Calgary to Nelson, BC

Wow, so we got busy and have been neglecting our blog. Time to get up to date.

We spent two nights in Calgary so that we could spend a day at the Calgary Folk Festival.

July 26 – Hot and sunny with thunderstorms

The festival was a huge event and was held in Prince’s Island Park in downtown Calgary. Throughout the day there were 6 stages with concerts going on simultaneously so we had to make some tough decisions on who we could go see. But we got to spend more than 12 hours listening to great concerts! We saw John Wort Hannam, Calexico, Bill Callahan, a Hawk and a Hacksaw, Andrew Bird, Basia Bulat, Josh Ritter, Trish Klein of the Be Good Tanyas, Maryem Toller and the Toronto-Cairo Collective, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Master Musicians of Jajouka, Mark Erelli, The Duhks, James “Blood” Ulmer, and Blue Rodeo. Josie particularly liked Andrew Bird, Basia Bulat, Josh Ritter, Trish Klein, the Duhks, and Blue Rodeo for the anthem factor. Scott’s favorites were John Wort Hannam, Josh Ritter, and A Hawk and a Hacksaw. Josh Ritter was the person we were most excited to see... he was a lot of fun and a bit goofy, not as intense as his album lyrics would make him seem. He played up that he used to be a scientist, which was endearing. We learned a valuable lesson that day – bring a tarp to claim a spot in front of the main stage as soon as you arrive on the festival grounds, lest you end up squeezing between other people’s tarps at the back where people feel they’re too far back to bother cheering for the artists. There was also an impressive lightning storm during the evening show that left everyone a bit damp but still in good cheer. We took some time to wander around Calgary before heading back to our tent in the suburban campground.

July 27 – Hot and sunny, ~6400 km from home

Even though we were dead tired we managed to check out on time and were on our way east to Drumheller. It was out of the way but we didn’t want to miss the badlands and the Royal Tyrell Museum, big nerds that we are. Everything in Drumheller is dinosaur related, they even have the world’s largest dinosaur. Cavendish and their Anne of Green Gables fixation have nothing on Drumheller.

On the way into town you are driving through rolling fields of wheat and canola, then all of a sudden you drop down into the Red River Valley and the Alberta badlands. The exposed sediments are layered with all shades of black, grey, red, orange, and buff. It was hot, hot, hot and shade was at a premium. We stopped at a roadside park to eat lunch and Scott was almost attacked by a posse of Columbian ground squirrels that were accustomed to being hand-fed. We got out of there and went to the famous (and air conditioned) Royal Tyrell Museum. The museum was really well put together (huge, interactive displays) and full of an intense amount of information. We really enjoyed the section on how they extract the fossils, the ‘prehistoric’ garden (ancient pants that are still around today), the rise of amphibians and insects display, the Ediacaran Fauna display, and the hall of dinosaur fossils. As a bonus while we were inside it poured rain and the heat broke. Thus in the early evening we had a comfortable walk through the badlands next to the museum where we got to see cacti, sage-brush and other desert plants, and some neat vistas, but no complete hoodoos. We found a campground on the south side of Drumheller and took a stroll through a hayfield before calling it a night.

Ediacaran fauna attack!

A Devonian coral reef

Poor little dead amphibians...or were they lizards? I forget.

Acanthostega - not an amphibian, but close.

Someone at the Royal Tyrell Museum has the job of making the skeletons look like they're eating each other...

Don't worry, he's vegetarian.

The Alberta Badlands

Cacti

The prairie just dropped off into the river valley

July 28 – warm and sunny, ~6800 km from home

Slept in and stopped just down the road from our campground to see real hoodoos. We went for a 10 minute hike through the area – the hoodoos were the largest and most impressive on the whole trip. Feeling fulfilled, we left town and headed southwest, cutting through southern Alberta. Lots of canola and wheat, cows, oil pipelines, and the odd oil well. The wind moving through the wheat fields looked like waves and water flowing – very beautiful. We got excited when we saw a sign advertising cheese for sale on a farm 2 miles off the pavement. Driven by a desire for farm-gate dairy we decided to go on an adventure on the ‘range’ roads. As far as we can understand ‘range’ is a term applied to loose gravel roads that only go to farmland and you can see trucks coming 5km away so no one bothers to put stop signs where the very straight roads intersect. We did get the hairy eyeball from a local but couldn’t find any farm advertising cheese, which was a bummer. Cheeseless, we moved on. Prairies gave way to low foothills and the occasional coulee where trees could be found. When we got to Pincher Creek we were impressed by the massive wind-fields... in a 360° view we counted over 130 wind turbines. We skirted the Rockies for a good hour or so on our way to Waterton Lakes National Park. Just inside the park boundary was a sign indicating a buffalo paddock. Curious, we followed the road to a lookout above fenced-in rolling prairie, but decided to keep driving. Next we came to a sign indicating we could drive directly into the paddock! There was a grate you drove over that the buffalo/bison couldn’t cross, and you had to stay in your car. It was like a safari, we couldn’t believe it. The bison were all hanging out right next to (or on) the road. We were wary of the bull, but he seemed mostly interested in sniffing the rears of the females. We got some great photos before heading further into the park. The park campsites were full (on a weekday!), but we managed to find a place to crash in a campground at Crooked Creek that was run by the local naturalists club. A very private site, great bathroom/shower facilities, and cheaper than park camping. We stayed for two nights.

