24.05.2012- 24.05.2012   6 °C

Early-ish start today as we said goodbye to our wonderful hosts Rudy and Jean and hit the road for Banff! Before heading out of Calgary we really thought we should go and check out downtown and actually see Calgary the city not just the suburbs!! Calgary has a population of a million and really reminds me of Brissie. Similar small downtown area set on a river…

The main thing we all wanted to see was the Stampede grounds. Every year, Calgary hosts the Calgary Stampede or the Ultimate Ekka! The Stampede seems to be quite similar to our shows.. bull riding, horse riding, show jumping, bake sales, rides… pretty much our Easter Show style of thing.. The big difference is probably the chuck wagon races.. A chuck wagon is a canvas covered wagon, Little House on the Prairie style. They are raced around the ring and apparently it’s a big deal if you win the overall race! This year is the one hundred year anniversary so the whole town is already gearing up for the big event (which isn’t until July). We also had a squiz around the river and saw plenty of baby geese with their mummies and black squirrels (which are apparently grey ones that are a bit darker?)

From downtown we headed into the Rocky mountains to see what all the fuss is about! Probably not too surprising but it started to snow again on our way to Banff! Isn’t it the end of Spring here??? The Rockies are amazing you are driving along the plain and then suddenly you are surrounded by huge mountains! No foothills on this side of the mountains! All of the pine forests, that cover the mountains, are dusted with snow.. really pretty!

Banff isn’t too far from Calgary so we were in town early in the afternoon. The town is a typical ski town.. lots of stone clad shops mainly selling clothing, coupled with dozens of hotels and apartments all surrounded by huge snow capped mountains! We managed to find some pretty cheap accommodation so we checked in and then decided to go for a drive around the town to check out the sites. Our first stop was just outside the downtown to see the Chateau Banff. The chateau is this huge hotel perched on the hill overlooking the river. The chateau was built in the late 1800s and is built to appear quite castle like.. really beautiful…

Typically, we then left the chateau behind and went looking for the ski resort! There are two near to Banff, Sunshine and Norquay. Norquay is the closest and was our first stop. It appears to be a small resort, no on snow accom.. it actually reminded me a bit of Selwyn! We continued our tour of Banff NP and drove up part of the way to Lake Louise to hunt for animals and to see the Sunshine resort. No animal sightings (damn) and we were quite disappointed with the Sunshine resort.. Just a gondola up the mountain! First impresions weren’t great, but we later discovered that the village is at the top of the gondola and it has on snow accom! Apparently, the snow here is also second to none.. champagne powder (according to the locals, far superior to the snow at Whistler!). From what I could work out it is easier to ski in champagne powder as you get more grip and less icy sections?? I guess I’ll have to come back to test out the conditions!!

Our drive back was via some lakes (nearby to Banff village) and the only sort of animals we saw were birds! Very disappointing!!! It’s the first time we’ve gone for a lengthy drive late in the afternoon and seen no animals..

Dinner was a tasty home cooked savoury mince before we headed back out of town to the Banff hot springs for a well deserved soak. It’s a pretty good setup here in town, you get changed walk down a ramp and are immediately in the hot waters of the pool.. 40 deg in the pool and about 7 outside… toasty! It’s a tough way to end the day!

Song of the Day– Shania Twain, That don’t impress me much     (I thought it was about time I showcased some of the great Canadian artists.. Just Google you’d be really surprised how many awesome singer/ songwriters come from this part of the world!)