We got a late start and headed to the closest coffee shop to try to catch some free wi-fi. Evidently, Canada doesn’t believe in free wi-fi, so in the interest of being cheap we headed downtown to check out the old buildings and the view from the space needle. The Calgary space needle has a glass floored section where you can look straight down about 30 floors. The theatre next door is aptly named "The Vertigo Theatre". From up top you can see the Stampede rodeo going on but it seemed kind of small compared to the Houston rodeo. Next we walked to an outdoor shopping area and talked to a local artist about the photographs he was selling. He showed us a picture of one of the mountains in the Canadian Rockies that we would be passing and was a pretty nice guy.
After being in the wilderness and small towns for so many weeks, the big city was kind of an overload so we left downtown and hit some thrift stores and an awesome Vietnamese restaurant in the artsy side of town. Finally, we remembered to mail back our hotel key from Cody. We also stopped in a camera store and got a tripod for the camera. Next, we decided to try to go to another local brew pub for dinner. We drove and drove and finally found it, but they had just closed for the day. I guess we looked really bummed out because the brewers that were still chatting in the tasting room, gave us two free glasses and some “belt buckles”. It was worth the trip – we found some of their beer in the local store – Big Rock (Warthog Cream Ale).
We headed to camping – found a great spot with lovely green grass and wi-fi. Even though we suspected the lovely grass might be from waste water runoff from the RV’s up the hill – it was still a nice spot with only the occasional smelly wind. The campsite also had a view of the site of the 1988 Winter Olympics. The ground hogs here have set up a tunnel system with a hole under each and every picnic table so they can get scraps without being seen.
We were too hungry and tired to cook so we set up camp and drove into the nearby suburbs for some food. We found Montana’s – which was good. I had a very interesting chicken faijitas with a apple butter salsa – weird but good. Kevin had the ribs with the “Texas Bold” sauce – Northerners really like their sugar! After dinner we were able to do all our laundry and check our email for a very reasonable price.
Pictures for Day 19 and Day 20
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
July 10th: Drumheller, Vulcan, & Calgary (Day 18)
Drumheller (Royal Tyrrell Museum) was an amazing museum!
We drove onto Vulcan, Alberta just for the nerdiness of it. Besides almost getting lost and running out of gas, and all the rain, it was a still a worthwhile trip. Vulcan is desperately trying to lobby for the premier of the next Star Trek movie. We asked the guide at the Vulcan welcoming center if they had a theatre, she said “well no, but we have an auditorium and we are trying to get a screen and projector”. So if you get a chance…go to their facebook site and send an email to help them.
Afterwards, we drove to Calgary and got the nastiest and most expensive hotel of our trip so far. Calgary was in the middle of their “Stampede” and all the prices were jacked up for the event. The dogs loved the room because there was plenty of floor space and nasty smells for them to rub in. The only advantage to this hotel was the closeness to downtown and patch of grass that was right outside the door. We didn’t have to leash the dogs even once – they were so good. We showered, it had a been a while, and headed to a local brew pub (Wild Wood) for a sampler of beers and local food. All 7 of their beers were great, except for the pilsner which tasted like skunky honey. We didn’t even bother to finish that one. It had been a very long day, so we headed back to the hotel.
Pictures for Day 18
We drove onto Vulcan, Alberta just for the nerdiness of it. Besides almost getting lost and running out of gas, and all the rain, it was a still a worthwhile trip. Vulcan is desperately trying to lobby for the premier of the next Star Trek movie. We asked the guide at the Vulcan welcoming center if they had a theatre, she said “well no, but we have an auditorium and we are trying to get a screen and projector”. So if you get a chance…go to their facebook site and send an email to help them.
