chapter two

Chapter 2 – from the Great Canadian outback

We spent a couple of days in Calgary doing the old touristy things like the zoo and the shopping circuit and so on until we decided one day we should go up the Calgary Tower. Now everything we had seen of this tower made it look famous and out of this world awesome. I wasn’t too impressed but it gave us a really cool view of the whole of downtown Calgary and just about everywhere we had already walked. Our photos only illustrate how yucky and dusty everything looks because of the snow which has stuck around for almost 2 months turning very icy and slippery and then of course there is the dirt and salt they use to try and clean it all up – I just thought it made sludge and brown snow. But it was amazing to see the Rockies from up top and feel so close to them. A picture speaks better than these words so I will put one in just for you all.

Eventually it was time for us to move on to the actual solo adventure and head for the real outback in the far off Canadian Rockies. We had planned to go into Banff National Park and Jasper National Park for a few days only to discover that bus tickets were cheaper if we stayed a little longer – forgetting to factor in the price of accommodation for the extra nights. It must have been part of the plan otherwise I think we wouldn’t have had the amazing adventures we did in both these small touristy towns. Thanks to the Course family again for their generosity, they kindly helped us out in driving right into Banff where they took us up to the very top of one point in the Rockies. The ride is known as the Gondola which is a really fun ride up in a cable car to a spot overlooking the town. Once at the peak you can still walk all over the summit of a nearby mountain for better panoramic views. Since our camera has the ability Ang and I tried to put a panoramic shot together. Let us know what you think about it.

After this we quickly moved on to Lake Louise as we were not going to make this stop on our trip but Doug and Elmarie felt we really had to go to see how the lake looked in winter all frozen up. It was creepy walking on the surface of a huge pile of water which was frozen due to the water coming from a glacier nearby. What we didn’t know was that the one hotel makes ice sculptures of various animals just around the ice and we had so much fun exploring around all this differing beauty. The coolest or scariest thing for me was going on the iced lake and trying my hand at sliding in my shoes. Ang was braver than I and she attempted to skate on the ice. It was so much fun – even though the temp was sitting well below 0C. Unfortunately we had to keep moving and eventually had to say farewell to our Calgary family when they left us at our Hostel in Banff. Now the fun was about to begin…

For us, this was the first time we would stay in a hostel together and it was a little daunting. I decided to try and save us some money by placing us in a small commune of 6 rather than the huge dorm rooms and instead of spending more on single room spaciousness. As we soon realized, single room spaciousness was worth the extra money they charged. One of our room mates – Andrew – was a Canadian party animal except he never went out to party, barely ate anything, loved FABREEZE and spent most hours of the waking day Farting, Burping or Coughing. If he wasn’t doing these three favorites, then he was alternatively drawing, drinking or sleeping (snoring). And fortunately for Ang and I, we were both able to acquire his strange disease as we both caught the bug he was sharing every minute. But Banff was more about the beautiful town and the awesome night life and all the natural beauty which we attempted to explore with out limited time.

We spent a day exploring the town and its infrastructure – meaning the shops for the guys reading. It was a beautifully designed town, very old and close knit where you felt like welcome even though we were just passing through. Of course everything was way too pricy that we spent tons of our time browsing and window shopping and didn’t really buy much. Instead we spent our money wisely on a nice outdoor swim in the Banff natural hot springs. I’m pretty sure most people think I’m joking when I say outdoor hot springs were open in winter – guess what so did we till we got through the doors and climbed very quickly in to the warm water to escape the cold weather. This too could factor into our diseased state – but we prefer the Andrew factor. Even though we felt mad swimming with the snow around us, it was so much fun and we just had to do it. Now for those of you who care a lot about wildlife, we found out that the old springs had to be closed down due to a natural snail that lived in the hot water which was being killed by the BIG people swimming around. Poor snails….

We did have a run in with some deer that decided to invade our hike on the last day in Banff. I suppose we felt invaded because he tried to walk right up to us to see if we had any good snacks with us as twigs and dried up bark was getting so old. Anyway, we moved on quickly to our next stop in Jasper, only a 4 hour drive away but with some of the most amazing landscape markers along the way. The main one of these was the Columbia Ice fields which exist all year round but are only open to public viewing up close during the summer months. We were unsure why it was closed because it still looked an incredible sight as this huge slab of ice lay on the mountain and didn’t melt all year round. It gets fed by one of the nearby glaciers which obviously keeps it seriously cold – facts from our bus driver John. Eventually we arrived at our next hostel in Jasper and you will have to catch the rest on our next installment of Ross and Angie’s adventure.