Day 12 - July 21, 2011 - Travis Arrives

Travis is flying in today from Birmingham via Dallas. He was to leave Birmingham at about 6:30 am and arrive in Calgary at about 1:20 pm (Mountain time). So, Jimmy and I really didn’t plan to do anything this morning other than to finish getting the coach cleaned up, driving to Calgary, finding fuel for the car, finding the airport and finding a place to eat after we picked Travis up since we figured he would not have eaten anything between breakfast and when he arrived (we were right about that part BTW). Anyway, we figured that, if the traffic and construction on the way to the airport were as bad as they were getting from the south of Calgary to the highway to go to Banff, we had better add a bunch of time in order to get the fuel, find the eating place and get to the airport in time. Guess what – we found the airport almost two hours before Travis’ arrival from Dallas.

So, we head out in search of diesel fuel for the car. That quest made us realize even more than our previous observations that Calgary appears to be a city of tall buildings in the middle (town centre as it would be spelled up here) surrounded by bedroom community after bedroom community after bedroom community. And, if you get to the middle of the bedroom community, you will find all of the amenities such as gas stations, fast food restaurants, shopping centers, grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. There was an A&W Root Beer, a Time Horton’s, a Burger King and lots and lots of other familiar places. There was also a Shell station with diesel fuel whose pumps did not recognize our stateside Shell card (Jimmy had to go inside to pay for the fuel).

We quickly eliminated the chain fast food restaurants (I had originally said that I didn’t want to eat in a chain restaurant the entire time we were gone. Jimmy took that to mean that we would eat on the coach since I had prepared a few meals in anticipation of having to stop en route in some places where eating out would not be convenient.) Anyway, we found a Pacini restaurant very close to the airport. So, that was the identified place to eat after we picked Travis up.

So, back to the airport we went to await his arrival. We were still a good 40 minutes early. But, Calgary has what they call cell phone waiting lots which are free. You park in the lot and await a call from your passenger. They are supposed to call you when they are curbside in one of the purple waiting areas. Then you leave the parking lot and head to the arrivals area to pick up the passenger. We patiently waited until we saw an American Airlines place land at about 1:20 pm. We figured it would be about 10 minutes to the gate, but we had no idea how long it would be until he cleared customs. After about 25 minutes, I just couldn’t wait any longer, so we cranked up and drove to he arrivals area. He was curbside our second time around.

We threw his stuff in the back of the Jeep and headed to the restaurant to eat. It was great. They have their own water, and you have a selection of sparkling or not. They have a bread bar where you grill your selection of bread on a flame grill. We all ate fairly light and hit the Trans Canadian Highway west back to the coach where we could get him settled in.

The first thing we did after we got to the campground was walk out to the Hoodoo’s since Travis brought his good camera. For the 21st through the 24th, the pictures that I upload will be taken by a real camera instead of a point and shoot that I use.



We then drove into Banff. Travis wound up getting a new pair of shoes since the only hiking shoes he brought are over the ankle boots. Up here, for what we were doing, you don’t really need anything that rough and ready since most of the walking we are going to be doing is less strenuous. We went to eat at the Rose and Crown and sat in the roof top patio. It was just warm enough to be enjoyable, plus there was not a really big crowd up there for the first 30 minutes or so. I had traditional fish and chips, Jimmy had a salad with prawns, and Travis had a sandwich with sweet potato fries. We were kind of disappointed in the sweet potato fries – they just had not retained the sweetness we are familiar with. But, everything was good.

One thing that Jimmy had read about was Lake Minnewanka – which is across the Trans Canadian Highway from Banff. It was said by those who had written in their travel logs that it was a good drive if you wanted to see animals. We saw one female elk who had a collar on eating grass on the side of the highway. We couldn’t tell if she was staked out by the park personnel so that everyone would get to see one wild animal, or if she had just been left behind when all of the other wild animals went on vacation for the summer. Either way, she was the only large animal we saw. There were some tourists in the area who could be referred to as wild animals, but they did not count technically.



We came back to the coach since all of us were tired. We played with Peaches and The Bear for a while, then made down the couch for Travis and we all went to bed.

More tomorrow.