In the month or so we have seen the transition to summer though it hasn't been the greatest of weather we have managed to make the most of what we have. Like most places around the world, summer time means outdoors and camping... so that is what we did.
Last days off Suzy, myself and a couple of other friends decided to go camping out at Kanaskis for two nights. The place is about 1.5hrs from Calgary and is an awesome drive through the mountains. Was a long weekend so Suzy and I got there early to snag a campsite. We got there and had no cell reception so had to run to the local store and call our friends and give directions on how to get there via their voicemail, we were sure they were not going to arrive but at about 8:30pm all of a sudden they managed to find us. We were thrilled to say the least thought they were lost in the wilderness.
We got the site set up, cooked some sweet bison burgers and got to some drinking around the campfire before bed.
Kicking back after camp set up for evening drinking festivities
The following day we got up and cooked breaky and went for a walk around the local area. We had bear spray with us as there was a grizzly and her two cubs in the area. We walked around the lake for the morning and played around the local area. Again the weather was overcast and average but was still a nice day to see there area.
Valley scenery
Playing around the lake
Nice backdrop around the lake
The afternoon we got back for lunch and then shortly after it started raining so we set in for an afternoon of "Cards against humanity" (if you haven't played this yet, get involved such a great game). After the rain and a number of alcoholic beverage the BB gun came out again and we started target shooting which then turned into the best drinking game I have played to date. It involved about 6 cans at different locations (some close, some further and harder to hit) all with different seconds of drinking allocated to them if you hit them. The game is played so that if you fire for the can for 1 second of drinking and miss you drink for 1 second, if you hit it then you get to double it's value and delegate those seconds to the other players. If you hit the 6 second can you basically got to tell someone to finish their drink.
Cards against humanity
BB Gun Drinking Game
BB Gun drinking game
The night ended up pretty messy after all the drinking and made for some other fun traditional Canadian camping eats which included smokies on the fire (smokies are like a large sausage in bread) and S'mores which made for a delicious evening.
Cookin' up some Smokies
The following morning we slowly packed up and headed home, on the way out of the national park we were pleasantly surprised to see the mumma grizzly and her two cubs playing on the hill. The mumma was massive and the cubs were unreal to see playing around with each other in real life. Was truly amazing to be this close to them and see how they interact.
Grizzly and cubs
Mumma Grizzly
Unfortunately I was up north working for the entire Stampede which is quite a big deal so sadly I cannot provide any insight into these festivities. My sister Steph though had road tripped to Calgary to work Stampede and ended up staying longer to wait for me so I could join her for a couple of days on her road trip to Jasper.
After getting packed and ready to go on the Thursday morning after getting back from site, we got on the road. We made stops at Lake Louise for a late lunch next to the water. Was different to see the landscape in summer with less snow and ice. We pressed on pretty quickly to get on the Icefields Highway to Jasper. We were a little worried about our chances of getting to Jasper as there had been some serious forest fires right in the middle stretch of the highway (Saskatchewan Crossing) and the Park Rangers had been shutting off the road when the fire had been flaring up.
Drive through the icefield highway 93
We took the risk and pressed on through seeing some pretty unreal scenery. To me the drive through this section of the Rockies was the best I had seen, such large mountains and shear faces that seemed to get higher and higher which were matched perfectly with the blue and teal coloured lakes at the bases in the forests. The photos do not do the area justice its expanse can only be seen in person.
We slowly made the drive through also stopping at the Colombia Icefields which is a large glacier between the mountains that is quite spectacular. Again would have been better with some sunshine but the history behind it is also interesting in the fact that the glacier is slowly getting smaller and smaller which is quite sad considering this is due climate change.
Steph and I at the base of the Colombia Glacier
We arrived in Jasper late that afternoon, we made it through the fires, you could clearly see where the forest had burnt away but it appeared to mostly be under control. Upon getting into Jasper we got a campsite and set up and got into some Macgyver-like cooking on the back of Steph's van (named "Mum") to get our steaks cooked out of the rain. We also had a number of unexpected visitors that evening with a herd of about 12 large elk walk right through our camp site.
Beer and steak... True camping fashion
Elk through the campsite
The following day we rose quite late and got going with some banana and egg pancakes.
Banana pancakes
We then ventured to Maligne Lake and Canyon to see the sites. Not only was the scenery spectacular but we also saw a heap of wildlife including elk, bears and deer. We cruised around the lake and canyons for the afternoon and then finished the afternoon of with a late lunch lakeside which was quite relaxing. That evening was some more delicious camp meals and some red wine. Considering how active the day was, being out camping and in nature was super relaxing and exactly what I needed after some stressful weeks at work.
