Alberta

Alberta beer sampling

/ Greg / 1 Comment

With the move from Halifax to Saskatoon and all that entailed, this has been a year of shorter trips and vacations. One of those was a July road trip to Edmonton to see the Tragically Hip play on their last tour. Like all my trips this year, and owing to Saskatchewan’s limited selection of craft beer, I managed to find a way to sneak in some sampling and tastings over a couple of days in Edmonton.

On the afternoon before the Hip show, I noticed an interesting beer and wine store in the downtown and grabbed these two to put on ice back at the hotel. The Blindman Session ale was very tasty post-concert. I should have been smarter and grabbed more to bring back home.

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Courage and Grace, Too

/ Greg / 5 Comments

As the last strains of “Ahead by a Century” were just fading into the rafters of Rexall Place in Edmonton, Gord Downie walked to the front, his Tragically Hip band members fading quietly off stage. The spotlights centred on the Canadian icon, alone.

I can’t imagine Wayne Gretzky himself ever received an ovation the likes of which Gord was soaking in. I looked around the arena, and through my own teary vision, couldn’t see another dry eye. Yes, we all knew there was an encore to come, but in our own way we were all saying our thanks to Gord and his band. His was the music most of us in attendance had grown up to. The soundtrack of road trips, of summers, of that girl you just met or the girl who just left you. In that moment in Edmonton, we were all taken back to those indelible memories that have been woven into the fabric of our lives. We were saying thanks, but also saying goodbye. And we were all in awe of a man dealing with a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and his desire to tour one last time.

This was no dress rehearsal, it was his life.

Gord Downie alone on stage

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Eating in Banff (aka: bison, bison, bison, elk)

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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):

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Views along the Bow River Parkway

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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:

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The beauty of Lake Louise

/ Greg / 2 Comments

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:

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An Alberta teaser

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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: