No, THIS is the last post

I'm back. Since about last Saturday/Sunday. Depends what time zone you're in. I've almost got over my jetlag now and I feel disappointingly normal.

I thought I might as well finish off this blog properly, seeing as it's as much as a reminder for me as for other people.

A week ago last Friday was my last day of work in the studio - John took everyone out for lunch at Coyote's and I had a barbeque with my friends in the evening. Then at about midnight I got the greyhound bus from the station overnight, arriving in Vancouver about 4:30pm. In between getting on and off the bus there was a lot of dozing so it really wasn't that bad, apart from the last couple of hours, when it seemed like we were so close to Vancouver but just approaching it slower and slower.

I stayed the night in Vancouver, and met up with Kevin (from the BEGINNING of the trip). We went out for a curry and saw some funny guy in Yuk Yuk's comedy club.

And the next day I wandered around in circles to get to the bus station. Not lost, just exploring. On the bus to Victoria, there was this old Scottish lady who made dog coats and recommended things to do in the city. I ended up finding this blues concert thing, which was kind of fun. Mainly because I was dancing and I didn't know anyone so it was easier not to be embarrassed.

Victoria is a wet stone city, but it's also very musical. There were some great buskers about, and this bridge that made sighing sounds at different pitches when the cars ran over the metal grid.

One of the days, I made it through to the south seawall and took a whole load of photographs. It was the Pacific Ocean, although the visibility wasn't great.




I visited various things in Victoria; the Royal BC Museum, the Abkhazi Gardens, the shops...just being a wandering tourist. It was a pretty nice way to end the trip.

The journey back went to plan. I was in Banff one more night, before getting the bus, plane, bus, and plane back home. Which is where I am now, already planning to go to Sheffield in less than two weeks. I'm just visiting, really.

I'm beginning to think about where I can go next year.

This may be the last post...

It's half one in the morning, my time, so I don't feel very literate, but this may be the last chance I have to post before I go to Victoria.

I just got back from a roadtrip with Paul. Starting at 7:30am. Breakfast in Calgary, visited Walmart (just for interest), drove to Drumheller through the Badlands, had lunch, took pictures in mouth of world's largest dinosaur...


...ate ice cream, drove a bit, found a town called Vulcan...


...drove to lake which wasn't as interesting as it looked on the map, stopped off for dinner at random town, got lost in Calgary in the dark, then made it back home.

A couple more pictures.




And this may be the last blog because I just don't think I'll have time again otherwise. I'm going to Victoria tomorrow evening, and I'll not have much internet. Just so everyone knows, my flight is late on the 7th, arriving late on the 8th.

4th/3rd Last Days

Before I say anything else, here's a video of an elk swimming right in front of my canoe (and I'm even in it).


I forgot to blog yesterday. It wouldn't have been that interesting though I had a nice day. I did Tunnel Mountain in the morning, visited Paul to help me book the youth hostel in Vancouver/Victoria, went canoeing and went out for steak with Paul, Laura and Isa. For the very last time.

But today is the more important bit. Paul, Pascal (his flatmate) and I went up Mt Rundle. We met at 7:30am because I wanted to be back in plenty of time to do stuff in the afternoon, which we were. And in the middle of that time we got to the top. Pascal and I anyway. Paul had hurt his leg earlier so he stopped and waited in a cubby hole (see photos) while Pascal and I went on to the top. The last bit was very tricky because there was snow and a load of loose rock so you had to take it very slowly. Hiking poles helped a lot. Anyway, the way down was great - all this sliding on loose rock. It's a lot of fun.

So here are pictures.













So that's it. I'm just about to go out for the last pasta night... I'll blog again tomorrow. Going to see some dinosaurs.

Just to see if this works

Here is a video slideshow of some anonymous wedding pictures.

5th last day in Banff

White water rafting. No pictures due to unavoidable wetness. I met Aaron and we got picked up by the big yellow American-style school bus about 8am (so EARLY!). There was an extremely talkative Irish guy who decided to talk to me, or at me, for the entire journey. I just sat there and nodded occasionally. He didn't even notice that I was still dozing.

The beginning of this rafting morning was on the Bow River, 20 minutes east of Canmore. There were meant to be mountains, but they never appeared out of the mist, and the rain. It is beginning to behave like autumn here because the summer is so short.

Anyway, on the river, there were a few really nice rapids at the beginning. Everyone in our boat was young and fit so we could do some pretty fun stuff, like surfing in places. Half way through, we drew all the boats up onto the bank because we were doing an optional cliff jump. The cliff was pretty high - maybe 30 feet. There was water underneath. I jumped. On the way down, I began to consider whether or not it was a good idea.

