Calgary

Calgary – home of the oil sands, 10 gallon hats, cowboys and money.

Calgary's CBD. Oil dominates the skyline

Calgary’s a bit like Hamilton (the one in the Waikato not Ontario). Not a tourist destination by any means but there’s a thing or two to see and do there. Okay, now that I think about it they’re not that similar. 

We drove the hour and half from Banff to Calgary in the stylin Chrysler 300, dropped our stuff off at Matt and Dil’s place and then with a heavy heart I returned the Chrysler to the rental car place. Sigh. It brings a tear to my eye and pang in my heart just thinking about it.

Matt and Dils took us to their local for a brew and some kai. I mentioned that I thought that it was in Calgary where Mum and Dad had been to a proper cowboy bar and that Dad even rode the mechanical bull. Matt was dead keen on getting me to a cowboy bar but I assured him that although I’d be keen it wasn’t at the top of my “Calgary to-do list”.

Speaking of which, what was on my Calgary to-do list? Well, that’s just it – nothing really.

When planning our move to Yellowknife we could have flown direct from Vancouver but wanted to see as much as possible en route. Calgary happened to be where our good friends Matt and Dils lived so we really wanted to catch up with them.

Calgary's CBD at dusk. More oil anyone?

After dinner and a couple of drinks we headed back to Matt and Dil’s place and chilled out for a bit. One of Dil’s old school friends and her fiance (Natasha and Montage) called in and Dils made Montage tell the stories about his childhood in Brampton (near Hamilton, Ontario funnily enough). Although now a surgeon, Montage and his brother were made to attend an ESL class (english as a second language course) and were refused library cards (brown kids can’t read apparently) because they weren’t white. Even though they spoke perfect english.

Nothing like a bit of racial discrimination to make life interesting.

So anyway, back to Calgary. It was a Monday night, we had a couple of chores to do and flew out on Wednesday morning. Matt, Dils, Natasha and Montage suggested enough activities to fill a week – we had one complete day.

Long story short, we went to the museum. It was a great museum, and a good insight into the history of Calgary/Alberta’s oil history and general history (which is dominated by oil). Also an interesting insight into the history of the First Nations (“Indians” for the un-PC) which has a similar jist as with most colonised aboriginal cultures.

Banff

Saturday morning in Banff consisted of sleeping in. Just as we were contemplating leaving the hotel to find an eating establishment, our pals from Calgary texted to say that they were almost at the hotel.

A giant rat crosses the road in Banff

We greeted Matt and Dils out front of the hotel. It was so good to see them. We’d become good friends when we all lived in Wellington, but a seemingly common trend for us eventuated -move to a new city, meet a couple of great people, they move! They had moved from Wellington back to Dilshana’s home town of Edmonton and then to Calgary – Banff was their play ground.

After a brief catch up I put in the hard word to shake a leg towards somewhere that sold food. As it would happen Matt and Dils knew of a couple of good options and as it was now after 12 I voted for the more lunch like option.

We spent most of the day chatting and then eventually moved on to drinking and chatting. Saturday night in Banff – every hooligan from Calgary had come to Banff and they had all ended up staying at the same hotel as us. After several drinks we carefully filled up drink bottles with booze and headed to the outdoor hot pool/spa. We walked out to the pool to see about 20 frat boys belly flopping into the pool, smoking cigarettes in the spa and throwing more empty beer cans onto the mountain of empties surrounding the pool.  

We carefully placed our beverages on the side of the pool and slipped into the warmth of the whirling hot pool.

Matt explains the historic significance of the frozen waterfall to Dils and I

Sunday was a slowish start but the Big Breakfast made any signs of a hangover soon disappear. The Chrysler 300 transported us to an awesome semi-frozen waterfall. The walk to the waterfall was a bit hairy but well worth it. We then checked out some other sites before ending up at Lake Louise.  As I drove up to the flash as hotel, a member of the baggy pants brigade (i.e a valet dude) approached the drivers side of the Chrysler: “Valet sir?” “No thanks mate, just cruisin”. The Chrysler eased past the baggy pants brigade to park by the other plebs in the pleb car-park. We walked to the lake. It was frozen.

