Road Trip! - Part 2

Day 5
After a cool night's camping in Banff we drove through the lovely town of Canmore (one of the few places I'd consider living other than Vancouver) filled up Stella with petrol ($0.85/litre now that we were out of the National Park) and got ourselves some Starbucks. We were then ready to head out of the mountains and across the prairie, through Calgary - sheer traffic hell with about 5 separate construction jobs going on - and out towards Drumheller. On the way we stopped at Horseshoe Canyon, which is a smaller, Canadian version of the Grand Canyon. Spectacular in it's own right, especially since it is plunked down in the middle of prairie landscape. It had been raining a bit so the trails that lead down into it were too slippery to walk but we saw lots of Prairie Dogs (Ground Squirrels) and enjoyed the view. The photos we took when we came back from the museum (the later ones in the series) showed the depth and scale more effectively because of the angle of the sun.

After our brief stop, we were back on the road to go see some hot dinosaur action at the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller. I went there when I was a kid before the large museum was built so I was completely impressed with what they've done with the place. It is spectacular. Even the landscape surrounding is amazing. Everyone should see the badlands at least once. I'd like to do another trip sometime where we spend a bunch more time in the badlands because, well, wow. Anyhoo, we spent several hours at the museum marvelling at the huge (and the not-so-huge) creatures before grabbing dinner and driving back to Calgary. We'd intended to camp that night but there were huge thunderhead clouds and none of the campsites we looked at had any foliage (being prairie and all) so we ended up grabbing a hotel room in Calgary for the night. A jaccuzi suite to be precise, with complimentary champagne. It was fabulous at the end of a really long day.

Day 6
After fighting more Calgary construction we were out of the city and headed South. We stopped in Nanton and checked out their Lancaster Museum. Theovis' Grandad flew Lancasters in WWII and it was very interesting to get a better look at what the planes were like. We were even able to climb aboard one - seriously cramped quarters for 5 guys or so! There was a lot of great WWII information, memorabilia and history in the place making it one of the best random stops we made. We kept going and got lunch before heading to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, where the First Nations people hunted buffalo by running them off the the cliff for thousands of years before the Europeans showed up with their guns. More spectacular history but after an hour or so my body was starting to complain about all the standing so we went for a walk outside, "peeped" back at a few more prairie dogs and spotted a Yellow-bellied marmot sunning himself on a rock. Eventually we were back on the road driving through very windy landscape spotted with windmills. In the Crowsnest pass of the Rockies we stopped briefly to look at the Frank Slide - a 1903 landslide that took out most of the coal-mining town of Frank and left half a mountain. We didn't go into the Interpretive centre there, having had more than our share of interpretation for one day, but we walked around, getting a good look at the slide and spotting this tiny wild orchid, which photographed much better than the ones I tried in Golden. We camped that night in Fernie, back in BC and in the town of Theovis' birth. I got to try out my Outback oven that night by making brownies. Damn, they were good!

Day 7
We packed up early and got on the road to do a big stretch of driving, hoping to make it to Osoyoos that evening. The Parks woman suggested a campground outside Osoyoos that she liked so we even had a firm destination in mind for a change. We drove through all sorts of pretty Kootenay towns and stopped in Creston for a pub lunch. We giggled a bit at the menu where the word 'baguette' was spelled both 'brigitte' and 'briquette'. Generally I'm not too fond of eating briquettes for lunch. I don't actually remember much more about this day because I think it was pretty much all driving. We pulled into the recommended campsite that night and after several circles of the grounds, found an attractive site to set up for the night. For the first night we actually had dry firewood and were able to have a really nice campfire. Theo toasted us some very nice marshmallows. Despite enjoying the toasted gooeyness, I could only eat 2. I have no idea how we gobbled them down by the dozen as children. We had a chipmunk guest scamper through the site every now and then. He also spent a bunch of time up a tree hollering at our neighbours. Very cute.

Day 8
Our last day was spent doing the run from Osoyoos to Vancouver. We'd intended to do a couple winery tours on the way but we were really in the wrong part of the Okanagan for the high concentration of wineries. The couple we did pass were at 9:45 in the morning and it just didn't seem like the time to be drinking wine. We grabbed some cherries and asparagus at a fruit stand, spotting the most bizarre little car in the parking lot (it's a BMW). We then just plowed our way to Vancouver, stopping for lunch and several mosquito bites in Manning park, stopping for a round of mini-golf and some videogames at the Castle Fun Park in Abbotsford, and finally stopping at Colossus in Langley to see Shrek 2 (and get some air conditioning on a scorchingly hot day). We eventually made it home that evening where we sat for several hours being stared at accusingly by the cats before getting up the motivation to actually empty Stella of all her baggage. Ta da!