Blogs from Alberta, Canada, North America

20231001 To Jasper Park Lodge The day was glorious for being on a tour bus, looking down on the traffic. The true blue sky was a backdrop worthy of the gleaming snow on the mountains and the shining yellow leaves on the Trembling Aspens. The dark green deciduous trees set off the golden glow, only superseded by the even darker blue-green of the firs at the higher altitudes. In some places, recent snow sugared individual trees, reminiscent of a complex carpet pattern. Yet, some dark stony-grey steep mountain faces were stained with the deep yellow of late larches. Occasionally, deep turquoise lakes beamed through trees beside the highway. The Athabasca River , icy pale blue, trickled and flowed in the flats along the roadside. Only a mountain chill belied the sunny day. 20231002 Lac Beauvert Lac ... read more

30 June It’s a slow start after last night’s celebrations, but we eventually stir and head across to the venue to survey the damage. The errant frisbee’s still stuck firmly in the bottom of the flower pot, and it looks like someone’s had a go at watering it, which is a bit worrying. Other than that everything seems to be in tact. Emma looked exhausted well before the end of proceedings last night, and she still looks very tired. It seems they had an undisturbed interlude, which is more than Issy and I could say about our wedding night. We spent it in a room on the 35th floor of a Melbourne city hotel. I was having a shower in the morning when I heard Issy pounding on the bathroom door in panic. It seems that ... read more

26 June It’s a day of wedding domestics. First up Issy and I are summoned to take Emma to pick up her dress. I’m strictly forbidden from venturing anywhere near the fitting room, on pain of death. As another father of the bride tells me as we sit patiently in the waiting room - “you’ve got two jobs. You have to wait, and you have to pay”. Hmmm. Next up is a stop to pick up enough ice cream to feed a small African country. Then it’s off to a session at the local spray tan salon, which is proving a bit hard to find hidden away in the back blocks of an industrial estate. I hope they know what they’re doing. I think it was in the movie “Bride Wars” where one of the brides ... read more

It’s an earlyish start for me; I need to collect Michael and head off to get a “rush” fitting of my suit for the wedding … and to think I managed to get through six decades without ever realising that one of my arms is longer than the other. That little surprise out of the way, it’s back to the ‘burbs just in time to witness Troy trying to set fire to the kitchen. Our Airbnb house is great, and has everything that opens and shuts …. well almost everything. It seems the one exception is a toaster, and apparently cooking toast in the oven wasn’t quite as straightforward as Troy might have hoped. Oh well. At least we now know where the fire extinguisher is. Issy’s decided on a day off from touring, and Emma ... read more

We awoke to find the rain had stopped, but that there was now new snow on the mountain tops - so pretty! We left Dead Man’s Flats and drove west back towards Calgary. Rather than drive down the Trans Canada Highway, we took the scenic route. I’d had a look on Google Maps, and found place called Ghost Lake which looked quite nice to visit. As we drove there I was looking into the trees lining the road with the hope of seeing a bear when Susan said, “Look! An animal!” I looked to the other side of the road where she was pointing but didn’t spot anything, and she told me it was a brown animal. Could it be the elusive bear, I wondered? No, when we got closer to it and could both see ... read more