July 11th & July 12th: Calgary (Day 19 & Day 20)

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