move us but no way.  Bad rating coming their way. 

What we did not realize till we got there was that Banff as well as the town of Lake Louise are both inside the national park, so you had to buy a park pass, $18 a day, just to go into the towns, even if just for dinner.  Crazy!  Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are two of the most popular destinations and I read that the parking lots were full by 7:00am.  We wrongly assumed there would be people coming and going.  We drove through traffic to the lot at Lake Louise only to be turned away and directed back to overflow parking and the shuttle bus 5+ miles back down the highway.  After standing in line for 90 minutes, we finally got on the bus back up to Lake Louise. 

The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, $650 a night for the cheapest room, is perched on the edge of the beautiful turquoise blue lake and there must have been a few hundred people there, enjoying the view.  We hiked fourteen-miles roundtrip, around the lake then up the mountain, to a lovely tea room by the glaciers, where we planned to have lunch but only had time to buy a bottle of water and turn around, since we wasted hours with the parking and bussing crap (and we still almost missed the last bus back to the parking lot). Always hoping for animal sightings, we saw Pika, lots of Chipmunks, a Hoary Marmot and a Porcupine (but no bear or mountain goats, sorry Dessa).  

The next day, we got up at 5:30 to drive the hour back to the overflow lot to take the bus to Moraine Lake.  Even so, after waiting only 30 minutes we got the next to the last direct bus there, after that they all go to Lake Louise where you have to buy another bus ticket to get back to Lake Moraine.  Moraine Lake is an even brighter turquoise blue surrounded by snow-capped mountains known as Ten Peaks, so beautiful it was once used on the back of the Canadian twenty-dollar bill.  

After a short 4-mile hike, we got back on the bus and drove into Banff.  It is probably 10 by 10 blocks of shops, restaurants and bars surrounded by hotels and of course mountains.  The Fairmount Banff Springs which opened in 1888 looks like a castle sitting atop a hill and is within easy walking distance to downtown.  To ease the soreness from mountain hiking, we brought our bathing suits and soaked in the hot springs pool while enjoying the beautiful scenery.  We finished the day with an excellent dinner and topped it off with a walk around the free gardens for me (yes that does mean more flower pictures) while Bill read his book. 

We expected there would be good motorcycling roads in the area but we were wrong, they apparently make no effort to cross the mountains here, instead sticking to the valleys.  The only half decent road we found turned out to be all gravel and yet it was the “recommended” road with a surface rating of three stars on the motorcycling sites. What???  It is certainly a beautiful area and there is lots more to do a few hours north, next time we will go to Jasper National Park and the Columbia Ice Fields.

We stopped half way to Vancouver at Kelowna, a fair-sized city known mostly for its orchards and wineries.  The drive from Banff was beautiful, the mountains got smaller and gave way to hills covered with amazing forests that stretched for hundreds of miles.  The RV park was nice and we got a good spot, so that was a huge improvement, our only complaint was the helicopter that started crop dusting the surrounding orchards at 5:30am, back and forth, and loud as hell.  After taking a day to shop and see a movie, we returned to exploring by going to ride our bikes along the Myra Canyon Trestles.  The 18 trestles and two tunnels were constructed over 11 kilometers to span a canyon width of one kilometer and was considered an engineering marvel when it was finished in 1912.  In 1980 the railroad removed the tracks and gave the property to the city, eventually boardwalks and rails were added to the trestles so the public could use them.  To get to them, we had to drive eight kilometers up a gravel road and were shocked to see lots of cars at the top, as well as a huge bicycle rental operation.  The trestles were only wide enough to allow bikes to ride one way across single file and walkers had to step off onto the gapped boards.  We were there on a weekday and it was not easy to pass slower riders, I can’t imagine what it would be like on the weekend when all those rental bikes are on the path.  It was very cool riding across the trestles, way up high on the canyon walls.  Such a great idea to use defunct railroad tracks as trails.  Another day we found a nice motorcycle ride, a hundred miles south through the forests and back along the eighty-mile long Okanagan Lake, where we stopped at a bar for a drink and some people watching.

After an overnight stay in Princeton so we could have lunch with one of Bill’s cousins, we made our way to the coast of beautiful Vancouver, with its many islands, bridges and surrounding mountains. I had stopped here twenty years ago and remembered going to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, so off we went the first day to see it.  I don’t know what it cost the first time I was here but it is now $54 Canadian (a little over $40 US).  The area has been a tourist attraction since it was built in 1888 and has evolved into a sort of amusement park with rope bridges in the treetops and nature walks and there were hundreds of people there.  Not sure it was worth the price but everything seems to be more expensive in Canada (definitely not worth it in my opinion but they had no problems filling the place).  Bill has some family here too, so we had a couple of nice dinners with them and went to a great (and free) air show, where we watched the Snowbirds, several stunt planes and a CF18 fighter. 

Based on family recommendations, we hit a few local sites.  Stanley Park is lovely and was on its own small island just over the bridge from our RV park, so we rode our bikes over and around the water’s edge (of course every park visit can be improved by spending some time in their gardens taking even more flower pictures).  The road to Whistler made a good motorcycle ride, except for the awful Sunday evening traffic on the way back, that forced Bill to break boy scout code and drive along the shoulder for several miles, with a half dozen other riders following us. I resisted but it was so much better than sitting on a hot bike for thirty minutes. We wrapped up our time in Vancouver with some kayaking around the private islands and the multi-million dollar homes at Deep Cove, followed by lunch at Honey Donuts with of course a famous “honey donut” for dessert (and they were Excellent).  Five days, mostly sunny…Yea!!  was not nearly enough time and we did not even try to go to Victoria, so…next time.

The scenery west of Calgary has been fantastic.  It would have been even better if we had more sunny days but while the entire US was under a massive heat warning, we were still using heaters at night.  So far, this has mostly been the chilly, cloudy “at least it didn’t rain on us” tour.

Now, it is back to the US where we will explore more national parks and the Pacific Northwest.

Here are our travel photos and video and more of the Light Balance Show.

I put the flowers in a separate album so you can look if you want.