Day 7 – Calgary to Canmore
Calgary was the biggest city we’ve been to in a while, and
the first thing we noticed was the TRAFFIC! We’ve been spoiled for the last 4 years, rarely taking us 20
minutes to go anywhere. Today it
took us 20 minutes just to get out of the hotel parking lot.
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| The Calgary Tower and our first big city buildings in a LONG time! |
The first item on our itinerary was Olympic Park, site of
the ski jumping/ice skating events at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. It was neat to walk around and see how
big the ski jumps were, but the excursions were pretty pricey and the kids weren’t
old enough to participate in some of the more “extreme” (i.e. fun) options, so
we walked over to the ice rink and pretended what it’d be like to perform in
front of screaming fans for a few minutes.
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| Ash and Alex check out what a bobsled is like. |
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| Ashleigh imagines what it would be like to perform in this rink! |
The big attraction of the day was the Calgary Zoo. Greg stayed outside with Daisy, since
it was by far the hottest day we’ve had on our trip - almost 80 degrees! (After following our friends back east
going through the misery of 108+, I’m not sure we’ll get much sympathy. While Aimee and the kids were walking
around viewing all the animals, Greg took a trip over to the Big Rock Brewery,
only to discover that it was closed – on a Saturday! Greg was not having a lot of luck on his brewery tour so
far! However at the zoo, the kids
were very excited to see hippos, giraffes, monkeys, elephants, a red panda, and
lots of butterflies in the butterfly garden. We debated whether or not to add them to the official
wildlife count.
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| Ashleigh thought someone had stepped on this guy but was pleasantly surprised when she picked him up and he moved! |
Unfortunately, when we first started planning the trip, we
had planned on coming through Calgary a week later during the Calgary
Stampede. Although slightly
disappointed to miss this festival, we were thankful we would not have to deal
with all the extra crowds! It will
be the Stampede’s 100th anniversary, so it is sure to draw a huge
crowd - the “uncrowded” Calgary was enough for us.
After the zoo, we ventured back towards Banff and stopped in
the neighboring town of Canmore.
We ate dinner at the highly recommended Grizzly Paw Brewery (thank you
Dwyer’s!) and walked around the town for an hour or so. We got settled in our lodge off the
main strip, and quite excited to know that we didn’t have to pack up tomorrow
morning, since we were staying an extra day in Canmore to enjoy all the sights
and activities in nearby Banff.
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| A grizzly bear we spotted up on the hill at our exit to our Canmore hotel. |
Another note, today felt like a half-day of sorts, as
Canmore is only about 60 miles from Calgary, which after 6 days of 300+ miles a
day, was a nice change of pace. It
was also nice knowing we were staying put tomorrow, as we could use a day to settle
down and not focus on just putting more miles on the road.
Tomorrow: Staying in Canmore
Wildlife sightings:
Grizzly Bear – 1
Big Horn Sheep - 4
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