Rolling through the Rockies

06-09-12

TORONTO

Awoke in a frenzied panic, packed our bags, scoffed a quick brekkie and rushed to the train station for our 09:15 start to the series of trains that would see us in Frankfurt at 1PM for our flight to Toronto. A series of late trains and bad decisions on our behalf saw us arrive at Frankfurt a couple of hours later than we were expecting but still in time to catch the plane.

When we boarded the plane, we found ourselves seated at the very last seats at the rear of the plane. This has it’s advantages. No little Angus’ kicking the back of your seat. If the plane crashes, you are generally the last to die. You have first crack at the food and drinks trolley. Easy access to the air crew for more drinks. Quick access to toilet. Nobody sitting next to you.

A few disadvantages. The stench from the toilet with the door continually being opened and closed and people lining up past your seat.

Nevertheless, we were reasonably happy with the arrangement. Then the flight attendant offered us seats a few rows up in a row of 4 where only one was occupied. We declined but she was insistent and explained it would help them out as it gave the air crew a few extra seats to use so, probably against our better judgement, we moved (always try and be on the good side of the air crew). The spare seat in the row of 4 was immediately occupied by another person alternately interacting with his family in the row in front and sleeping on Kathys shoulder. We also realised that there were 2 small children in the row in front and 3 in the row behind.

Never give up your seats for anything less than premium economy!

Never!!!

 

07-09-12

CALGARY

We spend a night in Toronto at one of the airport hotels and jumped on a plane early the next morning, picked up our hire car then went and picked up Morgs from the Gulag.

After a tour around the prison camp, we took a drive up to Canmore then back into Calgary via shops. Suddenly it appeared that with two females in the car, my thoughts or suggestions were no longer of any merit and didn’t even need to be listened to really. I drove where I was told to.

 

08-09-12

CALGARY

With our increasingly inexplicable attraction to UNESCO World Heritage Sites still driving us, we took a 5 hour return trip to Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump to look at a cliff where bison have been herded off a cliff by the Indians for the last 6,500 years, up until they ran out of them 150 years ago. They have started breeding the herds up again but refused to run them off the cliff for our entertainment. We said we would even be happy if they just pushed a cow over the edge, but, still no.

The annual buffalo cull has been replaced by the weekly shopping trolley maul at Costco.

 

 

09-09-12

CALGARY

With a beautiful sunny day and the temperature in the mid 20’s, we decked ourselves out in shorts and T-shirts and headed into the Rockies towards Jasper. The drive is rated in the top 10 in the world and it’s not difficult to see why. With the sun lighting up the mountains and reflecting off the glaciers, around every corner was another view to make you gasp. The camera got a serious work-out at almost every roadside lookout.

Then we arrived at Lake Louise where it started raining and the temperature dropped by around 15 degrees. Feeling pretty stupid in our short and T-shirts now. Nevertheless, took the mandatory photos of the cloud behind which lurked Lake Louise and any possible mountain views and pushed onwards. The weather cleared and the temperature rose almost back up to 20deg, which we thought would be ok for us to stay in our shorts and T-shirts. Looking back it’s an obvious mistake, if you are going to walk up to a glacier, it’s probably going to get colder. Hmmmmm.....big lump of ice. OK, lets go back to the car now. We checked into the Glacier View Inn which had a view of the Athabasca Glacier from the window...............oh, I get it! Installed ourselves in the room with the heater on. Despite it being bathed in glorious sunshine, we chose not to catch the last tour of the day onto the glacier, opting instead to catch one first thing in the morning.

 We've got our shorts and T-shirts on and we are off!

 

Morgs was fully stoked to be at Lake Louise

Look out! There's a glacier behind you

 

 

10-09-12

COLUMBIA ICEFIELDS

The morning dawned beautiful and sunny and by the time we caught the second tour of the day, had turned bitterly cold with snow coming at us sideways. An excellent time to be on a glacier. We chiselled the ice formations off Kathy and headed off to Banff.

Banff was lovely, the weather had turned nice again so we jumped on the cable car up to Sulphur Mountain where we had lunch at the restaurant looking out over the Rockies. Within 30 minutes, all we could see was snow going sideways again. And we still had the cable car ride back down to look forward to.

We dropped Morgs back at the labour camp and drove back to Calgary and checked in at the airport hotel to be ready for our 6AM flight to Hamilton the following day.

I'm so glad we didn't come up yesterday when the weather was good