Letter
No. 244
Dear all,
Continuing the story of our trip to Canada …
Day 10 – Jasper to
Lake Louise. Christmas
Eve started early with a 7am bus transfer
from Jasper to Lake Louise. It was very cold and still dark when the bus
arrived. As we climbed on board we were surprised to see Belinda Barrie, who
had been Matt’s science teacher at BBC. She and her family were staying at the
same place as us, and we subsequently bumped into them half a dozen times over
the next two days. This is not actually the first time we have seen her on
holiday outside of Brisbane, which is even more surprising. It is a small
world.
It was 286km on “The Ice Highway” from the west
to the east side of the Canadian Rockies. About half way we stopped at the
Athabasca Glacier. There was a viewing platform on the edge of the road and you
could see the light blue glacial ice about 10m thick on the mountain on the
other side of the valley. It was quite amazing. The ice highway lived up to its
name – it was ice nearly all the way and a little rough in places, like
travelling on a dirt road!
We arrived at Chateau Lake Louise about 11am.
It was impossibly beautiful with snow everywhere. All the pine trees were
covered in snow and in some places it was about a metre thick. The Chateau
looked like Santa had exploded on it with Christmas decorations everywhere. Our
room was very luxurious with a fantastic view of the mountain and edge of the
frozen lake. We even had our own miniature Christmas tree so we put all of our
(small) presents underneath it. Katie was delighted at how perfect it looked. Various
welcome platters and Christmas gifts arrived through the course of the
afternoon.
We went to the pool, spa and steam room, then
walked back through the grand reception just as Santa was handing out his
presents to the little kids next to the enormous Christmas tree! He must have been the real Santa as his beard
was real. Jessie was too old for a present but we hung around anyway and went
to say hello just before he left. That evening we had a banquet dinner at a
Swiss restaurant called Walliser Stübe.
We had a cheese fondue, fabulous chateaubriand steak and then a
chocolate fondue to finish. We were very full. There were Christmas carols around
the tree afterwards with several hundred people there so Katie and I joined in
the singing. It felt very special and very traditional.
Day 11 – Lake Louise.
Christmas Day. We
had a fantastic breakfast in bed on Christmas morning and opened our presents
before phoning Australia and the UK to wish our families a Merry Christmas. Santa
had found Matt and Jessie, to their surprise, and had given them useful
cold-weather/Canadian gifts like socks, face scarves, chocolates and candied nuts.
We even had a lovely Santa stocking from the hotel containing travel games,
oranges and candy canes. A great start to the day.
Outside it was -28C. We had booked a late
morning horse-drawn sleigh ride around the lake. The ride was very lovely and
the views of the mountains, frozen lake and forest were absolutely beautiful
but it was bitterly cold. I had seven layers on but was still frozen after the
hour’s ride, so we went straight inside for gingerbread latte and hot chocolate.
In the afternoon we went ice skating on the frozen
lake. It was much harder than ice skating in a rink as the ice was a bit lumpy
and there was no rail at the edge to hold on to. I hadn’t been ice skating for
some time but only had a few minor spills. The kids and Katie skated rings
around me. Just as I was leaving the ice for the final time I wiped out and ended
up flat on my back! We had booked a two-hour session but no-one lasted the full
two hours and we all came in at separate times. Afterwards the girls had long
soaks in the bath while Matt and I went to the spa to warm up.
We had booked a traditional Christmas dinner;
however we discovered that there wasn’t a suitable vegetarian option for Jessie
so we ended up in the Lakeview restaurant having a somewhat unorthodox
Christmas meal of burgers! Katie wanted turkey so she had a turkey burger, Jessie
had a veggie burger, I had a bison burger and Matt had smoky beef burger. Everyone
was happy and we did have some festive entrees and champagne as well. A great
Christmas Day.
Day 12 – Lake Louise
to Banff. We had a
long lie in on Boxing Day as we had a 10:45am transfer to Banff. The
temperature was -29 with a 10 degree wind chill factor! Unfortunately we heard
that our transfer bus had broken down on the ice highway we had crossed a
couple of days earlier and they had to send out a replacement bus which would
be an hour late. We had coffee and played chess in the lovely hotel lounge room
until the bus came. As we were leaving the Chateau, Matt said that he thought
it had been one of the most special Christmases he had ever had.