I'm glad I did it because it was the highlight of the day, even though it made me pretty cold for the rest of the time. Although the rafting was enjoyable, the water is quite low right now so there weren't really enough rapids. They gave everyone hot chocolate at the end. Mmmm. I had my dry socks on and I was happy.

I had a very long, hot shower when I got back, only around noon. I went out later on and almost beat Paul at Othello...then played hockey with Laura and her friends. I was attempting to fluke an action shot. I didn't get anything much, but I'll put some up since I didn't have any rafting photos.





Anyway. Not many plans for tomorrow yet, apart from going canoeing and eating steak.

Jasper and more

Last Sunday, Laura and I had lunch at Peggy's, then I ended up going with Peggy, Lorelle, Jade and Paul to Canmore. Nobody decided why, even when we got there, so we just ended up wandering round the surprisingly few shops still open on a Sunday evening.

And on Monday I went swimming in the morning at the Banff Centre, then met Paul to play Othello in the Wildflower cafe. I did quite well, which means to say that he didn't beat me so badly this time. Later, we met Laura and her friends from work to play indoor hockey, Canadian style. WAY more fun than what we played at school. You can touch the ball with your hands and your feet, as well as your stick.

Tuesday, Laura and I went to Jasper on the Brewster Icefields tour. They're intended for people a little older and richer than us, but we had a great bus driver called Alan, who made everything interesting. AND he promised not to stop at any tacky gift shops. It's a long drive up there, so we stopped at a load of scenic places along the way. The whole thing was scenic really. I tried to take tourist snaps.







You'll probably gather from the pictures, but at the Icefields they bus you onto an actual glacier in these massive snowcoach thingys, then you can walk about in a small area of it for about 20 minutes, then they bus you back. Interestingly enough, the bus terminal building has the largest set of female toilets in the world.

When we got to Jasper, we discovered that there really isn't that much to do there in the evenings, so we went exploring. We found THE traffic light, THE totem pole, THE hospital, THE museum and THE escalator. Yes, it's a small town - there's only one of everything there. Not like Banff.







After dinner in a diner (there were plenty of nicer restaurants to choose from actually, but none of them had a picture of a slice of chocolate fudge cookie cake on the door), we waited for the shuttle to the youth hostel at the totem pole. It never came, so we ended up sharing a taxi there with 3 other girls, which turned out to be better value anyway. The hostel itself wasn't great. I woke up in the middle of the night to find my blanket had disappeared. Then, drowsily putting two and two together, I noticed the cavernous gap between the bed (I had the top bunk) and the wall. So after trying to sleep blanketless for a while, and failing, I stretched my arm down the gap and waved it about, hoping that the stranger in the bottom bunk wouldn't mind, but that didn't quite work either. I had to get out of bed. In doing so, I made a loud clattering sound because the handrail wasn't properly attatched, and I think that must have woken quite a few people.

Anyway, we were on the early Discover Jasper tour in the morning so we made our peanut butter sandwiches and found the bus...it was Alan again. He took us up to a lake and back, stopping off at various places.



This sweet and cuddly creature is the first bear I've seen. I've been here so long I was beginning to think they were avoiding me, but this one ate quite happily by the side of the road while all the cars stopped to take it's photograph. Unusally, nobody was stupid enough to get out.





The bus back to Banff was the airport shuttle rather than a tour bus, so Laura and I just dozed and ate maple leaf cookies (like custard creams except in the shape of a maple leaf). We arrived in time for pasta night and stuck around for a bit to hear the Jasper String Quartet, who had come to play. I took pictures, but it was very dark. They're all grainy.






There's a plateau about 8km from Banff called Sunshine Meadows, which is one of the major ski areas in the winter. In the summer, it is covered with wild flowers. The only way to get up there is by getting a shuttle bus up an access road, which you usually have to pay $50 for. Paul and I have contacts though...namely a friend of a friend of a friend, so we managed to get complimentary tickets. It was a beautiful hike, but not worth so much money! There was a bear warning out for a grizzly mum and cubs just at the start of the trail but we didn't see them. We walked in a big group, making plenty of noise, so the bears would have known we were coming and had the sense to move on. Later on, Paul and I were walking in a group of four with a couple of Californians. We spotted a male grizzly way off in the distance, but decided to double back anyway.







We got back from the hike and went up to the hot springs for a dip. You don't swim there. It's too crowded. It was the first time I've been there during the daytime, so I could actually see Rundle opposite. In the evening, it was movie night at the Living Room, so we turned up and watched Empire Records. It's apparently a cult movie.

