Where I've been this past weekend

***Pic heavy***

LOL...I always see this warning on blog posts so I thought I would throw it in here too!

Since Monday October 5th I was in Calgary, Alberta. It's just under a four hour flight West of Toronto where I live.

On Saturday October 10th, my parents flew out from Toronto to join me in Calgary. And my younger sister from Edmonton drove south to meet us all in Calgary (Edmonton is about a three hour drive from Calgary).

So there was six of us altogether on the weekend: both of my parents, my younger sister Jennifer, her boyfriend Siv, my friend Emmanuel and myself. Saturday was spent seeing Calgary. My family and I did a number of things:

• walked along Stephen Avenue (Calgary's downtown shopping district)
• drove by Calgary's Saddledome (where concerts are held)
• drove by the Canada Olympic Park (where Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter olympics)
• went to the Calgary Stampede Casino (where I played my first game of blackjack at any casino!)
• checked out Crescent Heights (an area outside of the city were you have a great view of the whole downtown Calgary)
• and went up the Calgary Tower (which you saw from my bedroom window at the Fairmont Palliser since I posted a pic of it during the week)

Here's pictures taken from Crescent Heights. It's just outside of the city and you have an amazing view of the whole of downtown Calgary.






Yep, that's the whole of downtown Calgary in those two pictures above! Small city!

And I took this picture of everyone standing on the Crescent Heights hill. From left to right we have Siv (my sister's boyfriend), Jennifer (my younger sister), my Mom, my Dad, my friend Emmanuel.


And the six of us went up the Calgary Tower.

This is a picture of the glass floor with my Dad on the left, Siv on the glass floor goofing off and my sister taking a picture of Siv.




Oh boy, I look terrible in all the pictures (lack of sleep?!) but here's my friend Emmanuel and myself sitting on the glass floor.




Only Jennifer and my Mother wouldn't dare step on the glass floor.


Have you ever been in a high tower with a glass floor and went on the glass floor???

And for fun I took a picture of my shoes (bottom left), my Dad's shoes (top), and Emmanuel's shoes (bottom right) while standing on the glass floor.



The next day on Saturday, we all drove out to Banff and Lake Louise.


Banff is about a 1.5 hour drive from Calgary and it's very scenic out there with mountains. Lake Louise is about another hour drive from Banff. Lake Louise is a well known turquoise coloured lake.

We saw these cute light grey coloured birds out in Banff and Lake Louise. They're kinda chubby looking with their feathers so that's what makes them look really cute and they hop right up to you! =) I haven't seen these birds before, have you???


Going up Sulphur Mountain using the gondola in Banff is a must if you're there as a tourist. I've been up Sulphur Mountain once before and was terrified of that gondola ride! This time, I was much better and was able to talk and look out the window too!

My Dad took this picture of my Mom and I on the gondola ride up to Sulphur Mountain.

And I took this picture looking out my gondola window. Jenn, Siv and Emmanuel were in the gondola on the left following us up the mountain:

The trees were so beautiful and Christmas-like with all the snow. Don't you think??

Have you been on a gondola before??? Were you scared???

About the snow, it snowed everday for a short bit on the weekend. And earlier in the week there was some snow in downtown Calgary so I had my first snowfall for the Fall season out in Calgary. It still has not snowed yet in Toronto this season.

Has it snowed yet where you are???

The next picture shows the gorgeous view at the top of Sulphur Moutain. If you see closely, there is a hotel towards the bottom centre of the picture hidden in the shadows - that's the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel. Notoriously known for being haunted....eeek!

So yah, we stayed at The Rimrock Resort Hotel instead....which is conveniently right beside the gondola ride.

This was one view from my hotel room at The Rimrock:

And another view from my hotel room at The Rimrock:

And here's another lovely picture of the beautiful mountain ranges from the view on Sulphur Mountain.

And we also managed to do Lake Louise on Saturday. It's a beautiful turqoise colour and it's the first lake I ever saw that had this colour. I've been to Lake Louise a few times already but it was the first time for my parents and my sister.

Here is a picture of my sister Jennifer and I in front of Lake Louise:

Lake Louise and the beautiful mountains surrounding it. It really is a small lake...but guess how deep it is?

This lake is 70 metres deep at it's deepest!!! For some odd reason, I always feel that small bodies of water should be shallow but not the case here!

So on Monday morning Jenn and Siv departed us to head back to Edmonton. The both of them are in University and they had to get back to Edmonton that day in order to get ready for school on Tuesday.

So on Monday it was only my Mom, my Dad, Emmanuel and myself who went on the daytrip to the Columbia Icefields. It was the first time for any of us to go to the Icefields which is in Jasper National Park.

Jasper National park is huge and there are many scenic sites along the drive. The Columbia Icefields is only the half way point to Jasper itself.

One very scenic stop on the way to the Icefields is Peyto Lake. It's another gorgeous turqouise coloured lake but a lot quieter than the more touristy Lake Louise.

We didn't bother to walk right up to the foot of the lake because it was a 2.2 km walk from the parking lot to the base of of the lake. So we ended up just walking to the viewpoint area which is about a 800 metre walk.

And here is the gorgeous view of Peyto Lake:

Can you see a wolf from the shape of the lake???

On the left side of the lake is the glacier that feeds into the lake:

So after Peyto Lake we did have a few other stops to view other lakes but not quite as beautiful as Peyto in my opinion.

I'll skip right to the Columbia Icefield. That big hunk of ice in the middle of the picture is the Athabasca Glacier. Further up above the glacier is the Icefield itself.

We took a special tour bus which took us out onto the Athabasca Glacier. Look how huge those tires are! That's me standing beside the bus which is already on the glacier itself.

Okay, see the orange coloured pylons in the picture below? That's where tourists should stop walking because the rest of the ice/mountains may have huge crevices that are covered in snow and if you step on that area, you can fall into the crevice and die.

In this picture below, I'm on the Athabasca Glacier looking at the Columbia Icefield. The glacier is apparently always moving like a river and the Icefield is like a lake - it stays still but feeds into the glacier. I remember that part from the bus driver's speech.

If you see closely, there appears to be tiny crevices in the Icefield. Well according to the bus driver, those small crevices are actually pretty large and some of them can fit up to six of those large buses stacked on top of one another in terms of depth and up to two large buses across in terms of width.

Picture below: this was one really cool glacier stuck on the side of Mount Andromeda. It looks like snow about to fall down on that poor fellow below beside the orange pylon but it's actually frozen ice.

And glacier ice is not like ice cubes in your freezer. Glacier Ice is has been formed using a lot of pressure. There was quite a bit of snow covering the Athabasca glacier so it wasn't slippery to stand on the glacier.

Here's a picture of my foot on the glacier. You can see the ice below the layer of snow:

And here's a picture below of the rickety snowmobile that would have taken us out on the glacier if it had been 50 or so odd years ago.

Maybe in 50 years from now, people will look at that huge red bus I took out onto the glacier and shake their head thinking, "what the heck! I'm safer walking out there than taking that bus!"

And lastly, one of the stops we took after leaving the Icefield was to stop at a place called Bridal Veil Falls. I'm not sure if you can tell but in the picture below, the falls are actually fully frozen! Have you seen a frozen waterfall before???

=) Karen