Hoodoos!

Hoodoo!

Range road country - spot the farm at the other end of the field

The mountains at Waterton Lakes National Park

Columbian ground squirrel in the buffalo paddock

Buffalo in the buffalo paddock

The bull was sleepy

July 29 – Warm and sunny

First thing in the morning we headed to the park interpretive centre where we saw a series of amphibian underpasses on the nearby road. Apparently there was a big salamander study that was ongoing. We heard later that the cost of the underpasses was very controversial in the town but Josie was super pleased about them. We went up the road and booked an evening horseback ride at Alpine Stables because we figured we couldn’t be in southern Alberta and not ride horses. To kill time we explored the town of Waterton – where deer run amok and are totally un-phased by people but will attack dogs. We enjoyed some peach sorbet and Saskatoon-berry pie ice cream on the beach before leaving for a short hike of the Red-rock canyon. At the canyon Josie finally got to see her first mountain goat. A mama and her baby were hanging out in the parking lot eating things off the underside of the cars (??). Sketchy. After our hike (stroll) we stopped to soak our feet on the creek bottom and saw some stromatolites in a rock at the edge of the canyon, which delighted our geeky little hearts.

The horseback riding was fantastic. They gave Josie the super docile horse (normally reserved for children) because she’s afraid of horses. We were the only clients on our ride. The family that ran the stable took us off through some fields and out along the lake before turning on to a trail that went through some nice hardwood. Our horses knew that we were newbies so they took every chance they got to eat grass rather than walk. Apparently we needed to kick them harder, which didn’t feel right to do, the poor things. Eventually we got the hang of it. We ran into some huge mudholes which the horses stumbled in – Scott looked like a rodeo king trying to keep on his horse when it lost balance. Our guide was actually thrown from his horse into a tree, but he was ok. We took a different path up to a field overlooking the lake and the Prince of Whales Hotel – breathtaking. When we were nearly back at the stable we got into a wasp nest which sent some horses kicking. We can’t say it wasn’t exciting! When we dismounted our legs felt like those of cartoon cowboys – all bowed out in the shape of a horse. It was a great day and we headed back to the campground to have a fire before tucking in.

Name that wildflower...we couldn't

The creek running out of Red Rock Canyon

Red Rock Canyon - boys that water was cold!

Real stromatolites! Thanks for the oxidizing atmosphere!

Mountain goats

July 30 – warm in the morning and evening, cool and rain in the afternoon, ~7250km from home

This was the day we headed to Nelson – our trip’s end. We drove back out through Pincher Creek and continued through the Crow’s Nest pass. We stopped in the town of Frank to look at the slide – a massive rock slide that buried half the town in the early 1900’s. It really was amazing and must have been horrific. The interpretive center was closed for renovations so we didn’t stay long.

We passed into BC and saw our first Overwaitea Foods, also what was once the world’s largest truck. We were in the mountains and the car knew it. The road down from the pass was 16km at an 8% grade. There were lots of runaway truck ramps – spots where you could go off the road into deep gravel if your breaks failed. Luckily our breaks held and we got to Nelson in one piece. We went to the campground, basically a large lawn subdivided into tiny spots, super cramped but it provided everything we needed. We spent the night working on our Department of Natural Resources Voluntary Planning Submissions (last minute homework!).

Heading back into the Rockies

A rainbow in the mountains

The windmills near Pincher Creek

Through the Kootenay Pass, Nelson ahead!

July 31 – Hot and sunny

In the morning Josie finished her voluntary planning submission and Scott wandered downtown for a bit. He found the town to be much bigger than he thought it would be, with a lot of health/ natural food stores and a lot of dentists. When he got back to the campground Josie was finishing her submission and a squirrel was chucking high-speed kamikaze Douglas fir cones at us and the car - so close to our heads that you could hear the “wzzzzz” as they passed. We didn’t linger long.

We took another stroll around town before we went out to Hugh and Maggie Jones’ house. This was the place near Balfour (about 30 minutes from Nelson) where we would be WWOOF-ing (WWOOF = Willing Workers On Organic Farms) until we found an apartment. Hugh and Maggie live on a steep hill at the base of a mountain, overlooking the West Arm of Kootenay Lake and the mountains on the other side. Due to a miscommunication they weren’t expecting us until the next day but were happy to have us. We met Hugh and Danny (their other WWOOFer from Quebec) and later Maggie got home from town and we all had the first of many delicious suppers together. We then settled into the trailer they had set up for us in their yard. It was nice to know we would have some respite from cramming ourselves into the car. Their pets (dogs Quila and Huxley and cat Snagglepuss) were sweet and everyone seemed really great – we were happy to have landed in our new home for the month of August.

COMING SOON to a blog near you:
Our adventures thus far in BC – look forward to old growth cedars, spawning salmon, glacier hikes and woodworking creations!