Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Trip Start
Mar 26, 2008
1
30
60
Trip End
Dec 07, 2008
Calgary,
Alberta,
Canada
Thursday, July 3, 2008
A very crowded and busy city this week with the Stampede drawing hundreds of thousands of people to town. We headed for our next hosts vowing to avoid driving back in to town.
We arrived at Pat and Janice's house and met Janice as Pat was away on business. We immediately felt at home and were in awe of the beautiful cool basement as it was a really hot day. We tried to get to bed early as it was going to be an early start in the morning.
Up before six, we headed for the train station and caught the train in to the city. Arriving in plenty of time, we found our bleacher seats and watched as the crowd built, even the pre-parade was fun with different groups parading by and then the parade began, there were some really novel floats, tons of beautifully groomed horses and some fantastic bands. We all thoroughly enjoyed the bag pipes and all the big brass bands and drums. It was also a great opportunity for people watching, Calgary sure knows how to throw a party! We were prepared for another scorcher, but were thrilled that it remained overcast and quite cool for the parade, but almost on cue as it finished the sun came out and began to roast us.
We headed home and enjoyed the chance to chat with Janice in their lovely garden and the kids enjoyed their two cute dogs Jake and Casey.
The next day we had a leisurely start and then headed for the train again. We were in with the crowd and headed to the Stampede. We first checked out the theme park and the kids had a couple of rides and then we hit the grandstand for the rodeo. Wow, this was really exciting with the wildest horses, the biggest bulls and the most amazingly crazy cowboys tring to stay on these animals for as long as they can. They really chose a risky profession.
Half way through the show Chris left to wash what he thought was sunblock out of his eyes and didn't come back. We found him at the end of the show downstairs with one ugly looking swollen eye and obviously not feeling so great. We found the first aid area and let him to be dealt with by the professionals (he ended up there for 3 hours but the rest of us kept going!).
The girls wanted to get to the dog show so Zack and I agreed to meet them over there and stayed for a while. When we got to the show we realised that seeing them there was highly unlikely. There were literally well over 10,000 people there and we enjoyed the show and headed back to the stadium hoping they would eventually do the same thing.
I spent the next couple of hours being the flagpole that they could return to as everyone lost everyone and eventually we managed to gather and head back in to check on the Chris the invalid.
He wasn't looking pretty, but put on a brave face and joined us at the chuckwagon races. Now this is one mad idea. Four wagons, lead by four horses a piece and chased by four more horses and their riders (called "outriders"), tearing around a course and trying not to crash into each other. It definitely was exciting, but also a great relief that no one was hurt.
We left early to get the big eye guy home and passed through the throngs of people on the way out. The thing that struck me was the huge number of people at the stampede.
The next day we had a lovely cruisy day, the kids and Chris went out for a look around the shops and came home with another mountain of books(our van begins to look like a mobile library) We had the pleasure of meeting Pat who had arrived back from Spain last night.
In the evening we had a lovely barbeque with Pat and Janice and their family, their daughter Jennifer and her husband Darcy and son Sam, who had a blast playing with the kids. Their other daughter Catherine was also there with her husband Graham and daughter Mara, who enjoyed chasing around behind the kids as they went crazy in the garden.
We had a plan to go to the Tyrrell Museum the next day and decided it made sense to carry on to Lethbridge rather than have two driving days.
We woke the next morning and farewelled amd thanked our hosts, Janice and Pat, and headed off to our next destination, Lethbridge in southern Alberta, Canada. .
Traffic lights are sideways!
Comments
Love the hats
Can't believe how much you guys fit in in a day or two! Feel like I was at the parade after the slideshow and love the rodeo hats - really suit everyone, but where is the photo of Chris' bulging eye and what was wrong with it - was it just the sunscreen?
:)
You guys must be wiped out - you've been so busy! Ouch, what was wrong with Chris' eye? Your photos remind me of rodeo days back in Tucson - fun times!