Prairies to mountains and back

As Mark has already said, we spent six days in Bow Valley Provincial Park and had a lovely view of the mountains. A nice hike through the park took me to Middle Lake

past lots of wildflowers everywhere

And down to the Bow River

Canada Day (July 1^st) saw us spending the day in Banff and watching the parade and fireworks later that evening. Banff is such a beautiful town and we may spend a winter season there J

And of course I had to join in the celebrations as it would have been rude not to!

The Calgary Stampede claims to be the ‘Greatest Outdoor show on Earth’. On Friday (4^th July) we went to see the opening parade and watched over 140 floats/ horses/ marching bands and performers walk by which took over 2 hours. William Shatner (Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk) was the Grand Marshall this year, although at 83 years old, he was in a car rather than on a horse. There is a town called Vulcan which is about 160kms south of Calgary, and they were hoping he would pilot their float

At various points during the parade, the road sweepers came through to clean up the copious amounts of horse manure that was left in the middle of the road, ready to catch out the following marching bands! We liked the way the trucks had been decorated

Then onward to Stampede Park and the opening ceremony and rodeo. I did appreciate the standing ovation I got for my birthday and the singing of O Canada and the Star Spangled Banner, although I would have preferred Waltzing Mathilda although one mustn't be too picky when one is in a foreign country ;-) I did enjoy the bucking broncos and bull riding…

and all in all, thoroughly enjoyed my birthday.

On Saturday we decided to drive up to the Columbia Ice-fields, north of Banff. The scenery was stunning and we saw so many glaciers on the way:

We’ll do Jasper and the other end of the ice-field parkway on our way to Alaska next month. We stopped in at Lake Louise on the way home but there were so many coaches full of tourists that we decided to leave it until next year when we come back this way.

On Monday we were back at the Calgary Stampede, this time to check out the exhibits, watch the chuck-wagon races and the evening show. At the Adrenaline ranch, we saw dirt bikes, an ATV and a snow mobile doing somersaults in the air – brilliant!

The chuck wagon races were really fast and we watched 8 heats, the fastest of which compete on the last day for up to $1m.

The evening show wasn't really our thing (I guess we've been spoilt over the years) but the light show and fireworks were good.

Tuesday we went out to the Olympic Park where the 1988 winter Olympics were held.

We had great fun on the Luge – this was the course

The park is open in the winter, so maybe the bobsled might be on the cards next time!

Wednesday we started our journey north and are now on the outskirts of Edmonton for a month, waiting for the skies to get dark before we head to Alaska