Calgary

Calgary was a very relaxing break for us. Julie's parents live on top of a hill with sweeping views over rolling green fields with cows and horses, a river in the distance and on a clear day you can see the mountains on the horizon. It's just outside of Calgary, and not far from the town centre at all. While staying there I learnt how to drive the tractor, and mowed some of their very extensive lawn, and I also got a lesson in how to catch a mole (using over sized mouse traps buried in their burrows).

It was also the Calgary Stampede. There are many aspects to this two week long festival (they claim it is the greatest outdoor show on earth). One is that everyday somewhere across Calgary a community group will be putting on a free pancake breakfast to anyone and everyone. Free breakfast...I'm in. So we went to two. One was quite miserable as we stood in the rain for 45mins to get our pancakes and eggs, while the poor musicians were singing their hearts out on stage. The other was much classier with boot scootin and even some native aboriginal dancing too, and warm sunshine. All very yummy food...and it's free!

The stampede itself was amazing, especially considering the fact that 2 weeks beforehand a lot of Calgary was completely under water (100,000 people evacuated in the worst flooding the city has ever seen). The theme this year was Come Hell or High Water. The stampede reminds me a lot of out shows around Australia, but with bigger hats and belt buckles involved. There is also much less of a consumer mentality as I didn't see any show bags at all. Lots of sideshow alley type games, a few rides, but the big focus is the rodeo. Julie and I got standing room tickets and watched men riding bucking horses and bulls for 3 hours. It did make me wonder who thought of this as a sport in the first place. I'm sure it must have been to impress a girl. My favourite to watch was actually the women's barrel racing and they also have a team event for kids. They are in teams of 3 and the object is for one of the team members to get on the back of a 'wild' miniature pony. Most of the time was spent with 3 kids grabbing onto a rope and being dragged along the ground after the pony. Very hilarious and the kids looked like they had a ball. We also went to a show with Superdogs, which are rescue dogs who have been highly trained to do all sorts of tricks like dancing and going through obstacle courses. I tried my first bison hotdog...like a regular hotdog but with a few extra spices. I did have the opportunity to buy pretty much anything deep fried, including coke, but declined. There was a lot of country music played (apparently some pretty big artists come for it but none the day we were there...at least none that I had heard of).

We spent the rest of our time in Calgary visiting some neighbouring towns, going to a Turkish festival and visiting Julie's relatives. Was a very fun and cultural experience. We drove home again through the Rockies and it was once again amazing. I don't think I would ever get tired of those views.
Back to Vancouver.