I’d seen many pictures of Lake Louise from a variety of tramping (called ‘hiking’ here) books I’d borrowed from the library in Vancouver. Touted as one of the most spectacular scenic places in all of….BC (? Canada, the world? I don’t know, but ya know what I mean) it’s a lake fed by several glaciers which means that the particles in the glacial melt cause the light to reflect in such a way…. which makes it some cool colour (Turquoise or one of those crazy colours that a colour-blind person such as myself find hard to describe).

None of those stupid hiking books had photos of it frozen! I was a tad disappointed. But disappointment is a relative term, it was still pretty magnificent. While pretty much frozen solid, there were parts on the fringes near where we were standing that weren’t frozen, which explained the necessity for the couple of signs along the edge of the lake saying “Caution, thin ice”.

I couldn’t believe the amount of retards that were on the ice. I was standing there with my camera on video setting just waiting for one of the english scouser kids to plunge through the ice so then I could capture Dad saying “Al right mate, ooks ike ou’ve falen fru ve ice. Sheryl, Daryl’s gone and bloody well fallen fru the bloody ice. hold my beer for a minute would ya luv”.

My other hypothesis was that they were american tourists. Either way we didn’t get to see anyone fall through the ice. 

Over nearer the hotel there was a spot for ice skating etc so we stood and watched a chick do some figure skating, some lads playing around with ice hockey sticks and pucks and a few Japanese tourist falling on their arses.

 

Caution thin ice

Who forgot to shut the freezer door?

Famous four

Merrit to Banff, a long snowy drive

We hit the road early (8am) after I got most of the ice off the windscreen. The highway heading out of Merritt was covered in ice and snow which made for a cautious drive. When following a slow car I was passed and thought I may as well pass too. Changing lanes was a little hairy with a slight fish tail and some loud inhalations by my co-pilot, but my past experience of fish tailing in early model Chryslers had me felling pretty comfortable.

Snowy old Salmon Arm

 

 

After an hour or so on the road we stopped for breakfast at Tim Hortons – which was surprisingly nice. It was both of our debuts at Tim Hortons.

Morning tea time

 

 

Rogers Pass is a notoriously sketchy section of the road en route to Banff. The Chrysler 300 handled it like a piece of cake. We stopped at the cafe at the top to get some kai. We’d had a morning tea stop en route at Salmon Arm at a cool independent cafe (sometimes a rarity in north american towns), and were feeling pretty peckish. Unfortunately at 2:30pm the lunch offerings were slim, so I had a small bowl of soup while Nicole decided to fast.

We hit the road again and saw a truck facing the wrong way on the other side of the separated highway with its trailer on its side, and a few cars which had obviously spun out off the side of the road. The Chrysler 300 kept on truckin.

After 8 hours of driving mainly on icy snow covered roads and for large periods of snow and/or rain I was relieved to finally pull into our digs in Banff.

After lugging all our worldly possessions up to our room I lay on the bed for 5 minutes and then we hit the hotel bar – I felt I deserved a drink or 12. A few drinks later and a few pubs later we ended up eating pizza at about 10:30pm before crashing for our Friday night in Banff.

On the road, farewell Vancouver, thanks for having us

I’d rung around a million different moving companies and most had a minimum moving weight/amount which we didn’t meet. So we settled on Greyhound Couriers and I arranged to have them come and pick up our stuff at 10am.

With our 8 boxes packed up I started lugging them down to the foyer of our apartment building. Our plan was seamless – get all our stuff picked up, bus into town to collect our rental car, drive home and get our last remaining stuff, get the flat inspected, our bond back and then hit the road.

At 1pm when the courier still hadn’t arrived (after several phone calls) I made the executive decision to bus into town to get the rental car. A brand spanking new Chrysler 300. I’d been dreaming of this moment since, well since I had looked on line to get a rental car. We arrived at home and called Greyhound to say we’d drop our stuff off at their depot. I regret not getting a photo of the car fully laden with our stuff.

The back seats folded down so I put my mountain bike box in followed by most of the varying sized boxes. The big mamma of the boxes was never going to fit, but I wasn’t going to do two trips when it was already getting late. I tied the boot (trunk) down with a couple of boxes half in/half out, instructed Nicole to take her seat and buckle up before I squeezed in the big box onto her lap. The box wasn’t excessively heavy but it was a stretch to get it in. In steady rain we set of with the car so full I couldn’t see out the back window or the right side. As my navigator Nicole had a hard time of giving directions but as luck would have it we made it to the depot without incident.

