Sarah is writing tonight's blog as Alan is frozen. If he thaws out a bit, he will add his comments in red. Just starting to thaw a bit now after sitting in front of the heat for a while. Oh my god it's cold here.
We needed to be out of our accommodation in Banff this morning by 11am. We decided that we would give Sunshine's ski area a miss and just head to Calgary. As we exited our room, we discovered it was raining with a bit of snow. Alan remarked that no one would be going up the gondola this morning as the cloud was so low and I suggested we drive up and see. Well, the further we drove up the hill, the heavier the snow got. We were pretty excited and were the only idiots standing out in it taking photos. You forget how wet and cold it can be when you're having that much fun. I'm sure it's mundane for Canadians, but for us it's awesome to be driving through and then standing in a heavy snowfall.
After managing to get a little wet, we got back into the car and started heading out of town. The snow/rain stayed with us for about 20 minutes and then it stopped. I think it was a fitting farewell to the Rockies. As we drove, on the mountains slowly started to fade away until it was nothing but flat ground without a mountain to be seen. That was pretty sad.
As we were approaching Calgary, we came upon an amusement park just off the side of the highway. I saw a rollercoaster so I took the next exit as it's so long since I've done something fun like that. To my dismay, the park was closed. That's not fair. How nasty of them to tease me like that.
Our accommodation is west of Calgary across the road from where the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics were held. As it was still too early to check in, we drove into town, with written instructions on how to find Calgary Zoo. Of course, Alan failed to follow the directions and before we knew it, we were driving around stuck in the city's many one way streets. I'm pretty sure the directions must have been wrong. I would never take any wrong turns. 45 minutes later, I spied a Police Officer who was doing radar. We pulled over and asked him directions to the zoo and his response was "you're in the wrong city aren't you". I had read from several different sources that the zoo was fairly lame and the Officer's comment kind of reinforced it. He gave us directions and off we went and then realised that his directions were wrong. I think he might have been confused about exactly where he was. So again, lost, we kept driving and finally, after another 15 minutes, found out way back on to the other side of the river where we needed to be. Another wrong turn and then we found ourselves heading in the right direction and into the zoo parking lot.
It was reasonably full for what is supposed to be a bad zoo. When we got to the gate it had a note saying that it was closing today at 3.30 for a staff function and as it was just after 1pm, they did a 2 for 1 deal. Can't complain about that. They didn't give us a map which was a little suprising. At this point it was actually sunny and relatively warm, so I only wore one jumper into the zoo. I should have known better.
It took us going to a zoo to finally see all the Canadian wildlife we had been promised: bears, moose, caribou. Finally!!! We also walked around the rest of the zoo. It was strange to see giraffes indoors but I guess it is too cold for them outside at this time of the year. They had an Australian section which contained wallabies, a sad looking emu, lizards and cane toads. Really? Are they the only Australian animals they could come up with?
After about 90 minutes, we had seen all of the zoo except the weirdest thing of all, the prehistoric section. Yes, you read correctly. Doesn't every zoo have animatronic dinosaurs? Well I thought they were pretty cool. I thought I was at Jurassic Park.
By this stage it was absolutely freezing and getting close to the zoo closure time. Freezing does not come close to describing how I felt in that cold wind with only one jumper on. Thankfully we both knew how to get to our hotel and about 20 minutes later we were here. Ah, nice and warm and very comfortable.
We had seen a Denny's while driving into town and planned on going there for dinner. I thought I'd check up to see if there was one closer than the 8kms away and discovered we had one around the corner, just a mere 220 metres. Before going to dinner we took a drive around Calgary Olympic Park. The park is closed, with the ski season having ended in the first week of April. However, we were able to walk around the ski jump towers. Why on earth would anyone decide that they would want to strap on skis and jump off something 90 metres high? Just standing beside it near the launch point made me dizzy. We drove back by the bobsled track but couldn't get too good a view of it.
Alan managed to eat just about everything on the menu for dinner, including bringing a piece of lemon meringue pie back to the room for dessert. Yes ok so I'm a big fatty. No need to rub it in. Mmmmm lemon meringue pie. Yum!
Tomorrow afternoon we fly to Las Vegas. Hopefully there won't be any delays as there is a severe storm warning in place for Calgary tonight and tomorrow, with it clearing for the afternoon. They are predicting 100km winds, rain and snow.
Las Vegas will be a huge shock after being in such cold temperatures for over two weeks, quiet roads and lack of people.
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