Steph on the dock at Maligne Lake
The next day we got going again and went for a hike through the valley of the five lakes. On the trek I saw probably the greenest lake I have ever seen. After a solid hike the afternoon we drove around for some more wildlife and then ended up kayaking around a lake. And by kayaking I mean Steph and I spun around in circles in a kayak haha.
Bear and cub meet on the road
A storm rolled in shortly after and cut our afternoon short but ended with us going to a bar for some beers and nachos to celebrate another year for me living in Canada and to just generally get out of the the rain.....
Beautiful teal/green lake.. So clear
Great spot to take a rest and take in the views
Kayaking the lake
Valley of the five lakes hike
That even we chilled and watched a movie and got set ready to take off early the next day. The following morning I rented a car and drove back to Calgary along the same route. The drive was a little better on the way back as there was some more sunlight which showed the peaks and colours of the lakes better and was a great end to a good couple of days traveling with the sister. Was a really good catch up with her and was glad she let me be apart of her Canadian adventure.
View from drivers seat back to Calgary... Made for a relaxing drive home
I can see it has been quite a while since I have posted on here. It is well overdue. Just hard to find time with the work schedule I am currently doing but there has been plenty of fun activities happening. I have a post that I am finishing up about the end of the winter season here which should be posted within the next month.
In the meantime the last 2 months have seen the snow completely go and spring start which means that it is still relatively cool (not cold) but no snow.
My last week off work it was the first long weekend of the spring/summer season May Long. As a group had planned on going camping for the weekend but due to the still quite cold weather and high chances of rain we backed out and brainstormed a new option over a couple of bottles of wine and beer. We decided to find somewhere close by with some great activities to undertake so we decided to book some dingy hotel rooms in Drumheller and go there for the Saturday and Sunday.
For anyone unaware (most will be), Drumheller is a small town about 1hr 45mins north-east of Calgary. The town is most famous for the discovery of dinosaur fossils in the area (still being found on a regular basis in the area). The region is also quite different in scenery to the rest of Alberta as you start to head a across the flat prairies, Drumheller sneaks up on you as a town in the middle of a small canyon which is a good change.
On Saturday morning we started the morning with a touch of running around but stocked up the cooler with booze and stocked up Lauren and Nick's Dodge SUV with all 7 of of us and got on the road to Drumheller. Needless to say being a road trip we stopped every possible location and we drank at a bar in every small town on the way...
All aboard the cruise to Drumheller
The first town we stopped at was called Irrancana where I am pretty sure we disgraced the locals by jumping on their statue horse, taking a camera into the bar (lady was scared we were filming a movie haha) and just our general presence in the town.
Suzy defiling Silvester fire hydrant
The crew in Irricana
General inapropriateness
We ended up in the local lounge (which doubled as a Chinese restaurant) for a beer and to watch the second period of hockey playoffs. We then got back on the road to the next town of Beiseker which was a solid 15mins down the highway. We pulled up at a saloon bar and played some pool and drank a little more (I may add we had a designated driver the whole time if people are wondering).
We proceeded to Drumheller with a minor detour to a field in the middle of nowhere to shotgun some beers, shoot the bb gun in the field and get out and stretch.
Kids just having fun
BB Gun fun in the field
We eventually got to Drumheller... 1 and 3/4 hr drive became over 5 hrs with the pit stops and shenanigans.
Upom arrival we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and got to exploring the town. Now again for everyone who has not been to Drumheller, well to say that the town is founded on dinosaurs is an understatement. The whole town is covered in dinosaur statues and streets and shops are named after the ancient beasts.....
As such we proceeded to all buy dinosaur T-shirts and we pretty much wore them all weekend.
Rockin our dinosaur T-shirts
There also came a point shortly after this where I was dared to go for a swim in a local fountain, so I stripped off and jumped in. In doing so scaring most of the kids that were in the fountain (small clip in the video at the end of the blog).
The rest of the evening in Drumheller was a great evening involving "Cards Against Humanity" at the hotel, dinner, laser tag (drunk... yes I ended up running into the wall), then smashing karaoke until the AM.
The next morning we awoke (some a little worse for wear compared with others...) to get back on the train again. After breakfast and restocking the cooler with alcohol we got in the car and went to the dinosaur museum for an excursion. Really was cool to get a history of the area and see how abundant these creatures were in Alberta.
