Thursday, January 2, 2014

West Trip....Day Ten.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! My New Years resolution is to finish this trip blog before the next trip....LOL.
 I wasn't planning on dragging it out this long but I have been so busy with the holidays and work I just didn't have time to finish it.

The Three Sisters are a trio of peaks near Canmore, Alberta, Canada. They are known individually as Big Sister (Faith), Middle Sister (Charity), Little Sister (Hope).
 
This is day ten of our trip west as we leave the Canadian Rockies and begin the long trip home.
Leaving Canmore we shortly passed the Three Sisters Mountains, the last mountains we'll see.
 
One minute I took a picture of these mountains, looked down for a few minutes.......
and when I looked up we were in the prairies. I had no idea. I always imagined Canada to be fairly mountainous, especially the Calgary area. Not so. West-Central Canada is mostly prairie, consisting of large grain farms.
Nearing Calgary we passed a colorful building in the Olympic colors which I assume was part of the 1988 Winter Olympics. Goodness gracious.......how could that possibly be 25 years ago?
 Ski Jumps
 
The Calgary Tower
 
 
 
Standing on the glass floor on the observation deck. Carolyn....why aren't you looking down?
 
 
Calgary with the Rocky Mountains in the distance.
 
Calgary Skyline
 
Remember the Bow River in Banff. Here it is flowing through Calgary.
You wouldn't know two month prior, this area had catastrophic flooding when the Bow River and others overflowed after heavy rains in the area. The dome below had water up to the first ten rows of seats.
Calgary Saddledome hosted figure skating and ice hockey in the 88 Olympics and is home to the Calgary Flames. The famous Calgary Stampede is also held here in July, which would have been on our itinerary had we been here at the right time. 
 
We also stopped at Heritage Park, a historical village in Calgary. The park features four distinct villages or areas reflecting time periods in Western Canadian history. The time periods are circa 1864, 1880, 1910, and Heritage Town Square depicting the 1930s to 1950s.

A scaled down version of a Hudson Bay Fur Trading Fort.
 
 
The building's inside the fort contain furnishing's or replica's of that period.
 
 
Adjacent to the Hudson Bay Company Fort is the Aboriginal Encampment.
 
Sod House
 
This area of the park depicts a 1910 Railroad Town.
 
 
 
 
But the place we spent most of our time was the Gasoline Alley Museum, devoted to all kinds of automobiles, trucks, and gas pumps etc.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Would LOVE to have this! I have memories of going on a trip years ago with my family in one of these.
 
A few of the what seemed like hundreds of gas pumps.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I could post a hundred photos of old cars and trucks but this post is getting way too long.

Back on the bus we passed a prairie fire.
 
We saw a lot of grain elevators and trains transporting the grain in the prairies.
 
 We stayed in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
 
 
 

4 comments:

  1. Such blue blue sky in so many of those photos. Lovely! We visited that area in 1999 starting in Calgary and heading west to Banff then south to Glacier and returning to Calgary to fly home.

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  2. I am glad you shared this in January... It is nice looking at the pictures with all the grass and leaves, I am so missing seeing anything green. My fiance even had to look at the pictures in this post to look at all the cars and gas pumps. We both really enjoyed it :)

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  3. Awesome pics like always. Your camera does an excellent job taking pics. I think I might be a wee bit jealous.

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  4. I say this after every post, but you all really had a wonderful trip… Bet you were getting tired by now though… I know I would!

    Didn't realize that Calgary was THAT large… Loved seeing the fort and museum… AND--noticed how flat everything was once you left the mountains.

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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