105 To Banff

Canada
Québec & New Brunswick
Nova Scotia & Newfoundland
Québec & Ontario
Manitoba to the Pacific

91 To Winnipeg
92 Winnipeg
93 Wasagaming
94 On to Yorkton
95 Manitoba Beach
96 Wanuskewin
97 To Edmonton
98 Edmonton
99 To Hinton
100 To Jasper
101 The Rockies
102 Snowy roads
103 To Drumheller
104 Dinosaurs
105 To Banff
106 Banff
107 Banff
108 Lake Louise
109 Farewell Rockies
110 To Vancouver
111 Go Canucks
112 Morty & Harry
113 Where next?
114 Visas and Picasso
115 Downtown
116 Catch up
117 Vancouver Island
118 To Tofino
119 Pacific Rim
120 Surfers and big trees
121 Last Legislature
122 Farewell to Morty
123 Mile zero, again

Canada: Alberta

Wednesday 16 November 2005

It was yet another cold morning. The weather reports implied it would be getting warmer but it was still well below zero when we left. Outside the tourist information office in town is one of their new attractions, described as “exciting” in the local tourist bumf. What is it?? A twenty five metre tall model Tyrannosaurus Rex. If you so desire, you can pay $3 to climb up the inside and stand in its mouth looking out over the valley. We decided that photos from the ground were more than enough for us and stopped off before leaving town to get a few!

We then backtracked along the route 9 heading towards Calgary. Ahead of us were what we think (and hope for the best of reasons) will be our last views of Canadian prairies. They have kept us company now for many days and much as we are glad that we have seen them I think we are both also glad to be leaving the flat landscape behind us. This part of the prairies though will stick in our minds for some time. They are gently rolling rather than being totally flat but what makes them really special is that as you head west you have a stunning view of the Rockies looming ever closer towards you.

After Beisecker we again passed the Hutterite community. I think we are both taken aback that religious group can post such stark warnings that are almost threatening. SO much so that as we passed we slowed to capture photos of the signs. What I initially thought was one of the community waving to say “hello”, I now think was one telling me to bugger off and leave them alone!

Having read the description of Calgary in Lonely Planet neither of us had a burning desire to stop there. We had a picture of yet another town dominated by out of town malls and a central business district of high rise blocks. The main Trans Canada Highway runs through Calgary and our views were not really changed by what we saw. You first see Calgary from some distance away as the high rise business district is the only feature on an otherwise flat landscape.

We took a detour into the downtown area in search of camera cleaning equipment which we found in the shape of Don’s Photo shop. Here a very friendly chap told Stef what to do to clean the sensor on his camera and sent us packing with various bits and pieces. How well it has worked only time will tell but early cleaning attempts seemed to solve one problem but create another one.

Heading to the Rockies, again

Heading out of Calgary the Rockies dominated the road ahead of us. In South America we have spent a fair amount of time in the shadow of the Andes but have never had the sense of perspective of driving up close to a mountain range that we have had here. Turning left and right the Rockies dominate everything that you can see. Although they are lower altitude than the Andes they hold their own magnetic attraction and we both spent the afternoon either in stunned silence or reverting to baby talk and simply uttering “oooh” and “aaah” at each turn.

Even here at relatively low altitudes the wind was making its presence known, a foretaste of what we can expect as we get higher. No matter which compass direction we were driving in the wind seemed to switch round with us and to buffer the side of Morty trying in vain to push us across the road. It was nothing compared to the winds we had in Newfoundland though.

We got to Banff in the late afternoon and hunted around for a while for a hotel. We got a good deal at the Banff Inn, the sister hotel of the Whistlers Inn we had stayed at in Jasper. Banff itself seems like a small town that exists only because people come here to ski in Winter and to hike in Spring/Summer. It is just off season but the slopes opened a couple of days ago so they are expecting things to pick up pretty quickly.

Even though we are not meant to have wireless internet access at the hotel we picked up someone’s connection from somewhere. While it was good to have the access it also meant that we started to look to firm up our travel plans for Indonesia. This was bad news as the indications are that it is not the safest of places to go to right now if you are a Western traveller. As members of the Anglo Indonesian Society (one of Stef’s pet projects) we have fired off a mail to get a local on the ground update from them.

In the evening we headed into Banff and to the local cinema. For such a small place I was surprised that it had four screens with different films playing. We went into screen One, which probably seated a few hundred people, and saw Derailed. I quite liked it but Stef did not. At one point people in the cinema started to laugh, loudly, so I guess they didn’t like it either! We rounded off the night with dinner in the local “Irish” pub. Allegedly, the pub was built in Ireland and was dismantled and brought here but somehow I think that someone may have been visiting the Blarney stone too much!!

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