The rest of the afternoon consisted of a couple more saloon bars which were actually some of the coolest I had ever seen. The outsides of the bars were very Wild West feel which was quite cool. We had lunch and more beers at a small place called Wayne which is about 25mins outside Drumheller and anyone in Calgary looking for a good spot to go for a day trip I highly recommend going to this saloon bar for a feed and a bar.
Saloon bar just outside Drumheller
I believe we shamed and disgraced Wayne a little too
Last Chance Saloon for lunch
Drinks and lunch on the patio at Last Chance Saloon bar
We ended up back in Calgary later that night and continued on the drinking festivities. I know from the texts that I got the next day or two after this weekend that many in the group had a little too much "fun" and were still feeling this "fun" in their livers but apart from that was one of the best weekends had in Calgary yet. Looking forward to what the rest of the summer holds when it eventually starts here in about 3 weeks time.
Below I have cut together very quickly a video of some of the antics from the weekend. Play the Youtube clip if you are viewing it in Canada, for everyone else I have uploaded on my share drive and you can watch it on there (see attached link) as it sadly will not play in any other countries for some reason (will also post on my facebook page).
Until next time just remember a great travel adventure can be right at your doorstep, you don't need to get on a plane to "travel", explore your local area.
Gettin Heller'd in Drumheller (YouTube clip)
If not you can definitely view it from the link below. ENJOY!!!!
Another weekend, another day of boarding and this valentines day weekend had some amazing powder at Louise that Suzy and I took full advantage of and had one of the best days on the mountain yet. Below is a video from one of the weekend riding at Louise with my new Go Pro. The video is pretty slow to start and provides some good views of the slopes and the unreal views of the mountains. The second half is a little more of the snowboarding and a little better than the second half, this is also one of my first attempts at cutting a video. I have some great footage from this weekend but won't have much time to cut it so will be in one of the future posts. Enjoy the video, just click on the picture below and it should open.
Video of some snowboarding at Lake Louise
Afterwards we continued the day on by going to the actual Lake Louise to skate on the pond. It was completely surreal and felt like something out of a movie to skate on a lake in between the mountains in front of the grand Fairmont Hotel right on the lake with ice sculptures, kids playing hockey and families skating around. The video and photos attached are an attempt to show the views and experience but as usual I don't believe they do it any justice.
Suzy enjoying the views and hockey on the Lake
Hockey and skating on the frozen Lake Louise rinks
Ice sculpture of 2 Elk fighting
Video skating at Lake Louise
The last month here in Calgary has held some great occasions in Canadian lifestyle some of which only come around every couple of years... Yes people I am talking about the Winter Olympics.
Its quite funny coming from Australia to here where if we get anything less than a bronze in an event we are usually pretty disappointed, but when it comes to the Winter Olympics we are usually just happy to see that someone from the country showed up. I mean it's not like we don't cheer for them but based on our climate it has never really been our cup of tea. Well, when it comes to Canada, the roles are reversed. As their Winter Olympic motto stand "We are winter". So for them this is a big deal and it has been great to get involved and have 2 countries to be cheering for in these games as I now classify myself as a psuedo-Canadian.
As most know the biggest event for Canadians is the ice hockey. For them this is the be all and end all of the Olympics, and from what I have it sometimes felt that they cared more about beating the Americans in the games than actually getting gold in the event. Anyhow the games went on with Canada undefeated up to the quarter finals which they made it through and had a tough game against the US in semi-finals, which was on 10am-12:30pm on a Friday and to say the least my whole office of about 150 people ended up in the lunch room to watch the game. Upon winning this game they advanced to the gold medal match which was on a Sunday at 5:30am due to the time difference. This was funny as the Premier of Alberta on that Friday afternoon (almost immediately after the announcement of Canada making the gold medal game) dropped restrictions on the liquor laws of the province so that bars could open at 5am.
So we went to a local bar at 4.30am on a Sunday and saw the biggest line we have seen at the place ever at this particular bar (larger than any Saturday night for sure) and we somehow managed to get a table. We stayed an watched the game and drank beer at 5am, when in your life have you ever said you WENT (no left), yes WENT to the bar at 5am....
It was cold but I managed to pull off some sweet Canadian supporter gear as you can see in the photo.
My Canadian Supporter gear for the game
The game was unreal and the atmosphere in a bar at 5am was absolutely unreal, such a great experience. When the goals were scored everyone was high fiving and hugging each other around the bar sharing in the countries triumph. Below is a video to show the bar at the end siren when it was official that Canada had won gold in the Men's Hockey.