The drive to Banff was only about 45 minutes,
which was good as the bus had obviously been sitting in freezing temperatures for
some time with people on it and no heating. All of the internal windows were
totally iced over from the frozen condensation! It was a cool trip and we kept
all of our layers on. Fortunately the Caribou Lodge had a roaring fire in the
lobby. Our room wasn’t ready so we walked into town, had lunch and sorted out
our ski equipment. We decided we should all get ski helmets this time, which
seems the normal thing to wear in Canada, so it turned into an expensive
afternoon. Mind you buying them was only marginally more expensive than hiring
them for the week. We went back to the lodge, checked in and the kids and I went
straight to the spa for a sauna and steam room to warm up. That evening we
braved the cold and walked a few doors down to a nice tapas bar for dinner.
Days 13 to 15 – Banff
Skiing. Three days
of skiing. Our ski pass allowed us to go to three different resorts and there
was a fantastic bus service to get there and back, so we tried them all. The
first day we went to Sunshine, the second Norquay and the third Lake Louise.
The skiing was amazing and the runs are wide and open and often unmarked, so it
was quite a different ski experience to Europe or Japan. However, it was incredibly cold – definitely
the coldest skiing we have ever done – at around minus 25 air temp plus a
twelve-degree wind chill factor. We had no exposed skin whatsoever when we skied
and multiple layers (hand warmers, toe warmers, helmet liners, glove liners
etc). There is a real risk of hypothermia or frostbite if you stay out longer
than two hours at those temperatures, so we skied in short sessions with lots
of stops for hot chocolate and soup. The effort of putting on so many layers of
clothes each day got old really quickly and the relief at taking them off at
the end of each day was immense! It was too hard even to take photos as the
effort of taking my hand out of my glove was too much to bear and anyway our
hands were just too frozen to work properly.
Despite all this we had a great time skiing and
enjoyed the different resorts. Katie has a terrible sense of direction when
skiing and got lost several times, but she can ski faster than the rest of us
so it didn’t matter too much. Our phones did not cope well with the cold, the
batteries quickly died, so every morning we had to agree a place to meet for
lunch in case we split up. Our lodge in Banff was very cosy and the big lounge
with roaring fire was a welcome sight each afternoon as we staggered back in. We
went into Banff town for a pub dinner the first night and then had two nights
in the lodge. We ate at the lodge restaurant on the second night and then just
ordered pizza in the room on the third night. We slept very well every night.
Day 16 & 17 -
Banff Skiing. On our
second last day of skiing we went back to Lake Louise as we had all enjoyed the
skiing there so much. We split up in the morning and agreed a meeting point for
lunch at a beautiful wooden ski lodge. It was one of our best days of skiing,
especially as the sun had finally come out and the temperature had gone up a
fraction to around -20C. At lunchtime Matt came in with a very long face and
told us he had lost his phone. We had a very sombre lunch and decided to go
with him to retrace his route on the ski lifts he had been on and ask the lift
attendants if it had been handed in. No one had found it. Just as we were about
to ski back to the main guest services centre, Katie was poked her ski stick in
the snow where Matthew said he was standing and hit something hard. She reached
down and pulled his phone out of about 30cm of snow. We almost couldn’t believe
it and Matt was so happy! He raced off back to the lodge and dried it under the
hot air hand drier in the bathroom. Astonishingly it worked perfectly.
On the bus home that afternoon we were stopped
at a bus stop when we saw two boys out of the window sweeping through the snow
with their feet. We joked that they were probably looking for a phone, which we
thought was quite funny. We were astounded when the next minute they actually pulled
a phone out of the snow and whooped with joy! Twice in one day - it was too
much to believe.
