It's Cowboy time in Calgary

Trip Start Jun 30, 2008
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Trip End Jul 22, 2008


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Flag of Canada  , Alberta,
Saturday, July 5, 2008

Sandpoint to Calgary today. Gosh, further than it seemed on the map! We took the road over the Rockies via Kimberley - a Bavarian town - and through the Kootenay National Park to Banff and on to Calgary. We heard about this town - Kimberley - that had been dressed up like a Bavarian town to keep it alive through tourism. Very similar to a place we had seen on our first trip to Canada late 90's - Leavenworth in Washington - that had the same idea. Not sure who had the idea first, but whatever. It wasn't much out of the way - in fact not at all - just a side loop so it was a wee diversion. Going through the Kootenay it was interesting to note the look of the Rockies which last time we saw them, were totally snow covered. Whilst awesome, they had lost a lot of their character without their snow covered peaks. Some of the peaks still had snow on them and there were glaciers on some peaks and those that were snow capped certainly had a lot more character than those that didn't.

Since our bums were pretty square by now having pushed the miles all the way from San Fran, we did a couple of wee hikes in the Kootenay. One of them - Marble Canyon - has only one word for it - WOW! This canyon has a river flowing through it that has carved its way over thousands of years. Deep is not the word! There is one point where the river thunders through the canyon that it sounds like Victoria Falls in Africa! Close my eyes and I was transported back to 'The smoke that thunders' on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Took pikkies but I doubt they are going to be able to do it justice at all. What an awesome place. We would have liked to have done more hikes but time did not permit - we need to be in Calgary because we had tickets to the Stampede. Driving from Banff through to Calgary seemed to take forever, and then to find our motel on the otherside of Calgary seemed to take more than forever - an eternity - in fact it was only 20 minutes the other side, but it was late and we were really tired! However the motel - a Travelodge - was a really pleasant surprise. A feature of all motels in these cold parts seems to be the attraction of an indoor water slide and pool for kids - makes sense cause who would want to play outside at -30ºC! You have to be nuts to live here - however chatting to one woman who said that Calgary was pretty good cause the warm Chinook winds blow through to moderate the temperature - I hate to think! Calgary must have something going for it though cause the construction work etc going on and the city sprawl was considerable since we were there in 1999.
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