Oh Canada!!!

  Hitting the road in to Canada...

    We crossed the US - Canadian border and checked in to Canada customs on Monday morning. We headed on north on the Chief Mountain Highway to Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta- Canada's version of our Glacier National Park.  We had reservations for three nights in the Waterton campground in the village on Upper Waterton Lake.  This is a beautiful place- nice village with great mountain views all around. Since we were only two blocks from town, we walked everywhere in the village. They also have very nice walking and biking trails. We drove the Red Rock Canyon Parkway to Red Rock Canyon and hiked the canyon trail and the Blakiston Falls Trail - both were very pretty to see. We also drove the Akamina Parkway to Cameron Lake and hiked the lake trail until we reached the barricades - the rest of the trail is still closed due to snow on the trail that has not melted. Mark also hiked the Bear Hump Trail and we played tennis for the first time since Memorial Day weekend.  This is the nicest national park campground we have been in so far on this trip West. We walked to Cameron Waterfalls from our campground and we could hear the falls from the RV.  The views were wonderful.

   From Waterton, we headed north to Calgary for a three night stay. Calgary and the Canadian Rockies, that is. Calgary is a booming city of 1.3 million people and growing. Lots of construction too. It is very culturally diverse with more than 120 languages spoken here. Calgary is also home to the Calgary Stampede - the biggest Rodeo event annually in Canada.  Calgary was also the site of the 1988 Winter Olympics and the Olympic Park was not too far from our campground. There is lots of urban sprawl in the area surrounding Calgary with beautiful parks and biking/walking paths.

   We toured the Calgary Olympic Park facility which is still be used as a training facility.  They have a huge summer bike camp for kids where they use the chair lift to take the kids and their bikes to the top of the mountain. They have made bike trails for them to ride back down to the village. They have a skyline luge run, zipline, summer bobsled run, down hill mountain biking available. Mark did two runs on the luge which he thought was pretty neat!
   We could not leave Calgary  with out attending the Calgary Stampede - a 13 day event complete with a rodeo daily, chuck wagon races, amusement ride, Indian Village - similar to a state fair in the US.  We saw the Peking Acrobats perform, an Indian pow wow, and the chuck wagon races (9 heats) in the evening.  The chuck wagons  were running 40-45 mph in the races!!!! Since parking is at a premium in Calgary around Stampede Park, we chose to ride the commuter train in so we were dropped off/picked up right outside the main gate to Stampede Park. Lots of people, lots of junk food everywhere. Oh my!!!

   We will head on north to Banff, Alberta tomorrow....the journey continues.