Video of Canada wining the men's hockey
After the game we drank with friends and managed to crawl out at 1.30pm after a day of great sherades and gold medal cheer. I have added some photos of the celebrations throughout the day.
So anyway I am heading back up north to work.in the oil sands again for the next 2 weeks so.I daresay I will be very quiet up there... In the meantime I have some great footage from snowboarding on the weekend just need to edit it so that will likely be up in the next post. So for now, catch ya later
Just before Christmas I got the word that I was heading up to northern Alberta to work on site for my company Kiewit Energy. At the moment we are building a bitumen froth plant that extracts bitumen out of the oil sands up North.
So a week ago I was sent up in the role as Project Controls Engineer, I think my bosses got a kick out of sending the new Aussie up north in Jan and Feb which are usually the coldest months of the year and general daytime temperatures at our site during these months are -30 degrees standard....
Usually I would have been on a 14 days work and 7 days off to fly back to Calgary but upon arriving at site our company was having problems with the camps that we were utilising for staff and trade workers and our company had reached a cap on the numbers of beds they could use. So I spent the week up there on site and will hopefully be back there in a couple of months time when the bed situation is sorted.
In my time up there though I found out that these Canadian trade guys are pretty hardcore working outside in -20 to -30 (if not lower) temperatures. I went out for an hour and a half last week in -32 to watch a steel module being set in place and my hands were pretty numb afterwards.
From a construction view it gets much harder to get a number of things done but these Canadians have figured out ways to get around them like when they pour concrete in these temperatures they have little shelters around the pour area to heat the concrete so it will actually stand excavating in the winter becomes much harder as the ground is also frozen.
So the job is a froth plant which basically filters out the bitumen out of the sand that is dug up in the surrounding oil sands. Below are some photos of the construction that show how big the project is, my companies section of the works is a bit over $1 Billion worth... Quite an extraordinary project.
Overview of the site up at Kearl Lake
The froth plant at sunset in winter
Night works constructing the plant
So I have come back to Calgary now in the meantime and I am straight back into it with snowboarding on the weekends, learning to ice skate and play hockey and back to hanging out with some friends.
On the weekend we went to Lake Louise snowboarding as Suzy and I usually do. It was a cold weekend on the mountain sitting at about -23 degrees without the windchill but was a super sunny and lovely bluebird day. We had a great day playing around in the sun and having a couple of beers on the hill. Below are a couple of good shots that we took over the day in the forever beautiful rockies. I keep going every weekend but I never get bored of the views and surrounding scenery of these mountains.
Some of the views on the drive to Lake Louise
Strapping in for a beautiful day at Louise
Just hangin out today
Also it's a running joke that I keep telling Suzy that she is a useless guide because I took her home to show her koalas and kangaroos out the back of mum and dads place and she is yet to find me any wildlife (though she really has shown me a fair bit) but just as we were joking about it on the way home and she was saying keep your eyes out for some wildlife when we spotted about 10-12 Elk just chilling in a kids playground on the way back to Calgary. It was quite funny because the sign there states that dogs aren't allowed in the park, but apparently a dozen Elk is ok. These guys don't have any horns but were quite curious to take a look at us when we pulled up. Such lovely animals and a good end to a great day.
Elk chilling in the park (1st Feb 2014)
The elk in the park again with the sign pretty funny
I am just waiting on a new Go Pro camera so hopefully some more exciting photos soon in coming blog posts. Bit hard to use the old phone camera to get action shots and have out in the snow so the new camera will def help out.
So another part of Canadian life style as you may already know is ice hockey. So I have been to a couple now but managed to go watch a really good game last week Calgary Flames vs Chicago Blackhawks. I mean Calgary is a pretty rubbish team and Chicago are unreal but was a really good game to watch and surprisingly Calgary ended up winning 5-4 in overtime. Below is a photo of the teams during warm up.
Also these crazy Canadians had a cool halftime show where they did human bowling down the ice. They slingshot people down on little tobogans and try to take out the plush pins. Would be super fun to be apart of and was pretty cool to watch. Here is some footage, I was pretty far away but you get the general idea.
So until next time have fun, I have a heap of things to put up already but all are going to be very specific blog posts that focus on one general topic of life over here so keep your eyes peeled on this place. That's all for now, let the Canadian adventures continue... Fuurrr suuureee eh!!!
