2018 Calgary Road Trip: Day 11 International Peace Garden

Day 11 August 19th

Memories:

Grace: The stars made from the flowers, Canadian Survival food: Cheezies as fire starters, the nearest working bathroom being in another county.

Danny: Everybody playing Go Fish with the “Don’t Die Out There” cards, the candy bars - part of Canadian survival food. (Aero Bars)

Therese: Edible Garden, being in both countries,  endless and futile search for propane.

The International Peace Garden was indeed peaceful. We slept in and didn’t get around to breakfast until after 10:00. (This does not bode well for the start of school.)

We had blueberry pancakes, apple cinnamon compote and sausages (one day past their expiry date - a bit risky in the cooler but I cooked them well.) With about four pancakes left, my propane sputtered out. We figured it would be an easy 15 minute drive into town for a new canister of propane.

Our first order of business was to tour the gardens at the Peace Garden.

Everything was very beautiful and lush. The sunken garden which ran up the middle of the park. One side was Canada and the other was the US. We had our picture taken with one foot in each country.

The woman who took our picture is from the area and she gave us a long history about the park. She also mentioned that there is a week long music camp in the park every summer. The camp ends in a concert with the conductor standing with a foot in each county. There is also a sports camp happening at the same time. The kids seemed interested. I am interested in the peace part of a week at the park.

We also toured the solarium which had a very impressive cactus garden. We took a quick break before heading to town to grab a snack which included poutine just to get in some more Canadian food. The food was pretty much average but it filled us up and the kids were happy because I caved in and allowed them to get a bottle of soda each.

Then we hit the road to cross back into Canada and Boisavain, a small town just 15 minutes away. The town of about 3,000 people has produced an extensive booklet of all they have to offer which includes many murals painted on the buildings as well as a lovely community garden which arose from a deserted parking lot. They also have a huge sculpture of a turtle (Tommy Turtle) a remnant of a time the town held turtle races. The practice has since died out, but the sculpture remains.

It was a very cute town, but the cuteness was slightly diminished in that everywhere we went was either closed (Sunday) or didn’t have propane. Helpful people sent us to a number of locations, none of which got us what we needed. We made an ice cream stop at the Busy Bee which was quite tasty. I called around to local campsites to no avail. Oh well. We returned to the grocery store where we started and threw together some supplies to cook over a campfire. We ended up with Hot Dogs, PIllsbury Flaky Rolls and broccoli.

When we got back to the campsite we took a quick tour around the other half of the park. We passed the 9/11 Memorial which included some of the broken and twisted metal I-Beams from the World Trade Center as well as a tribute to the fallen firefighters who lost their lives that day. It was a very moving sight. A number of young people were biking in the area and zipped by. It reminded me that many of the visitors were too young to remember or hadn’t been born yet. For those of us who will never forget that day, it was an incredibly sacred and moving place.

Back to the campsite, but first we passed a prize winning edible garden. I was very taken with the “Midnight Snack” tomatoes which started out black and turned a very deep red when ripe. 

Just near the garden were two sets of bathrooms. The bathrooms on the US side were out of order. Grace commented that it was quite something when the nearest working bathroom was in another country.

After much smoke inhalation and positioning the broccoli and leftover taco meat on the fire and attempting to make an oven out of a foil roasting pan for the rolls, we settled down to eat. Not bad if I do say so myself.

I should add that Grace built up her stamina at this campsite trusting the 1,000 step round trip to the second bathroom. The bathroom 10 feed away from our campsite was older and evidently had too many bugs to be a viable option.

A better bathroom and the option of not having the only streetlight in the campground directly over our tent led us to offer to the kids to move the tent on the second day. But they vetoed it so we stayed put.

Our not-serial-killer neighbor had left sometime during the day so we were alone. with just the street light to keep us company.

The kids played in the impulse-purchase from last year: the inflatable boat thingies while I made dinner. Usually I would ask them to help because it’s no fun working while everyone else is relaxing. But they were having so much fun that I let them enjoy the afternoon out in the field which was kind of like a sea of grass.

Dinner, S’mores, game in the tent. Our last night of camping came to an end.

