With great sights of mountains!
Paul (a work colleague from Pfizer) and I decided to go to Lake Louise and Banff on the weekend before a sales training assignment in Calgary.
Lake louise is one of the most picturesque places across Canada -- all year long. It's as if someone asked the mountains and the lake to pose together for a picture! In the wintertime, Lake Louise is a great quiet place to skate.
The Calgary Zoo was very impressive. Lots of great animals to see. We especially liked this big guy!
This female gorilla was getting friendly through the window with us... I think she enjoyed watching us as much as we enjoyed watching her.
My favourite picture... this siberian tiger seems to be having sweet dreams alright! This was actually a full grown adult tiger, with its arms cross like a mummy. Adorable!
The hoodoos in the Badlands near drumheller, only a few hours away from Calgary, is certainly a unique sight to see. And Canada is probably the last place you'd expect to see them there!
The hoodoos (sounds like voodoos) are mounds of soil that have been eroded by the natural forces over time.
These are really fragile, but - welcome to Canada - even with all the tourist activity that is drawn to the site, the hoodoos have somehow managed to stay mostly intact with very little supervision and policing.
When we went (in May) it was really muddy and I slipped along the marked path a few times, but I hear it gets very hot and dry in the summertime.
I loved this sign... it's so wild, wild west!! Ok, so it's probably a little for show (and I took the bait), but I still think it's priceless.
The last chance saloon. We had fun in this "middle of nowhere" place. In fact, we had to cross about 11 bridges within just a few kms to get there! It was a classic place with a lot of history and an owner who was happy to share it!
It even had a shuffleboard!!! One of my favourite bar games and one of the hardest to find in Canada (unfortunately, not enough people share my passion in this game)!
The game is like a mini version of curling (another popular Canadian sport!!). Basically, you need to slide these pucks across a very slippery sandy surface and keep your puck from falling over the other side, while knocking your oponents pucks off. It gets pretty competitive.
Eric, my boyfriend at the time, and I at the West Edmonton Mall, in... well Edmonton. It is the biggest mall in the world!... though I still don't get it. Why in Edmonton and not in a larger city???
It's got all sorts of decorations (like this pirate ship which has shows daily),...
...and this HUGE wave and waterslide pool as well as roller coasters, and even an ice rink! As expected, we just didn't have enough time to explore it all.
It's interesting how we feel the need to change the orientation of our stop signs from one province to another. In most provinces in Canada, you have the vertical stop signs. In Quebec (because the French love being unique), they are horizontal. So I suppose Edmonton has one-upped everyone else by having them both ways, as you can see in this picture. Just an oddity I wanted to share.
