Happy New Year

For Christmas I caught the Greyhound to Penticton to my Aunts and together we drove to Calgary. The roads were terrible, due to heaps of snow and freezing temperatures… both on the Greyhound and driving! We spent a couple of days in Calgary with Toby, Kathryn and Jack, it was great to see them and Jack is getting so BIG.

From Calgary we drove to Edmonton, to spend Christmas with Glen and John. We had a white Christmas and the temperature was about –15. Glen and John threw a dinner party for their friends on Christmas Eve, which was a lot of fun. On Christmas day there was just the four of us, which was nice, Santa came in the morning and then we opened our other presents after that. We had Christmas dinner then played Super Mario on the Nintendo Wii and watched movies, very relaxed.

The drive back to Penticton from Edmonton was a lot better than on the way, the roads were clear for most of the trip! I had a couple of days in Naramata before heading back to Vancouver, we just chilled out, played the Wii and watched movies. I did manage to catch up with the girl I worked with in the Naramata Heritage Inn in the summer, which was good.

I got the bus back to Vancouver for New Years, the hostel has a bar downstairs and they had a party on New Years Eve, which I went to with friends from the hostel, we had a great night, with people dancing on Granville Street!

Edmonton, Alberta

I spent a week in Edmonton with my cousin Glen and John, we did all the tourist things and it has been great fun and I had a really nice time with them!

We visited West Edmonton Mall, which is the biggest mall in North America! We drove to Elk Island where we saw lots and lots of Bison at very close quarters (not by any choice of our own…) and a Coyote, but funnily enough no Elk… We took a couple of walks there along the lakeshores.

We went to the Edmonton International Fringe Festival and saw a play called Pop Tart, it was very funny! Fringes around the world have come from the Edinburgh Fringe, Edmonton Fringe is the second largest behind Edinburgh. The Edmonton Fringe presents over 1000 performances from 146 groups from noon to midnight over its ten-and-a-half-day run!

We visited Fort Edmonton, which was really good, it has most of the original Fort buildings, which were moved from their original site at the present day Legislator Buildings. There are exact replica streets from 1885, 1905 and 1920, with fully functional houses, a bakery and a sweet shop.

Now it’s onwards and east to Regina!

Me, Myself and I

Well, this is the first part of my trip that I have been on my own, without family or friends around. At first I got home sick, but after a few phone calls home to Fort William and Naramata and meeting new people and making some friends, the homesickness was gone!

I have been in Banff for over three weeks, I got myself a volunteering job in the HI Hostel, 4 hours work a day and I got a free bed for the night, worked out perfectly for me! Banff is a beautiful place and has lots of nature trails and forestry tracks, so I spent my days walking in the hills and my evenings working. I had a couple of evenings off so I went to see Harry Potter and Hairspray at the cinema with friends from the hostel and had a boozy night in the hostel pub with the rest of the volunteers! It was Banff’s Summer Arts Festival while I was there, so I went to see lots of plays, theatre performances and bands playing in the park!

I got a loan of a mountain bike and took a ride to The Cascade Ponds, Minnewanka Lake, Two Jack Lake and Johnston Lake! It took me four hours to complete this bike ride, I must have covered 15 – 20 kames and my butt was so sore the next day… I did however manage to avoid any bears that may have been roaming about, which I am very happy about! There have been lots of bear warnings up in Banff and the surrounding areas, and there have been a couple of bear attacks, on the same trails I have been walking and riding on… So I am very bear aware!

I took a day trip to Lake Louise and walked up to the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea Hut at a height of 2090 meters, it was built in 1927 by two Swiss Guides for the Canadian Pacific Rail. At the beginning of the summer season a helicopter flies in as many supplies as they can and that is the only time the helicopter does this, the rest of the season they rely on the staff to carry in more supplies! To this day the tea hut has no electricity and the people who work at the tea hut, work for 5 days in a row and live around the tea hut in little wooden cabins, they hike in and out on their days off, it is a 10.6 km roundtrip and when they leave the cabin they take rubbish with them and when they return to the cabin the take food and supplies with them.

I went to the famous Banff Hot Springs to relax and ease my sore muscles after my hike at Lake Louise, it is more like a very hot (40c) swimming pool as it has been modernised.

My Auntie Carolyn, Glen and John all came to Banff for Frobisher at we all stayed at the Banff Centre, Frobisher is an opera that John composed. We spent a few days together in Banff before I headed to Edmonton with Glen and John.

Banff and Calgary, Alberta

I had my last day of work at the Inn and was given some lovely gifts from the staff and owners before leaving!

We went to Sumac Ridge and took their winery tour and tasting, before going out for lunch on the lakeshore in Summerland! The weather was perfect, 37 degrees and beautiful!

I headed to Banff for a couple of days, did some hikes, canoed on the Bow River and took the gondola up Sulphur Mountain, the views were amazing, Banff is such a beautiful place, it reminds me of the French/Swiss Alps!

Then I headed to Calgary for the stampede, Yea Har! I stayed in the HI hostel downtown, my first hostel stay of many to come on this trip! I went up the Calgary Tower, which gave a fantastically clear view of Calgary, all the way out to the Rockies. I explored downtown where there were lots of festivities and street parties on for the Stampede. The Rodeo was so much fun and the evening show was amazing!

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