2018 Calgary Road Trip: Day 9 & 10 - The Drive

Day 9 & 10: August 17 & 18

The Drive:

Just as we did on the drive out to the mountains, we had a couple days that existed solely for the purpose of getting us from point A to point B. Or in this case: from point B back to point A. 

We had two 6.5 hour drives with a big reward in the middle: a hotel complete wth real beds and a shower! We enjoyed the Home Inn so much that we had changed our reservation on the return trip to stay there again. Danny was especially excited about the pool. We were all excited about a return trip to the Dairy King which was one of our more popular Ice Cream stops early in our trip.

But I digress…

I took some pictures of the stuff we have to load into our car every time we break camp. The tent comes down, sleeping bags, camp pads and camp chairs are all dismantled and stowed in their appropriate stuff sacks. Food, dishes and other sundries are put away and the entire car is emptied and repacked.

We usually eat Camp Oatmeal because it only involves dirtying one pan. If we’re really in a hurry we use paper bowls and plastic spoons to make clean-up go a little faster.

We did pretty well on our exit from Banff National Park.  While there were pretty stern bear warnings in Jasper, the big caution in Banff was fire. We were unable to light a fire and had to stick to the camp stove for meals.

As we left the camp, Grace suddenly began shouting: “a bear! a bear!”. Gordon was skeptical, but when we slowed down to look, sure enough: right across from our former campsite was a bear ambling just at the edge of the tree line. If we had opened the window and tossed out a baseball, we would have hit it. (Well…some of us might have missed.) We slowed down and snapped a few pictures. We even got to see it start up a tree. Then we headed out of the park and flagged down a ranger with the exciting news only to find out that someone had beat us to the scoop and the ranger was heading out to discourage the bear with some sort of unpleasantness.

Anyway…..back to our 13 hours of driving. 

Hotel…Dairy King….swimming pool…

I also made my grocery trip and admit to spending a little too much time in the coop just across the street from the hotel. It’s kind like a very scaled down version of Costco - maybe closer to the big HyVees that sell large quantities of groceries but also clothing, household goods, etc. It’s actually sort of like the love child of Costco and Aldi because you need to pay to use a cart and it’s cash only. 

Nevertheless, I made a pretty good haul including several varieties of Ketchup Potato Chips for Alyssa, our dedicated yard/house/guinea pig overseer. I got into a discussion with the cashier when I asked him what it took to get ones picture on the money. Did all Prime Ministers eventually end up on money? He said: “Anyone is OK except Trudeau.” Turns out, the guy hates Trudeau because he gave billions of dollars to terrorist immigrants and doesn’t spend any money on people who live in Canada. Really??!!?? The guy then complimented Donald Trump for being a child with too much power but at least he did some things right like averting a nuclear war with North Korea.

I tried to stay civil and present logical, factual counterpoints. But the guy informed me that he keeps up to date on politics because his mom is worried about Trump and he has to keep her informed. Oh dear! I guess Canada is not perfect after all.

A quick trip to the liquor store for beer rewards for neighbors (and dad) and I was off to the hotel to crank our three loads of laundry before bed.

The next morning we enjoyed the free breakfast which features a pancake machine which cranks out two pancakes on a converter belt over an agonizingly long wait during which time a little graphic shows the progress of the pancakes. I have no patience for it, but the kids love it!

We timed our trip to arrive at the International Peace Garden before they closed up shop at 6:00 pm. But that pesky little detail of time zone changes had us rolling in around 7:00 pm. Thankfully, there is no customs to go through to get in to the garden. That happens upon exit. So we pulled up to the booth just as the staff person was leaving for the night. 

We set up camp to the setting sun and enjoyed a meal of tacos, or just the parts of tacos that a person might be inclined to eat in Grace’s case. No Ice Cream stop on this day so we made the best of it with chocolate pudding and hot chocolate.

The kids made up a game where they used wood chips and sticks to mark out an imaginary city on the ground around the campsite. (They have no idea how affirming two weeks with minimal social media and screens is every year.)

The campsite was pretty deserted and very peaceful. But too many episodes of Dexter had me up often during the night as one of the sole occupants of the campsite was a middle aged man traveling alone in a dusty camper pulled by a dusty truck with obscured license plates.

Needless to say, I worried needlessly.

