Day 21-24 - In transit - Lake Louise, Calgary, Edmonton

I'm wrapping this all up into one entry as there seems little point in elaborating more.

We left Vancouver on Monday at 6:30am, exactly 24 hours later than the original itinerary - but this change has been a blessing in disguise. We have had excellent weather ever since Sunday. On the way out we got a last glimpse of Nanaimo Street, of Burnaby Lake and of outer Langley before heading off into the Coast Mountains. After Chilliwack, the view was absolutely awesome. The poor bus was struggling with the grades, but it made it eventually. We basically followed the TransCanada Highway 1 (mostly freeway grade) and stopped in Kamloops, Revelstoke and Golden on the way through to Lake Louise and went right up into the Rocky Mountains and crossed the Rogers Pass - I got about 75 photos on the way through.

One side note is that the timezone jump from GMT-7 to GMT-6 is well inside BC (before Golden), rather than the provincial border.

Lake Louise, though, was a bit of a shock. On arriving in Lake Louise, there was no directions to the hostel, and no-one around seemed to know where it was. It was 8:20pm and most things were closed in the village. So here was the two of us walking around with all our luggage not knowing where to go and walking in some direction hoping it was that way (we turned out to be fairly lucky in our guess). In the midst of all this, my camera fell out of its pouch to the ground and rolled, and the shutter button was all but destroyed. This really darkened the mood for the night, even though I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever, all I wanted to do was cry.

Thankfully, I thought of the idea of using a paper clip for a shutter button, so I was able to take photos after that although with some effort (edit 17/8 - I'm quite good at it now!). The hostel was clean and secure, but food in the village was very expensive - we spent $30 each on food in one day yet really didn't eat that much. The views, however, around the lake (4km from the hostel) and the surrounding mountains were amazing and we managed to get in about 5 hours walking, and explored the nearby Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise hotel, which was like a mini-shopping centre (someone told us that CP Rail built all the luxury hotels along the railway line, then Fairmont bought them - hence why they've got so many nice ones). The CP Rail train thundered past the village every now and again, giving a certain vibe to the whole experience.

On Wednesday we woke up early again as we had to be on a bus at 8am to Calgary. The first part of this ride was good - but I was kind of glad I didn't stay in Banff as the scenery didn't seem quite so accessible as at Lake Louise. Banff (inside the national park) is forbidden from exceeding its present town limits by Parks Canada, so the town of Canmore (22km away and just outside the Banff NP) has emerged as a residential and commercial hub for Banff. We arrived in Calgary at 10:30am.

Calgary has a very nice skyline and a lot of greenery surrounding the Bow River, and we found plenty of things to explore. They have a free tram running up most of 7th Avenue which is handy for getting from West End (just east of the Greyhound terminal) to the centre. Daniel shouted me a meal in a steakhouse, and we went up the Calgary Tower (kind of like a mini-Sky Tower) and up to Chinatown and over to Fort Calgary, where we spotted some cute gophers doing their thing (In retrospect, I'm glad I don't have a house and garden in Calgary, the garden would be full of gopher holes. You should see those things dig!) We ran back to the terminal via Shaw Millennium Park where we saw heaps of young skaters and cyclists on the biggest skate park either of us had ever seen (edit: it is in fact the biggest in North America), with a punk rock and hiphop soundtrack being cut by a local DJ. Unfortunately, while I made the 3pm bus, Daniel did not - the next bus was 3 hours later.

Calgary to Edmonton is a 299km drive across flat green country on what is for the most part a straight freeway with signs to small towns just off it. It counts as one of the most boring drives I've ever been part of, apart from possibly the Sydney-Canberra run via the Hume Freeway in 1998. Unlike other Greyhound services, this one actually showed movies - we saw Chicken Run (in French, but it's such a visual movie that you don't actually need an audio track) and some army movie which seemed to involve betrayal, shooting and killing - great for the kids on board, even if it had been cut for airline audiences.

Edmonton reminds me a lot of Adelaide, although it has its own character. Like Adelaide, it is a flat city with few prominent buildings - although the Alberta Provincial Legislature building is really nice. At the Saskatchewan River, though, which separates downtown from Old Strathcona where I am staying, there are some really nasty bends and slopes as the river is a good 30-40m below the downtown, and yet whoever designed the city still tried to keep with a grid layout. Edmonton's public transit system operates just like Honolulu's in that you pay $2 per ride and get a transfer ticket for onward travel, rather than a 2-hour or daypass ticket. The system is mostly bus but they have a light rail transit system (with just one line) which goes from the university through downtown to the inner north-eastern suburbs. Daniel has proposed that Edmonton adopt the motto "City of Stairs" - the university LRT station has no less than EIGHT flights of stairs to get from the surface to the station, and most LRT stations have at least 2 flights. There are hints that despite today's 34 degree highs, this city can get almost as far below zero in winter - there are road signs indicating snow routes where parking is banned, and entire sections of the city can only be accessed from underground (often by use of aforementioned staircases).

A visit to Edmonton cannot go without a visit to the ridiculously-sized West Edmonton Mall, which contains a waterslide park, live flamingoes running around, a mini-theme park for the kids, submarine rides (for $12.95), and of course oodles of shops. It's actually about 20 minutes drive from the centre (the city is between 97 and 110 St and WEM is at 170-178 St)

Edmonton has heaps of really amazing acoustic guitarists - I met and talked to one called Cal in the Legislature gardens, and another called Matt downtown. Whyte Avenue (near the hostel) is a bit of an artsy hangout, and was the centre of the Fringe Festival which was starting just as we were leaving - we kept hearing about it (many people thought we had arrived for it!)

What's surprising is that there's no real competition for beds in the hostel at Edmonton even though it is still peak season - being August and the end of the North American school holidays. It's the one place in Canada I've been that has not been practically booked out - although it's still busy.

As for us, we bought bison in the local IGA supermarket - it tastes really nice. Got eaten with loads of local cherry tomatoes and 2 full potatoes :)

Off to Toronto tomorrow... The sad part is I don't feel any emotional connection with Edmonton whatsoever. So far, Auckland and Vancouver have been the two places to manage that. Other than that it'll be my last day in Western Canada for quite a while, tomorrow will be quite unimportant in many ways.