That evening we went to The Grizzly House for
dinner. It is a bit of a Banff institution and hard to get a table at a decent
time. We had had to book several days earlier. The place is basically known for
its variety of meat fondues and it is a huge humming restaurant with a very
lively vibe. We had a really fun night. Katie and Jessie shared a yummy
vegetarian cheese fondue while Matthew and I had a Hunters meat fondue with
bison, wild boar and venison, which was delicious!
The next day was our last day of skiing. By
coincidence one of Matt’s best school friends Alex Russell and his family had arrived
in Banff the day before and we all agreed to meet at Sunshine in the main cafe
at 10am. Katie knew Alex’s mum and dad Julia and Stuart through her BBC
connections and Jessie knew Alex’s sister Kate who had been in the year above
her at St Aidan’s. We ended up skiing together most of the day and the kids all
had a great time together. It was a lovely sunny day at Sunshine and was the
warmest day yet at only -15C, which felt like a real improvement so we really
enjoyed our final ski.
That evening was New Year’s Eve. The Russell’s
were travelling with another family who have four kids and they were all
staying in a lodge just three doors down from ours. Julia had booked the Mexican
restaurant there for a New Year’s Eve dinner and we had a lovely celebratory
dinner with six adults and eight kids. After dinner all the kids went off to
the outdoor spa while the adults moved to the bar. There were apparently going
to be fireworks in the town centre, but we decided to give them a miss, due to
the cold. We made it to midnight, sang Auld Lang Syne and rugged up for the short
walk back to the Lodge. It was a very nice New Year’s Eve and good to spend it
with a crowd.
Day 18 – Banff - New
Year’s Day. Our
final day in Banff was a relaxing one, as we recovered from five days of skiing
and had a proper look around the pretty town. Banff is very picturesque with
alpine style timber buildings and we spent the morning wandering around the
shops. Jessie found a Vegan restaurant which she was keen to try so we all had
a vegetarian lunch. In the afternoon we went to the Banff Upper Hot Springs,
which are naturally hot outdoor volcanic springs. They had been closed for a
few days due to the freeze but had reopened when it warmed up to minus 20! The
springs were outdoors with snow and ice all around the pool and icicles
dangling off the handrails. It was a little chilly walking from the change
rooms to the pool and Katie almost couldn’t do it. Once in the water, it was a
strange feeling. Our bodies were at +40 degrees in the water and our heads at -20
degrees in the air. The hair on our head was white with frost after we got our
hair wet! Despite this it was very relaxing. There were lifeguards on duty but
I am not sure how much use they would be if someone was in trouble as they were
rugged up in ski clothes to keep warm. For our final night in Banff we had booked
the steak restaurant in our Lodge for dinner with the crowd from the previous
night. We had another fun night but didn’t stay up too late.
Day 19 – Banff to
Calgary. We had a transfer to Calgary which is a 150km
road journey. The roads were still very icy and in the 90-minute journey we saw
six cars which had skidded off the road into a snow drift. Our accommodation
was close to the city centre so we walked in to grab a late lunch. The city
centre itself seemed very quiet; we were surprised at how deserted the streets
were and how few shops there were right in the centre of Calgary, but the
people we met seemed very friendly. It was warmer by this time, only -4C, so we
felt more comfortable walking around, but the icy roads and pavements were
quite treacherous. Apparently there can be snow on the ground for around 6
months of every year, up to May. We went to the Glenbow Museum in the afternoon.
It was a huge museum covering the history of Alberta, Calgary, the First
Nations (Indians) and a spectacular display of rocks and minerals.
Day 20 – Drumheller
and the Badlands. This was a full day tour to the Alberta
Badlands and to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. It was about 180km to
get there, which was a 90-minute drive. Alberta can be summed up in three words
– beef, oil and fossils! We passed through endless (snow covered) fields or
prairies, which were so flat that we could literally see for miles. Alberta is
Beef country but is also one of the largest oil producing regions in the world.
Dotted across the fields were thousands and thousands of oil well heads, pumping
continuously. The whole area looked like Little House on the Prairies country
with oil wells. It was an iconic sight.
