Steam Whistle is probably my favourite Ontario beer. My typical arrival pattern to Toronto involves having one (or two) of these on the Porter flight into Toronto Island, dropping my bags at my sister’s place, then picking up a case of the green cans/bottles at the Summerhill LCBO.
A confluence of events brought my Dad and I to Toronto. I had a few vacation days to burn, my sister was traveling which left her condo available for us, Dad had the points for a free flight, and the Blue Jays were wrapping up a home stand against Seattle and Texas. That made plans for a three day trip come together very quickly.
Saturday: Three days, three baseball games, and a steady diet of cardiac arrest inducing food and drink kicked off shortly after arrival at mid day. After touching down on separate flights, we met up at the condo, quickly unpacked and made our way down to the stadium. Before entering, we pass underneath this sculpture outside Rogers Centre (“The Audience” by Michael Snow) which always makes me smile:
Not knowing much about the Seattle Mariners, we take in batting practice to try and learn about some of their hitters:
We make our way up to our seats for the Saturday afternoon game. Not too shabby for $14. I have to pinch myself that I can see professional sport for less than the cost of a junior hockey game in Halifax. Jays win 7-0 in a very entertaining game:
Banff is a picturesque town, full of charms to the wanderer. As my last post on our trip, here are some pictures taken of the town on a number of walks over a few days.
Banff Avenue:
I generally eat pretty well wherever I go on vacation. Some advance planning of the “can’t miss” places goes a long way toward making that happen. When I was doing my advance scouting for Banff, it became apparent early on that there wouldn’t be enough days in the itinerary to try all of the places that I wanted to. Here are the highlights of a week’s worth of delicious food and drink.
I violated a key travel rule – never return to the same restaurant twice on the same trip. I broke that rule because the food was so good on the first visit to the Bear Street Tavern and there was a menu full of things I wanted to try. On the first visit, they were running a Thursday night special on their bison short ribs. I saw this menu item arrive to a salivating customer at the table next to us as I was considering my order and it swung my decision. These were incredible – enormous, meaty and tender with crispy bits of BBQ sauce clinging to the edges. The beer off to the side is Tree Brewery Hop Head IPA from Kelowna, BC. Ignore the salad in the picture (I sure did):
The weather cleared on Friday morning just long enough for us to make our way to the top of Sulphur Mountain. This was one of the “must do” things on our itinerary. The day before, when we had a downpour in the Banff townsite, heavy snow fell starting about half way up the mountain. Here’s a view of the snow line on the mountain:
Although our Alberta road trip plans were cut short due to snow storms, we weren’t going to miss driving back from Lake Louise along the Bow River Parkway. It’s a scenic, winding 2 lane road through the forest, well known for its mountain vistas and wildlife sightings. This drive didn’t disappoint.
This is what most of the hour and a half drive looked like – forests and snow-capped mountain peaks. We only saw maybe eight other cars for the length of the drive. I took this picture standing in the middle of the road:
I’d rather be walking through the pine trees / high up above Lake Louise…
That line from the Blue Rodeo song “Western Skies” put Lake Louise on my mental travel map many many years ago. Our initial plans were to spend our first travel day hanging around Banff and to leave on a day-long road trip the following day to visit Lake Louise, perhaps Field, BC, the Icefields and the Bow River Parkway. The night before leaving, with the advance forecast calling for two days of heavy snow in the mountains, we called an audible.
Travel day: Awake at 3:45am, flight out of Halifax at 6:30, arrive in Calgary about 6 hours later. Two hours on a shuttle bus to Banff. Stop at a Safeway to pick up supplies and provisions and by 2pm Mountain time, we’re in our rental car and on our way north. We weren’t going to miss the chance to see Lake Louise, even if it was for an abbreviated visit. The weather gods smiled on us with temperatures pushing 15C and the sun broke through the clouds as we reached the lake. Our travel weary spirits were raised as we walked up a hill and the beauty of this view washed over us:
Mountains, rivers, trees and lakes. A steady diet of bison, elk and beef. Million dollar views everywhere I turned. A strong desire to stay longer in the mountains. That’s the synopsis of my week in Banff and Lake Louise, Alberta. I’m settling in tonight to sort through about a thousand photos (900 of which have a snow-capped mountain somewhere in the frame) and to start writing about this trip. There will be more to come over the next week or two, but here’s a teaser of the beauty that permeated my spirit over the past week:
I don’t get too wrapped up in the small rules changes that happen each NFL off-season, but there are two changes this year that I think will sacrifice some of the entertainment value of NFL football:
1. All plays that might have been scoring plays and all turnovers will now automatically be reviewed. Why is this a bad thing? First, replay reviews slow down the game. A football game now very rarely ends in less than 3 hours – this rule change will probably add a few more minutes to the average game length next year. Secondly, it’s entertaining to watch coaches incorrectly challenge calls and makes for great post-game second guessing of decisions. Thirdly, although you want to have every call correct, a few missed/incorrect calls adds some drama and intrigue (football is, after all, entertainment). I want to see a perfectly officiated game, but in lieu of that, a game that ends in 3 hours with a bit of added drama isn’t a bad alternative.
2. Changing the OT rules – This is a subtle change to make overtime more fair to both teams and to align the rules for regular season and post-season games. That sounds good, but dig a little deeper. Overtime in the regular season will now last longer due to multiple possessions. When overtime lasts longer, a likely outcome is an increase in tie games. A four hour game that ends in a tie doesn’t make anyone happy.
When I go more than a few months without busting out of town, I get restless. The kind of restless where a simple article, tweet, image or TV clip of somewhere else (anywhere else, really) can get me thinking about packing my bag and grabbing my passport.
I’ve been in a travel rut this winter. Plans for a guys trip to Trinidad fell through, and with a few work commitments and constraints, it’s been harder than usual to make travel plans. Thankfully, my travel restlessness is thawing now and there are a few adventures on the horizon. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be touring Banff and Lake Louise. Shortly after that, Dad and I are taking in three Blue Jays games (and likely, quite a few Ontario microbrews at my favourite Toronto bar, the Rebel House) over an extended weekend. A short July break in Ottawa is now booked. The pin board of locations for a summer trip is being narrowed as we watch flight prices bop up and down to Scandinavia and a few select European destinations. Fall plans for a trip to Colorado are moving from being penciled in to being written in ink.
All in all, things are looking up after a slow start to the year.
Bluenose Traveler 