2018 Calgary Road Trip: Day eight

Day 8: August 16

Transportation taken:

City Bus

Non-air conditioned shuttle bus

Dusty School Bus

Ski Tram

Provinces: Alberta, British Columbia

Idle time: 2 hours

Altitude: 9,000 feet above sea level

Highest Wifi HotSpot: 9,000 feet above sea level

Memories:

Grace: Beavertail

Danny: Smoothies, Ski life and Wifi Hotspot

Therese: The excellent Ramen

Gordon: Alpine squirrels that were not marmots.  Lake Minnewaska

I tried out my griddle again in the morning making pancakes. The results were mixed. I need to practice with the temperature regulation a little more, or maybe it’s time to look into a new camp stove. We started late so we got a late start getting the bus to Banff. Although in this case, it wasn’t late enough. The half-hour bus schedule didn’t start for another half hour so we waited at our camp bus stop for 30 minutes for the bus to arrive. This was foreshadowing for what was to come.

We got into Banff and checks in at the visitor center about the trip to the Sunshine Meadow mountain wildflower fields. We got minimal information and it felt a bit like a lot of waiting in line for not much new info.

Next it was time to find lunch. We decided that since we started so late, we would get lunch in town and have a cooler lunch for dinner that night. We stumbled on a Ramen place that turned out to be out of this world! We took our noodles to go and ate in a park on the Bow River with hazy mountains in the distance. 

We learned there was a free shuttle to the parking lot of the Mountain Meadow tourbus so we decided to leave the driving to someone else and catch the shuttle. That left us with just enough time to taste the local delicacy: Beaver Tails. Beaver tails are basically a flat pastry baked fresh and topped with any number of decadent options. One was plenty for the four of us. We decided Smoothies would take the place of Ice Cream today to alleviate the possibility of a massive sweetness overdose.

We caught the free shuttle to the Sunshine Meadow Village Parking lot which was basically a restaurant, gift shop and a lot of room for very long lines during the ski season. From there we rode the bus up to the tram. We learned that in the winter, the only way up to the tram spot which is also located at a mountain hotel, is by Gondola. If it can’t go in the gondola, it doesn’t go up. The gondolas only run on the weekends in the summer so that left us with the dusty school bus. After a moment of panic at the tram stop where Gordon thought he lost the lift tickets, he found them in his back pocket. We took a very quiet, serene, scenic, slightly scary ride up to the mountain top. It was super windy up there which makes sense as it was the highest peak in sight. Much to our surprise, we realized we were actually in British Columbia and on the other side of the continental divide. All water from this spot flowed to the Pacific Ocean. We climbed the viewing tower to look down on the beautiful valley and meadow below.  In the summer, this place is supposed to be a sea of colorful wildflowers. Fall brings a more muted tableau but still beautiful. We got a kick out of the “Wifi Hot Spot” sign at the top of the mountain. Because of our low batteries, we couldn’t make much use of this big altitude opportunity.

We began a hike down the mountainside with a divided opinion on how much hiking we should do. The kids dug their feet in and declared they wanted to catch the 4:30 shuttle back to Banff. The next shuttle would be 5:45 and they didn’t want to wait that long. Unfortunately, all the decision making time and an oversight over which bus left at 4:30 meant we arrived at the lodge just shortly after the dusty school bus left to take visitors to the 4:30 shuttle. So we were stuck. We took the 5:00 bus down to the now empty “village” and sat in the empty lobby trying to entertain ourselves with nothing to read and no electronics since our batteries were very low. Finally the bus came and took us to the bus back to camp. 

This time it was me who wanted to squeeze in one more activity on our last day. So after a quick cooler dinner, we got in the car for a drive to Lake Minnewaska. Our virtual tour guide took us on a route that went past a few other points of interest and another beautiful lake - the only beach in Banff. I grabbed some sand just in case it was glacial sand. We were also able to observe a couple loons calling out on the lake. Lake Minnewaska is the most popular lake in the city of Banff. But when we arrived there was almost no one there. We spent a quiet half hour watching the hazy silhouette of the mountains in the west turn pink. The kids explored the rocky lakefront and we watched cut birds hopping around. It was a very peaceful way to end the day.

We were all tired so we went to bed shortly after we got back and slept peacefully until some roadie people arrived in the campground around 12:30 am - - well after the 11:00 quiet time.