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Well we have had quite an adventerous time travelling across Canada in our RV. The fuel is not quite as cheap as NZ, the mileages have been much greater and the camper is a ford truck which seems to drink petrol. Apart from that the scenery has been quite spectacular, the locals are very friendly (Abby frequently has to drag Eric away, he could chat with them all day!).
We spent nearly two weeks in the Rockies, visiting the national parks; Jasper, Banff, Kootenay and Waterton. We have hiked up hills and had some amazing views and seen quite a lot of the local wildlife. The first week here it was very cold. We drove through a blizzard in Banff National Park (even the locals say snow in June is unusual). Whilst in Jasper we saw some bears on the side of the road from the safety of the campervan. Then Laura (one of Abby's work colleagues) left a message asking how many bears we had seen. After reading that message in Waterton NP we drove along to a scenic viewpoint and watched a brown bear (Eric swears it was a grizzly), walk down the middle of the road in front of us and within feet of the camper (thanks Laura!). Whilst in a provinicial park in Manitoba we had the pleasure of coming accross one foraging whilst we were out for an early morning stroll. Believe me all of the advice about them being easy to scare away and to 'remain calm' and talk to the bear went out of the window when there is one within 20m of you!. Abby went 'Oh sh*t there's a bear' and turned and ran in the other direction(the literature says you should back away slowly). Eric went and got his camera and followed it to take a picture!
Eric bought a book at Vancouver airport called 'wierd places to visit in Canada', this has helped give our road trip direction. We climbed the largest dinosaur in the world in Drumheller, in the badlands of Alberta. The area is famous for the quantity of dinosaur fossils found there. The landscape is very difficult to describe, like a kind of mini grand canyon. We then went to Vulcan which has nothing to do with star trek, but is cashing in on the name. We had our photograph taken with cardboard cut outs of Kirk, Bones and Spock et al at the Spaceship shaped Tourist Information Centre.
We have also had the opportunity to visit our friends Paul and Helen who now live just north of Calgary in Airdrie and meet the new addition to their family; George. It was great to stay in a house and sleep in a proper bed for a change, especially when it had been snowing that day!
Driving across the prairies was not as boring as most people predicted, some of the scenery is quite stunning, not as flat as you would imagine. We stayed in Grasslands NP in Saskatchewan and were lucky enough to see a buffalo and prairie dogs. The only drawback was the additional temporary visitor that we had that night, a field mouse got into the camper and took a liking to the residue of hot chocolate that we had in some mugs on the sink. We watched him drag a small bar of soap into a cupboard (obviously a very clean mouse), and finally chased him out, but we did not get a lot of sleep that night.
Internet terminals have been few and far between, most places have wifi if you have your own laptop. However we did find free access in MooseJaw in Saskatchewan whilst we were doing our laundry. MooseJaw was a small prairie city on the Canadian Pacific railway line; it has some 'secret' underground tunnels where Al Capone allegedly hid some of his booze before smuggling it into the states, so we had a very interesting tour with people playing the part of bootleggers/Chicago gangsters or molls showing us around.
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