Sept 26 – A Day in Calgary

We were fortunate to be in Calgary for the day relaxing and spending time with Chris’s Sister, Mary, & brother-in-law Peter K. We did laundry, ate, went for a walk, ate, and chatted!  Mary toured us through her fantastically thought out and orchestrated garden.   Peter K is an extraordinary sportsman and has done some amazing trips (scuba diving, hiking, full-gear mountain climbing, and much more).  We sat down to watch a documentary that was made of a climb up Kilimanjaro that he had done in 2014.  It is an amazing achievement by 26 climbers — all of whom made it to the top!

To top the day off, Ian (Chris’s brother), his wife Ann, his son Dan, and Dan’s girlfriend Courtney came over for dinner (unfortunately, Jade, Ian’s daughter was not well today and couldn’t make it).  Ian arrived just in time to join a Skype call with Chris’s Mom and one of her other Sisters, Pat.  It was just a bit of a family reunion virtually and in real-life.  How we kicked ourselves after Ian and family departed and we realized that we’d forgotten to take a picture of everyone together.  Well, there will need to be a next time!

It was a perfect and relaxing day and a bit in Calgary and we’re very grateful to Mary & Peter for the opportunity to visit.

Sept 27 – Calgary to Golden, B.C.

After another perfect meal (this time breakfast with fruit, yogurt, cereal, bread, & tons more) courtesy of Mary, we headed off to make our way toward Kelowna.  At this point the Transcanada (Hwy 1) heads towards Banff carrying with it the bulk of the east-west truck traffic.   We stopped in Banff briefly to pick up some groceries and to just remind ourselves to avoid busy places like Banff in the future.  We did see a deer downtown partaking in someone’s hedges for lunch. En route we stopped quite often to take in the sights.

We stopped to do some walking at Moraine Lake near Lake Louise.  We’d hoped to hike up to see the larches that were turning gold and dropping their needles but the hike required a minimum of four people (a requirement for hiking in this area due to Grizzly Bear danger) so we decided to just walk up the nearby rock pile first and then hike the length of the lake and back.  Well, truth be told, we could have easily found two other hikers to go up to the larches but, for some reason, neither of us had the energy today.  After the short lake walk, however, we had lifted spirits (and would have done the larch hike now…) but had run short on time.

We continued on our way crossing into British Columbia at Kicking Horse Pass between Lake Louise and Field.  We stopped briefly at the Spiral Tunnels just past Kicking Horse Pass and read about the history, their construction, and the train wrecks that occurred prior to its construction.

Finally we stopped at a campsite overlooking the mountains in a place called Golden.  The guy at the camp site had just closed his last tent site (all the tables and fire pits were put away) so he let us have an RV pull-through for the same price (a costly $26 this time!).  We decided to take a tent site anyway (as it had a better view and was ever so slightly further away from Highway 1 with the ever present truck traffic).   He was a bit surprised that we were camping… being that it was going down to 5 deg C that night.  Then another guy walked by and commented that “Too cold to camp isn’t it?”.  Geese, they’re pretty wimpy in Golden.   Although, admittedly, this was the first and only time (so far) that we broke out Little Buddy Heater to take some of the chill off our legs during dinner.