We then flew home, loaded the car, had the flat inspected, got our bond back, cranked up Dr. Dre on the ipod through the kick arse car stereo and joined the rest of Vancouver in the rush hour traffic heading out of the city.

My personal travel co-ordinator (Nicole aka Dr. Whare) had sensibly booked us into a hotel in Banff for three nights but nothing was booked for our first night on the road. Thank god for that because when we finally got past the crawling traffic on the highway (at dusk in persistent rain) we hit the hills past Hope (on the Coquihalla Highway) when the snow started. Feeling pretty knackered after a very long day, the intense concentration of driving through snow on a slippery road was not a good mix for a long drive.

We made it down the hills and into a sleepy little town called Merritt. As my co-pilot read from the Lonely Planet about Merritt: “Nestled in the pretty Nicole Valley 115km north of Hope…motels sprang up with the building of the highway, and that’s pretty much all the action Merritt sees today – car traffic”.

We drove past a few hotels as we approached the town centre but didn’t bother to cruise the main and just pulled into the one with the sign saying “Best Chinese Buffet in Town”. The only Chinese Buffet in town? I convinced Nicole to also get the buffet and while not a culinary experience to rave about, the atmosphere was classic north american diner and the service was second to none.

Breakfast stop at Tim Horton's, Kamloops

A road trip into the mid west – Homeward bound

My sand castle

After checking out the wild west of Osoyoos our holiday was drawing to an end and we hit the road back towards Vancouver. After not getting our rental car till late (the day we picked it up) we didn’t need to return it till Monday afternoon so we decided to camp one last night somewhere near Vancouver.

En route to Lake Harrison we stopped at a diner because I’d missed my caffeine fix earlier. Dave’s Diner was classic. While waiting for my coffee and Nicole’s can of pop I noticed on the wall the Trade Certificate for Dave someone in Automotive Machining – to me this epitomised a “chef” in a north American diner – an ex mechanic! Dave even came out of the kitchen to chat to us and was very friendly.

We then hit the highway again and managed to keep up with the traffic on the open road doing 140kph even when the road signs said 80kph was the speed limit.

We arrived in Lake Harrison in the evening to find a closed camp ground. We then drove on and found a very cool little camp ground in amongst a forest. After setting up and a brief walk we had a relatively early night. In the morning we set off to check out what Lake Harrison had to offer…. sand castles! These guys take their sand castles to the next level. Of course we didn’t pay the $5 enter fee but cruised around the perimeter and I managed to take some good photos over the fence. And alas our road trip was all but over.

I steered the Mazda3 towards Vancouver and home sweet home it was. Time to find a job.

A road trip into the mid west – Penticton to Osoyoos

Jimmy K and Whare going native

Our camp ground in Penticton was pretty average but with a cool bag, some ice, beers and wine, Nicole was in her voyeuristic element. The extended family across from us were quite funny to observe. They were possibly Hispanic or “First Nation” and when the young “Dad” (maybe our age) and the old (late 60’s) granddad – who was white, quite old looking with his jeans, sneakers and bum bag – moved into their food tent (a big mosquito net around a park bench) and proceeded to smoke a joint we were quite enthralled. The kids (from about 8 up to maybe 14) loitered around outside and didn’t pay much attention to the pot smoking Dad and Granddad.

A bit later we observed the Dad wondering around for about an hour with a phone book while the kids biked around and the girls/ladies chilled out on an airbed. When going to the washroom (toilet), I saw the Dad using a payphone and then half an hour later about 8 pizzas turned up. The young kids were still running around when it was getting pretty dark and when I got up the next morning the blokes had all slept outside and the ladies had sleep in the tent. About an hour later their Van door slid open and out rolled Granddad and his little dog. They kept us entertained anyway.

After cooking up some bacon sandwiches and a cuppa tea we packed up and blew that joint. We hung at the beach for a while and then went to a cool café for coffee and a snack, before hitting the road south to Osoyoos.

With a description from the guide saying – “Anything but upscale, Osoyoos is a good and affordable base for exploring the region” – Osoyoos sounded like a bogans ideal holiday spot to me.