We stopped at a canyon on the way which had
apparently formed when a glacier dam burst about ten thousand years ago and the
flood waters carved out a spectacular canyon system around 150m deep. It was a
deep gash through the otherwise wide flat plains. The canyons were used for
horse rustling over the years and became known as the Badlands, partly because
they were not good areas for growing food or raising cattle and partly because
of the “bad” people who lived there. The canyons are also sites where enormous
numbers of dinosaur fossils have been found over the years. The Albertosaurus
was first found in the Horseshoe Canyon and was named after the state.
As we came into Drumheller the scenery looked
just like the country you see in American Western movies – except covered in
snow. The dinosaur museum was quite spectacular and had the most awesome display
of fossils and exhibits we have ever seen, including full T-Rex’s still in the
matrix, Triceratops, Parasaurolophus and practically every dinosaur you have
ever heard of, plus a Jurassic garden and other interesting displays. The fossils
were all real, not casts as in so many other museums. The museum is an active
centre for palaeontological research, so we watched activity in the lab where
the technicians were preparing the fossils for display and study which was also
fascinating. One large Ankylosaurus took a single technician five years to
prepare for display. We spent nearly three hours there and had a quick bite in
the café before we were picked up again. Next we drove around Drumheller, which
is a small town famed only for its dinosaur connections and is now on dinosaur
overload. Every street is named after a dinosaur and there are models on every
street corner including the Big Dino, a particularly impressive 25m tall T-Rex
which is (apparently) the tallest in the world. Our tour guide then took us on
a little side trip to the eleven bridges and the Last Chance Saloon where we
had a drink and admired the quirky 1940s and 1950s memorabilia. We also stopped
at the mushroom-shaped Hoodooes, geological shapes formed over many years by
wind erosion. There was so much to see in the area and we all agreed that this
had been one of the best days of our trip. On the drive back in the late
afternoon we spotted coyote, elk, a lone moose and also passed a Bison farm. They
were big!
Day 21 – Calgary Our last day in Calgary was fairly
quiet. We went to Fort Calgary in the morning which was the first official
settlement in Calgary. It was a nice small museum covering the history of
Calgary to present day. We spent the rest of the day wandering around Calgary
and doing a spot of clothes shopping. That evening we went out to a steak
restaurant to sample some delicious Alberta beef before heading back to the
room to pack for our long return journey.
Day 22 – Calgary to
Los Angeles We had
a 4am start from Calgary airport for our short flight to Los Angeles. Our bags
had already been checked through to Melbourne and we had cleared US Customs in
Calgary, so the whole experience was much quicker and we only had our day packs
for our 10 hours in LA. We started out in Hollywood Boulevard so that the kids
could see the stars and the Hollywood sign. The first star we saw was “Donald
Trump” which surprised us a little. It appeared that it was regularly
vandalised! He had got his star quite a few years ago for appearing on “The
Apprentice” which we thought was stretching the concept a little. The kids
enjoyed seeing the stars and the Chinese Theatre forecourt and we had lunch
with a view of the Hollywood sign. We then caught a taxi to Santa Monica Pier.
The traffic was horrendous and it took around an hour for a 12km trip, but it
was really nice at the pier. We spent
the afternoon wandering around looking at the stalls and rides and watching the
fishermen and a lone seal at the end of the pier. Afterwards we walked along
the beach boardwalk and stopped at a café for a drink. Matt wanted to go on to
Venice Beach which was the next beach along. It was a bit too far to walk in
the time we had left, so we caught an Uber down and wandered around looking at
all the stalls, street performers and the show-offs exercising in the open air
gym. We had a bite to eat in quite a cool restaurant and then headed back to
the airport.
Day 23 – Los Angeles
to Brisbane The
final journey was a very long trip where we lost a day over the date line back
to Melbourne. We nearly missed our flight back to Brisbane as I didn’t get
processed through the automatic gates properly and got separated from the rest
of the family. I had to be questioned and re-processed which took about 30
minutes and then we were fast-tracked to our gate. We made it home by lunchtime
and the house was still there with no problems. We love our journeys but it is
always nice to come home.
Cheers
Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly
