travel

Travels to my back deck

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Now more than a year without so much as a glance at airline seat sales, let alone the feeling of waking up jetlagged in a foreign country, there are early glimmers of hope for traveling in 2021. It is likely that traveling for me, this year, will be about reuniting with family out east, some western Canadian road trip adventures, and maybe, just maybe, a flight to a Canadian city later this year for some big city fun (eating in restaurants! going to bars!). Something holding me over until safer days ahead, and something that helped me hold it together in 2020, was the simple pleasure of hanging out on my back deck.

In the early pandemic days of 2020, my deck became a bit of an escape…an oasis really. A place for my wife and I to separate from our suddenly home office-focused work weeks.

Back deck, Saskatoon
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A staycation in five parts

/ Greg / Leave a comment

This past October, I took a needed week off of work, but due to rising pandemic case counts, my travel options were severely limited. I’m normally the type of person who wouldn’t dream of spending a handful of vacation days in my own city. I’ve always felt that a proper vacation needs a hotel and a plane ticket (or at worst, a very, very long road trip). 2020 threw up a lot of constraints for planning a proper week off, so I embraced the idea of a staycation to shake me out of the doldrums of what was a year of too much sameness for my restless spirit. So here’s my Saskatoon (and extended area) staycation in five parts.

Part 1 – An afternoon of mural exploration

I drove downtown, parked the car, and armed with nothing more than a list of interesting murals on my phone, wandered around my city as I might do when visiting a new place. This simple act made for a lovely afternoon and helped me see parts of Saskatoon through a fresh lens. I spent most of my afternoon wandering around the Riversdale neighbourhood where there is a wealth of vibrant public art in the form of murals. Here’s a small selection of what I explored.

Downtown Saskatoon murals
Downtown Saskatoon murals
Downtown Saskatoon murals
Downtown Saskatoon murals
Downtown Saskatoon murals
Downtown Saskatoon murals
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Getting away to Sylvan Lake

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Knowing myself to be a restless soul, once my wife booked our secluded cottage just south of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, I started looking around for what kind of trouble I could get myself into within a one hour drive. Don’t get me wrong… a cottage in the middle of nowhere sounded great, but sometimes when things are too quiet, I need an escape valve for a short diversion to give myself the ability to enjoy some more peace and quiet. Maybe a touch odd, but it has been working for me on my travels for years now.

Sylvan Lake popped up through my searching as meeting my criteria for a fun half-day excursion. My wife elected to stay back at the cottage, so I hopped in the car, popped open the sunroof, turned up the stereo and hit the arrow-straight highway east for about 45 minutes. My first stop was Sylvan Lake Brewing Company located on the east end of the town. I had visited far too few breweries in 2020, and sadly this would end up being the only “new to me” craft brewery I got to visit in the entire year. Sigh.

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The middle of nowhere

/ Greg / Leave a comment

When we left Banff National Park driving east into central Alberta, the sun was shining, the sky got bluer as the mountains receded, and my wife and I, while sad to leave the Rockies behind, were looking forward to a few days of serious down time at a cabin about twenty kilometres south of Rocky Mountain House. For all intents and purposes, we were going to the middle of nowhere to simply relax.

On a fortunate tip from a co-worker of my wife, we rented a gorgeous cabin at the Prairie Creek Inn that was the perfect mix of seclusion and luxurious comfort. For three nights this was our corner of the universe and both of us couldn’t have been happier with where we were.

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Looking back on 2020

/ Greg / Leave a comment

For the first time since 1992 I didn’t take a single flight in a calendar year. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and 2020 has me looking ahead with excitement to eight hour layovers, canceled flights, middle seats at the back of the plane by the washrooms… seriously. Travel took a back seat this year, but with safety and my natural restlessness pushing me, I managed to have a few adventures “on the road” to keep my spirits high. In no particular order, here is a list of my favourite travel experiences from 2020 – a year of making the best of it.

(1) The smell of salt water – I hit the road for the 90 minute drive to Manitou Beach and shortly after arriving took a walk along the water’s edge. Standing at this point, the breeze in my face, I could smell salt water. I closed my eyes and it felt like I could be standing along the water in Halifax on a peaceful morning. In a turbulent year, it was a true moment of feeling centred.

Manitou Beach
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Journey as the destination

/ Greg / 2 Comments

Our last day in the mountains in Alberta marked the midway point of our short, late summer vacation. We only had loose plans for the day – check out of our Banff hotel, pick up coffees for the road, then explore the Icefields Parkway before heading east toward a cabin we had booked for the rest of our vacation near Rocky Mountain House. This would be my second time driving the parkway, and I don’t think this drive will ever fail to wow me.

Having already explored Lake Louise a couple of days earlier, we passed that by on the highway and headed straight for the parkway. The post Labour Day roads were fairly deserted, the Tim’s coffee was tasting good (obviously helped out by the scenery), and our driving day was off to a great start. It would be a day of a lot of pulling off the road, including this first stop where the highway is elevated above Bow Lake.

Icefields Parkway
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When Banff empties out

/ Greg / 1 Comment

Labour Day 2020 started out as a rainy day so our plans were fairly modest. My wife and I had a lovely breakfast just outside the Banff townsite and over huevos rancheros decided on a drive to Canmore to visit an independent bookstore – a decision that both provided us our first chance to see snow this season on the highway into town and also helped me get an early jump on my xmas shopping. After a lazy middle of the day at our hotel, I got a bit restless. The clouds cleared, the temperatures rose and the town of Banff emptied out as most people headed home for a return to jobs and for the start of the school year.

There aren’t many lovely summer-like days in this part of the world where you get the sights mostly to yourself, so I took the opportunity to head to Lake Minnewanka. I had no plans other than to simply spend some time at the edge of the water. No plans never looked so good!

Lake Minnewanka
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Making the most of it

/ Greg / 3 Comments

Our “big trip” in 2020 was in many respects not as big as previous years. The ongoing pandemic narrowed our travel radius to driving distance of home rather than flight distance. Luckily for us, there are some amazing sights to see if you entertain a few eight hour road trip days. We planned a week away in Alberta split between its mountains and its prairie, and for everything that 2020 has thrown at us, I think we engineered a pretty impressive and needed vacation away.

After driving from Saskatoon to Banff where we made our home for three nights, an ominous longer-range forecast offered a glimmer of hope that we pounced on for a driving exploration of the Rocky Mountains. We started from Banff early in the morning and made our first stop at Lake Louise. I had been here a couple of times before, once with my Dad and another time with my wife, but never with the lake unencumbered by snow and ice. There is a reason many, including me, consider this the most beautiful place in Canada.

Lake Louise
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