Afterwards, we drove to Calgary and got the nastiest and most expensive hotel of our trip so far. Calgary was in the middle of their “Stampede” and all the prices were jacked up for the event. The dogs loved the room because there was plenty of floor space and nasty smells for them to rub in. The only advantage to this hotel was the closeness to downtown and patch of grass that was right outside the door. We didn’t have to leash the dogs even once – they were so good. We showered, it had a been a while, and headed to a local brew pub (Wild Wood) for a sampler of beers and local food. All 7 of their beers were great, except for the pilsner which tasted like skunky honey. We didn’t even bother to finish that one. It had been a very long day, so we headed back to the hotel.
Pictures for Day 18
Saturday, August 9, 2008
July 9th: Kevin, MT to Canada (Day 17)
The next day we overslept and barely made check out – but we were able to wash our camp dishes from our previous campsites, and took much needed showers. Kevin picked up a couple of coffees and muffins from next door and we checked out and headed to our next stop…Kevin, Montana. We did remember to return the key this time!
Kevin Montana is an old, half-dead oil town that was interesting and sad at the same time. We left Kevin and headed to Canada. Luckily the dogs were feeling calm (usually they bark at anyone who comes within 100 feet of the car) so Border Patrol passed us through with no problems. Apparently we got off easy because the Menonites that were trying to get through next to us were stopped and had their van searched. We made a couple of sandwiches on the road and headed on to the Alberta Badlands, where the largest concentration of dinosaur fossils in the world was found. We passed through Vauxhall, the Potato capital of the West, on our way to see the Dinosaur find. Along the way, we realized that none of the stores in Canada were able to treat our check card as a debit card so we had to go cashless until Calgary.
We drove through the Badlands and then drove 2 hours to Drumheller to see the Royal Tyrrell Museum of paleontology. It was late when we arrived so we decided to find a campsite, make dinner and call it a night. It was a little cloudy, but it looked like it would clear up soon so we set up camp. Almost immediately we were eaten alive by mosquitos, so we headed into town for bug spray, some groceries, and firewood. As we were spraying down in the parking lot of the grocery store, a local laughed at us and said “been there, done that – it’s not going to work”. Once we got the coils burning and the spray on, it wasn’t too bad. The mosquites may be in great quanity, but these "far north" mosquitos' bites don’t sting or itch and you can hardly even tell where they’ve bitten you. However…….the rain did not pass. What a night! It stormed and stormed and stormed - with wind and hail! At one point it quieted down and we were able to get a little bit of sleep. I woke up to tell Oops to stop "snurfling" (noises he makes when he takes an undue interest in his nether regions) but we realized that it wasn’t him. Something was outside the tent, but I guess it didn’t find anything interesting or maybe my mom “cut it out” voice worked on whatever it was. If we hadn't been camping in a stand of trees I don't think our tent would have survived the onslaught of hail and wind that night.
Pictures for Day 17
Kevin Montana is an old, half-dead oil town that was interesting and sad at the same time. We left Kevin and headed to Canada. Luckily the dogs were feeling calm (usually they bark at anyone who comes within 100 feet of the car) so Border Patrol passed us through with no problems. Apparently we got off easy because the Menonites that were trying to get through next to us were stopped and had their van searched. We made a couple of sandwiches on the road and headed on to the Alberta Badlands, where the largest concentration of dinosaur fossils in the world was found. We passed through Vauxhall, the Potato capital of the West, on our way to see the Dinosaur find. Along the way, we realized that none of the stores in Canada were able to treat our check card as a debit card so we had to go cashless until Calgary.
We drove through the Badlands and then drove 2 hours to Drumheller to see the Royal Tyrrell Museum of paleontology. It was late when we arrived so we decided to find a campsite, make dinner and call it a night. It was a little cloudy, but it looked like it would clear up soon so we set up camp. Almost immediately we were eaten alive by mosquitos, so we headed into town for bug spray, some groceries, and firewood. As we were spraying down in the parking lot of the grocery store, a local laughed at us and said “been there, done that – it’s not going to work”. Once we got the coils burning and the spray on, it wasn’t too bad. The mosquites may be in great quanity, but these "far north" mosquitos' bites don’t sting or itch and you can hardly even tell where they’ve bitten you. However…….the rain did not pass. What a night! It stormed and stormed and stormed - with wind and hail! At one point it quieted down and we were able to get a little bit of sleep. I woke up to tell Oops to stop "snurfling" (noises he makes when he takes an undue interest in his nether regions) but we realized that it wasn’t him. Something was outside the tent, but I guess it didn’t find anything interesting or maybe my mom “cut it out” voice worked on whatever it was. If we hadn't been camping in a stand of trees I don't think our tent would have survived the onslaught of hail and wind that night.
Pictures for Day 17
Friday, August 8, 2008
July 8th: Livingston, Bozeman, Conrad Montana (Day 16)
Livingston was really cute! First we stopped to do laundry, catch up on email, and make some phone calls. A fellow Texan caught me photographing the prairie dogs right outside the laundry and asked “where are you from??!”, when I told him Texas, he said “well – you’ve seen gopher’s right? Well these are the same thing – target practice!”
We had a great lunch at a cute Italian bistro. We began to notice that every little town that we went to had a senior center right downtown so everyone can get to it! We shopped at the senior center thrift shop and Cheri bought a genuine forest ranger uniform jacket! We wandered to several other thrift stores, tried to find the local brewery, Neptune’s Brewery (which turned out to be closed, so we just bought some bottled at the store. It wasn't really worth looking for in the first place). After Livingston we headed to Bozeman, where we hit several thrift stores and used ski/outdoor shops to get some winter essentials.
Bozeman was really cool and hip and reminded us of Austin (if it were in Colorado). It was cute, but we wanted to get a little out of town before settling for the night. Our plan was to drive just out of town and get a campsite – but we wound up driving to Great Falls to find camping. The only campground we could find in Great Falls (Mostly RV – only 5 campsites), was sandwiched between 2 highways, a railroad and in a really bad neighborhood, so we decided to move on and drive until we found the next campsite outside of town. That night we drove and drove but there was no camping to be found. The towns got smaller and smaller, too small to support any hotels. We couldn’t figure out why there were suddenly no camping sites in this part of the state since we had seen tons before. Our answer came when we stopped on the side of the road to let the dogs out to pee – The mosquitoes swarmed like nothing you have ever seen before – worse than a swamp in Louisiana, Florida, or East Houston! The car was full within minutes and we spent the next 2 days killing them. Needless to say, we gave up on camping.
We drove on to Conrad in the dark and found a cute Motel. The owner had already left for the night, but there was a phone on a TV tray outside the office with his number written next to it. Luckily, they allowed pets and had one room left. We waited a few minutes for him to show up and get us into our room. We loaded in and then realized that it was very stuffy and the AC window unit had a “Do not use this unit, it has been winterized”. Kevin had to go around back to see if it had indeed been winterized – it hadn’t thank goodness. We finally got everything settled and hit the sack after a very long day.
We had a great lunch at a cute Italian bistro. We began to notice that every little town that we went to had a senior center right downtown so everyone can get to it! We shopped at the senior center thrift shop and Cheri bought a genuine forest ranger uniform jacket! We wandered to several other thrift stores, tried to find the local brewery, Neptune’s Brewery (which turned out to be closed, so we just bought some bottled at the store. It wasn't really worth looking for in the first place). After Livingston we headed to Bozeman, where we hit several thrift stores and used ski/outdoor shops to get some winter essentials.