Osoyoos Lake divides and surrounds the small town (pop 4,800 which triples in peak summer) and we found it quite ironic that the skies opened up with a solid hail storm as we drove into Canada’s only desert. This is the arid end of the Okanagan Valley and the town marks the northern end of Mexico’s Sonoran Desert. At the First Nations Desert Centre we managed to see a calliope hummingbird (the smallest bird in Canada) but were unfortunate (or fortunate depending on your perspective) to not see any rattlesnakes (in the wild). The US border cuts through Osoyoos Lake. Nicole wasn’t keen to join me on the 5km swim across the border, or to accompany me on a mission up to the hills behind the camp ground where the search light on the border fence sweeps the landscape.

The girl at the information centre told us that all the campgrounds in the vicinity were full. Taking her advice with a grain of salt I swung our Mazad3 into a wicked campground on the lakeside and pleaded with the manager that surely he must have room for our tiny 2 man tent…. to no avail. We ended up on the other side of the lake in a weird but quaint little camp ground that used to be a water park – “Water Park and slide permanently out of order” said the sign. Our elevated campsite had a good view over the lake and we drank the last two cold beers from our new cool bag (thanks Wallmart) before setting up camp. After dinner and a few wines we embarked on a “short” post dinner walk. Nicole conveniently led us straight to the dodgiest pub in town which turned out to be very entertaining. All I can say is “only in North America” and I’m glad I had Nicole there to deter possible encounters with the ladies on the prowl.

A road trip into the mid west – Manning Park

Bombing Penticton

E.C Manning Park is in the heart of the Cascade Mountains which are pretty spectacular which ample lakes and soaring craggy peaks. It’s at the end of the 4,240km Mexico to Canada Pacific Crest Trail – if only Nicole didn’t have a sore knee.

We didn’t end up seeing (or even hearing any bears) during our stay at the Lightening Lake Camping Ground. After a cuppa tea and a short walk around the camp ground to the lake we packed up and headed to the café at the resort down the road and made the mistake of ordering breakfast – when our breakfasts arrived they could have both fed small armies.

We then hit the road which took us further inland – into the Okanagan Valley which has some of Canada’s mildest weather and over 70 wineries. Not wanting to spend the entire road trip “on the road” we pulled up in Penticton, about 2 hours drive from Manning Park. Penticton is a bit like Mount Maunganui – a beach resort (two massive lakes, an obviously no actual “beach”), which is gaining popularity with Canadian retirees. A lot of condos are popping up but we managed to find a camp ground (which we suspect will be developed on within a few years) to erect our tiny tent among more massive RVs. First mission was to by a cool bag to store ice and cold beers in, and some food apparently….and then we hit the beach where I proceeded to bomb Pentiction – Mangere style.

A road trip into the mid west

After being in Vancouver for a week, having the good fortune of securing an apartment and sending off our respective CV’s to every possible employer in Vancouver, we thought we’d embark on a wee road trip before hopefully settling into work.

Hide the honey

At short notice during the high summer season we managed to book a hire car but didn’t end up getting it until 3pm on a hot Vancouver Thursday afternoon. I was a tad nervous behind the wheel of our left hand drive Mazada3 but after driving the wrong way around the round-a-bout on the way back to our apartment to get our bags I was chanting “stay right, stay right” as I drove towards the motorway out of town.

Amid the peak traffic we drove south towards the US border and then headed east. With no destination in mind we ended up at the Lightening Lake Camping ground in the E.C Manning Park at about 7pm. The camp ground was pretty full but they had a spot for our tiny two person tramping tent. When I jokingly asked if there were any bears in the hood, the lady replied “yes, there’s a mother and cub around. They haven’t been in the camp ground but if you see them, let us know”. I felt like saying “I’m sure you’ll know if I see a bear!” The signs we observed everywhere afterwards confirmed Nicole’s worst fears – bears were in the area.

The camp ground was very different from a kiwi camp ground in that the camp sites were all on gravel! Gravel camp sites aside, the Lightning Lake camp ground was no too dissimilar to a DOC camp ground in NZ ie. toilets (or “washrooms” as they’re called here) were the only facilities. A gravel road through the thick Pine/Fir (?) forest had camp spots (like little cul-de-sacs) off it and it wasn’t until after I’d backed the car in to our “drive-way” that I realised we’d be camping on gravel!! Fricken crazy Canadians! Who the hell camps on gravel!!

Well I suppose the 90% of other “campers” in their RVs weren’t too worried about the gravel.