Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

Neil_1 — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:00:57 GMT

Hi all

Now, this will be a fair read – and it won’t make the one message, so I’ll try and split it up as appropriately as I can so it flows from one to the other in an ok and readable fashion.

Well, we’re now back from a most amazing trip. Still kinda jet-lagged at the moment, as we flew all night from LA to Brisbane and as a result, we by-passed Tuesday completely. I hope nothing major happened on that day, cause we saw none of it. How very weird really.

Firstly as I’d imagine a lot of you are wondering – I had lots of up times which was fantastic, but I also had to deal with some bad down times as well. I won’t go too much into the down times as I want to try and keep this post as ‘up five’ as possible.

The parts of Canada we saw - amazing.

Calgary – we were there a week before the Stampede hits their city and when I say hits their city, I mean it – it is one massive event.

Edmonton – wasn’t too bad either and by now we had our hire vehicle. We had to firstly upgrade from a Dodge Chrysler to a Ford SUV simply because the boot (trunk) space wasn’t big enough for all our bags!! The SUV was a neat little car though and was a breeze to drive and for the most part I did keep on the right hand side of the road.

The Rockies (Jasper and Banff) – um, breath-taking. Stunning views every which way you looked and the amount of snow still up high was incredible, as they are well into their summer months. And with summer comes mozzies (or as they know them as, Skeeters) and it’s an unwritten funny fact that the mozzie is Canada’s national bird – as they’re that BIG! Holy smoke, I swear at one stage I was being half carried by the buggas at one stage. Fortunately though, we didn’t encounter too many of them which is a very good thing.

Photos – well we took a bit over 4,000 of them. My daughter is an avid photographer and she is simply sensational with taking photos (or as the American/Canadian’s call them, pictures).

We scored some very good photos of Black Bears and we even got one of a mum and her cub and oh my, the cub was cute; and as you’re driving along it’s so easy to see if there’s something by the side of the road as you’ll see anything between 4-10 cars parked by the side of the road and you cruise up slowly (and if you don’t see anyone out of their cars, you know it’s a bear). Otherwise, people jump out of their cars and snap off photos of goats, deer or elk.

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

AGrace — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 05:30:16 GMT

Hi Neil,

It's so lovely to have you back. Part 1 sounded incredible. I'm glad you didn't get carried away by those mozzies, we would have missed you too much!

AGrace

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

Neil_1 — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 07:05:03 GMT

Thanx Amber

I think Part 3 was my fave - the whale watching was just incredible.

Not such a fan of this cold cold weather here though. 😞

Neil

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

white knight — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 12:42:25 GMT

Welcome back mate, it snowed here last night, central Victoria. Glad you had a good time (mostly).

topic Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1) in BB Social Zone

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)

Canada - my holiday experience (Part 1)