Aug 29 - Sep 5, 2000 Last updated: 2/12/03 4:00pm PT
The anniversary trip in September 1997 was to Calgary, Alberta. I’m writing this page in 2003, so it’s been a few years and this was before I had my Palm, so I don’t have a bunch of notes. (These days I keep a trip diary in my Palm, so building a web page is easy.) I’ll try to remember as much as possible, but I’m not 100% sure of the dates. I believe we were in Canada from 8/29/97 until 9/4 or 9/5.
Canada is a great country. Where else can you legally drive 100 and a warm day is in the 20’s. (kilometers per hour & Celsius). (And I guess the answer is everywhere but the US). We stayed at a Best Western south of downtown Calgary. Not sure exactly where it was at this point, but I know there was a great used CD/Record store nearby called Tramp’s that had a great selection of CDs that were hard to find. The weekend we were there, Tramp’s was having a half price sale.
This vacation was planned around a trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. We had seen a show on the Discovery Channel or TLC about this dinosaur museum where the average “joe” could go out on a dinosaur dig for a day. Of course, you pay for the privilege, but what a great experience. It was tiring and slow work, and we are so glad we did it.
We spent all day in the hot sun in the middle of the badlands of Alberta and only moved a few cubic inches of dirt with an ice pick. It gives a new appreciation for what is involved in these and other (archaeological) digs. Unfortunately, the color rendering in the image of the badlands isn’t representative of what you see in real life. The center of the second picture shows the bone that I was digging out.
Denise was the big dino-hunter of the day by discovering a dinosaur tooth from an Albertosaurus. And no, you can’t take the bones with you, so we don’t have the tooth. The whole exercise is to map out the depths and locations of bones to try and get a better understanding of how the dinosaurs lived and died. Denise was the first human being to ever touch that tooth.
At the end of the season, any bones that are ready to be moved back to the museum are encased in plaster. Any bones that can’t be taken out are reburied to protect them from the elements. Denise is the one with her arms in the bucket of plaster.
The first day of our trip, we drove down to Fort Macleod to see a museum of the Northwest Mounted Police.
Not far away was the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo jump. While now at a height of 10 meters, dense bone deposits 12 meters deep below the cliff would indicate that the drop was more than double this 6000 years ago when buffalo jumping began. Basically, the native people herded buffalo over the cliff as a way to hunt more efficiently.
Calgary held the Winter Olympics in 1988. The site is still used for training and recreation. There is also a museum which has artifacts from other Olympic events. Here we see a gold medal from the ’88 Olympics, the ski jumps, and an old bobsled.
Then there’s the luge. For $13 (Canadian & in 1997), and after you sign a waiver, you can risk your life and limb by sliding down an icy track on a tiny little sled. This has got to be the most fun I’ve had on a vacation ever. It was so much fun that when I got to the bottom, I went right back up the hill to plunk down another $13 to go again. Highly recommended if you are not a wiggler. If you can’t lay still, you will probably wipe out. It didn’t take much effort to move the sled left and right. Move too far in one direction and you’ll flip. It was so much fun that I could not help but have a huge smile and laugh out loud all the way down the hill. Denise did not do the luge. Denise is a wiggler! As you can see in the pictures, you don’t have to push yourself off. Someone (who works there) pushes you.
Next up, nature. We were headed to the Columbia Icefield to walk on a glacier. On the way, we stopped in Banff, a ski town. We toured the Banff Springs Hotel (a big fancy hotel) and hiked down to Bow Falls.
Here I am standing in front of Lake Louise. There is another big fancy hotel here too.
Near Lake Louise is the Continental Divide, which separates the water runoff between Atlantic and Pacific. Not much to see here but a big sign.
We stayed a couple of nights at the Columbia Icefield Chalet, next to the Columbia Icefield, where you can drive down to (in a mega-bus) and walk on a glacier. The first picture is of the glacier from the hotel, which is across the street.
Want to see a closeup of a glacier?
We also drove up to Jasper. On the way we saw a goat near the side of the road.