Bozeman was really cool and hip and reminded us of Austin (if it were in Colorado). It was cute, but we wanted to get a little out of town before settling for the night. Our plan was to drive just out of town and get a campsite – but we wound up driving to Great Falls to find camping. The only campground we could find in Great Falls (Mostly RV – only 5 campsites), was sandwiched between 2 highways, a railroad and in a really bad neighborhood, so we decided to move on and drive until we found the next campsite outside of town. That night we drove and drove but there was no camping to be found. The towns got smaller and smaller, too small to support any hotels. We couldn’t figure out why there were suddenly no camping sites in this part of the state since we had seen tons before. Our answer came when we stopped on the side of the road to let the dogs out to pee – The mosquitoes swarmed like nothing you have ever seen before – worse than a swamp in Louisiana, Florida, or East Houston! The car was full within minutes and we spent the next 2 days killing them. Needless to say, we gave up on camping.
We drove on to Conrad in the dark and found a cute Motel. The owner had already left for the night, but there was a phone on a TV tray outside the office with his number written next to it. Luckily, they allowed pets and had one room left. We waited a few minutes for him to show up and get us into our room. We loaded in and then realized that it was very stuffy and the AC window unit had a “Do not use this unit, it has been winterized”. Kevin had to go around back to see if it had indeed been winterized – it hadn’t thank goodness. We finally got everything settled and hit the sack after a very long day.
Pictures
We have reached a snag with the pictures - they are too large and have to be resized. We've also had a really hard time picking which pictures to post on the blog because there are so many. So....I'm working on resizing them and we will be posting them on another site just for pictures. I'll add the link to the blog as soon as they are done. Happy Friday!
July 7th: Yellowstone to Livingston (Day 15)
We got an early start on this day – a REAL early start! For some reason our phones kept changing back and forth between time zones so when we set our alarm for what we thought was 6:30am, it actually turned out to be 5:30am. We broke camp and didn't realize the time until we tried to get breakfast and everyplace was still closed. The morning started out slow, but we finally got to see a buffalo – as it ran right by our car! We also saw more deer, some bears (from the car - with park rangers moving the traffic along), a jackrabbit, a grey wolf, an eagle and an elk. We saw one of the bears when we stopped to see the only known standing petrified tree. By the time that we arrived at Mammoth Springs we were exhausted – so we only managed to walk the lower section and drove up to the upper section. We were pretty happy to spend the two days at the park that we did, but we could have spent a week and still not seen all the incredible sites.
We left the park and drove to Livingston. Right outside of town we found a fantastic campground between two mountains on the Yellowstone River. It was just a small camping park with mostly RV sites and a few primitive tent sites. The couple that ran the place were nice and gave us a great deal. After getting camp set up and making a big taco salad, we walked to the little burger joint right beside the camp and each got 2 scoops of ice cream for only 3$! Even better, they had Wi-Fi so we could catch up on our email! After a good night's sleep we packed up camp and drove into Livingston to catch up on some laundry and to see the town.
Pictures for Day 15
We left the park and drove to Livingston. Right outside of town we found a fantastic campground between two mountains on the Yellowstone River. It was just a small camping park with mostly RV sites and a few primitive tent sites. The couple that ran the place were nice and gave us a great deal. After getting camp set up and making a big taco salad, we walked to the little burger joint right beside the camp and each got 2 scoops of ice cream for only 3$! Even better, they had Wi-Fi so we could catch up on our email! After a good night's sleep we packed up camp and drove into Livingston to catch up on some laundry and to see the town.
Pictures for Day 15
Monday, August 4, 2008
July 6th: Yellowstone (Day 14)
We arrived at Yellowstone and discovered that we had forgotten to check out of the hotel in Cody. Luckily, Kevin has a habit of taking every hotel pen he can lay hands on so we had the phone number of the hotel and, once we found a pay phone in the park, were able to call for the address to send the key.
About five miles into the park we saw a black wolf trotting along the side of the road. Like all the animals in Yellowstone he seemed to be desperately pretending we were not there (throughout the park you could almost hear the animal mantra, "there are no cars, there are no cameras, there is not a crowd of humans following me wherever I go). He moved quickly as if on a very important mission but Cheri still managed to get some good pictures of him as he climbed the steep hill next to the road and disappeared over the the top.
