Calgary, Waterton Lakes, and Banff 2013

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June 3 Boston to Calgary. Loaded the car in pouring rain and had two-hour drive to Logan, arriving about 9 to find our flight to Montreal was delayed by an hour. Fortunately still made our connection and had time for Tim Horton's lunch before the long flight to Calgary. We had seats with TV screens on the Air Canada flight. Yay! Enjoyed the movie Parental Guidance (Billy Crystal, Bette Middler).

After landing we drove about an hour down to High River, passing through a lot of prairie and the occasional dense townhouse developments which struck us as odd. About ten minutes west of High River we came to the Highwood Views B&B. The hostess Colleen greeted us in front of her modest-looking home and led us around to a rear entrance on the lower level. From here we were looking out at cattle grazing on a huge expanse of prairie, with white-capped mountains in the far distance. Wow!

Inside was a sizable living room/dining area, a bathroom, and three bedrooms, and because no one else was booked for the night, we had the whole place to ourselves! This would be perfect, too for a family group. Everything was decorated with cowboy and Royal Canadian Mounted Police themes. Patrick, Colleen's husband whom we didn't meet is a Mounty (how cool). By now it was after 7 pm, and we were anxious to see if we could find the bison herd that Colleen had said was just down the road. Sure enough, about a mile back the way we had come we could see a few bison, including a calf, behind a knoll. They were a captive herd, of course. We didn't see much wildlife at this point except for a large hawk (Swainson's?), and we noticed how off our distance perception was on this arrow-straight road. When it felt like we were "almost back home" we still had about half a mile of walking to go, but the enormous distance beyond the home made it look much closer.

Back at the home, we debated going out in the hot tub. By now it was 9:30, which felt like 11:30 to us, although it was still light out. The air was definitely nippy, maybe about 50 degrees, but we thought "How often will we get the chance?" The hot water felt great, but the real treat came after the timer went off and the bubbling gave way to deep silence. Once our ears adjusted we started noticing all the night noises of the prairie: clicking insects, occasional moos, and suddenly a chorus of coyotes, calling back and forth from all directions. I've heard coyotes three or four times, and after the fact I can never recall exactly how they sounded except that it is very haunting and not a dog-like sound at all. We felt that we had been properly welcomed to Alberta.

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