John A. Travels to California

Day 6, Thursday, September 13, 2007 - To Alberta

Querenia: Bed, but no Breakfast

Day Six of our journey started with us waking up rather stiff and sore from a poor night’s sleep in the Bed & Breakfast.  The bed I had been sleeping on was at a 5° slant towards the floor, and the bed was only a single bed, so I had to fight from falling off all night. 
We got up around 7:00, and there was no coffee ready, as the host had promised.
Ronald didn’t bother using the showers, as they had left the window open, and things were very cold.  When I was able to close the window to take my shower, I couldn’t find any bar soap.  Ronald let me borrow his.    When we were finally ready to go around 7:45, then the owner finally walked in and made coffee for us.
Joe, the owner, was a rather interesting fellow.  He is a bow hunter, and spends January through March in the southern states, camping at various locations with his six Labrador retrievers.  He says he hunts a very

Home on the range at mile 36.7

small type of pig.  He had just received a new bow the day we arrived, and was thrilled with it.  Apparently his older bow had self destructed.   When we asked what his profession was, he said he was a dog trainer.  He must have income from some other source, though, as he seemed to be well off.
After chatting for about half-an-hour over coffee, we hit the road just after 8:30.  As we drove through Montana, I must say it looked rather desolate.  Everything was quite dry, and rather flat.  At one point, we noticed two cowboys and a border collie herding about 30 black Angus steers.  We were able to stop and take a couple of pictures.  They actually herded them underneath the road through a tunnel.  We also saw a truck hauling three trailers.
As we approached the border, we looked for a gas station to fill up, but couldn’t find one until we were right at the border.  After filling up, we got into line, and only

B&B owner Joe

had to wait for two other cars ahead of us.  The Canadian border guard seemed totally unconcerned, and didn’t even look at our identification.  She simply asked where we lived, where we were going, and said, “Have a good day.”
At this point, I’d taken over driving. We made good time to Lethbridge.  My cell phone changed the time, so I thought perhaps we’d gained another hour.  It was about 4:30, and we both felt like having some Chinese food.  The Chinese restaurant we stopped at didn’t have their buffet out until 5:00, so we just ordered the combo.  I was able to make contact via cell phone with mom, and Ronald also called his parents on my cell phone.  I’m back on the Canadian plan, and not using my roaming minutes.  Ronald has also started to use his debit card for purchases, which is a new experience for him.

Sue, the Labrador retriever at the B&B wants to play

As we approached Calgary, the roads turned into local streets, but the traffic seemed to flow quite well.  There were several turns to make, and I was very glad to be able to refer to the GPS which was sitting on Ronald’s lap.  Again, I just love traveling with GPS!  Even if we miss a turn, it only takes a minute to turn around because we know immediately when we’re heading the wrong way. (Whenever I have the voice prompts off time, I sometimes forget a turn is coming up.)
It was about 7:00 p.m. when we passed through Calgary, and we didn’t want to stop driving until at least until 8:00.  We figured that if we were able to get just past Calgary, the prices of the motels would drop, and we could save a bit of money.  And so we pushed on, and started looking for motels about 10 minutes outside of Calgary.  The only problem was, there was absolutely nothing beyond Calgary.  It was all Indian reservation and

Cowboys in Montana

open country. 
So we decided to push on, straight through to Banff.  However, when we approached the City of Canmore, Alberta, we saw some accommodation signs, and pulled in.  The GPS told me that there was a large strip of hotels on the other side of the highway, and, indeed, there was.  The first hotel we pulled into looked like a series of townhouse condos.  The girl at the desk said that they typically go for $200 a night, but that because this was the off-season, they were only $95.00.  It turned out to be a complete apartment with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.

We enter Alberta

We felt like we were kings for a night! 
I was also able to get Internet connection in the morning, and so uploaded the web page.  Ronald had a shower, while I edited the crop of pictures from the day before.
We traveled 1008 kilometres today.

Olympic village in Calgary