On our way to see Old Faithful and Castle Geyser we saw quite a few deer but the buffalo were still elusive and mule deer are only interesting for a short while. The geysers were amazing though. We were lucky enough to see Castle Geyser erupt. It has a cycle that is much longer than Old Faithful so unless you happen to be near by when it is ready to do its thing you could wait around all day and still not see it. Castle may not shoot as high as Old Faithful, but the formation around it and the sounds it makes are much more interesting. We hung around for Old Faithful and then headed out to see the rest of the boiling thermal pools.
Since we hadn't been real sure about when we would arrive at Yellowstone we had not made reservations for the interior campsites. They were packed! Long lines of reserved and hopeful campers waited outside of each campground so we headed out of the park at the west exit to look for camping elsewhere. At the first place we stopped, the owner was kind enough to ask if we had a tarp, which we did not, and explained that the ground in his tent area had been rained out the previous day and really hadn't dried enough. We thanked him for his honesty and headed down the road in search of drier digs.
About 10 miles out of town we found a sign advertising what appeared to be a great campsite; showers, riverside camping, the works. The road to this campsite was being prepared for resurfacing and the crews had stopped just short of making it drivable without a truck, jeep or SUV. Even at 5 mph, the fillings were being shaken out of our teeth so we turned off on what looked like a side road. It was much smoother than the main road ad we could tell it was heading back towards town so we took it, even though it was only about a car width across. It turned out to be a snowmobile/ATV track! Who knew you could go off-roading in a mini-van? Yay Mazda, heart of a sports car indeed!
We finally found a KOA and even though it was more of a carnival than a campsite (it took 5 minutes to thread our way through the crowds of kids on rented hotwheels and bikes) we took a site and settled in for the night.
Pictures for Day 14
About five miles into the park we saw a black wolf trotting along the side of the road. Like all the animals in Yellowstone he seemed to be desperately pretending we were not there (throughout the park you could almost hear the animal mantra, "there are no cars, there are no cameras, there is not a crowd of humans following me wherever I go). He moved quickly as if on a very important mission but Cheri still managed to get some good pictures of him as he climbed the steep hill next to the road and disappeared over the the top.
On our way to see Old Faithful and Castle Geyser we saw quite a few deer but the buffalo were still elusive and mule deer are only interesting for a short while. The geysers were amazing though. We were lucky enough to see Castle Geyser erupt. It has a cycle that is much longer than Old Faithful so unless you happen to be near by when it is ready to do its thing you could wait around all day and still not see it. Castle may not shoot as high as Old Faithful, but the formation around it and the sounds it makes are much more interesting. We hung around for Old Faithful and then headed out to see the rest of the boiling thermal pools.
Since we hadn't been real sure about when we would arrive at Yellowstone we had not made reservations for the interior campsites. They were packed! Long lines of reserved and hopeful campers waited outside of each campground so we headed out of the park at the west exit to look for camping elsewhere. At the first place we stopped, the owner was kind enough to ask if we had a tarp, which we did not, and explained that the ground in his tent area had been rained out the previous day and really hadn't dried enough. We thanked him for his honesty and headed down the road in search of drier digs.
About 10 miles out of town we found a sign advertising what appeared to be a great campsite; showers, riverside camping, the works. The road to this campsite was being prepared for resurfacing and the crews had stopped just short of making it drivable without a truck, jeep or SUV. Even at 5 mph, the fillings were being shaken out of our teeth so we turned off on what looked like a side road. It was much smoother than the main road ad we could tell it was heading back towards town so we took it, even though it was only about a car width across. It turned out to be a snowmobile/ATV track! Who knew you could go off-roading in a mini-van? Yay Mazda, heart of a sports car indeed!
We finally found a KOA and even though it was more of a carnival than a campsite (it took 5 minutes to thread our way through the crowds of kids on rented hotwheels and bikes) we took a site and settled in for the night.
Pictures for Day 14
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