On Friday I actually went to work, and spent a whole day in the studio. In the evening, it was volunteer appreciation night at the living room, so we all went canoeing. An elk swam right across the river in front of us... it was so cool. They're weird creatures. We had a canoe race for a couple of white water rafting tickets, which Aaron and I won (Aaron's the guy I was sharing the boat with). So, that's what I'm doing tomorrow!

Back at the Living room, they cooked us some burgers and had a strange prize draw...the donor of the prizes seemed to be some kind of health food shop. There were quite a few muscle mags as prizes. I didn't win one of those though, just a sports water bottle with one packet of chocolate flavoured meal replacement powder. Mmmm.

Yesterday - I worked all day AGAIN. Gabriella took me out for lunch at Timbers, and I ate with Tonya in the evening then watched "The Princess Bride" because I couldn't be bothered going swimming. I'm going today instead.

Hopefully, I'll be blogging more regularly next week. I don't even have 6 full days left here (in Banff) so I will definitely be making the most of them. Next Friday, I'll be going to Victoria for the remainder of my time in Canada.

Hiking and Biking

Expect a lot of photographs in this post. Some taken by me and some of me. My feet haven't really touched the ground this past week. Well, actually it would be truer to say that my head hasn't touched the pillow. Been doing stuff. Living life to the full, and all that.

Last Sunday, Paul taught me how to play Othello, which is this really simple but strategical board game, then we met Peggy and did a hike to Boom Lake. Dipped my feet in...



I had a great buffet lunch at Peggy's on Monday, after a short hike up Tunnel. We met again for a BBQ that evening...which was actually two BBQs in the same time and place. It turns out that Jade is a pretty good cook.


The Living Room organised a photo scavenger hunt around Banff on Tuesday evening - so we got a group together and turned up, finding that there was only this one other guy there. So we merged him into our group and competed against ourselves. Turns out we won...yay. A voucher for a large pizza from Aardvarks, which we enjoyed, sitting out on the bench in the dark.





Guess what we're doing here (above). I'm not going to give you any clues.



I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Paul's into off roading and stuff like that, and he wanted company/photos on this quad biking tour he was interested in, so I went with him. It was a LOT of fun. Not surprisingly, we had to drive out of the National Park to get to the place. The route went up one side of the mountain to an ancient cabin and mining area, then over the top and down to another valley, which was completely uninhabited. All the tracks were made of this lovely red dust, seeing as there was so much iron in the hills. Here I am looking as if I have a sore arm. I didn't though. I'm just very dusty.




On the way back, we stopped off at this place called Radium, because Tonya had recommended the ice-cream place there. Very rightfully. I had a very generous helping of peanut butter rolo flavour. Happy me.

We dropped in to pasta night and met Laura, Peggy, and Peggy's sister, then everyone piled into the car Paul had rented and we went up Sulphur Mountain to watch the sunset.

I met Paul and Laura, as well as a couple of her colleagues, again the next morning. Then we went up a mountain. Cascade is the one you always see at the end of Banff Avenue (apart from when it's cloudy) so it seems very familiar, but only from one angle. We met at 9am and finally finished the hike at 9:30pm. It was a long day, but I actually enjoyed nearly every bit of it. You don't really see the mountain for the first half of the way there because it's just hiking to the base of it through a forest, but when you actually get out onto the ridge and past the treeline, the views are amazing. You also have to scramble, because there's no earth. Just rock, scree, and a sharp drop for three hours.











So towards the end of the hike, it was our incentive to get some pizza and go to the hot springs. Which only Paul and I ended up actually doing. The hot springs are 40 degrees but I think the steam was actually coming from my smelly feet. When I got home, I discovered that Andrew had a portrait in Lake Louise the next morning and he'd like me to meet him at 7:30. I resigned myself to not getting much sleep. Why sleep when you've got a job like mine?

The portrait did go well, and it was worth the early morning. The light at Lake Louise was hazy and slightly red because of forest fires somewhere far away. Then after putting in some work at the studio I went home and woke up at 7:30pm.

This morning was a sad day...well, not really. My last wedding with Andrew. Probably not my last wedding, though, because John said I might be able to come with him and Toni on one. It was in Lake Louise again, outside in the sun. The bride's daughter fainted just before the end of the family portraits, because it was so hot. Then as soon as we were wanting to start the more creative stuff with the bride and groom, there was a thunderstorm. It rained buckets, and only stopped by the time we were on the road back home.

And here I am. Stay tuned for adventures in Jasper next week...