Calgary, September 12 - 26, 2015
This was one of our regular fall trips to get us away from the Toronto area after the summer and give us a change of pace to break up the period until we leave for Florida. We decided to do it in September because we figured that the weather would still be pretty decent and it'd let us try out some different golf courses along the way.
We scheduled the northerly activities in the first week to improve the chances of decent weather and then the golf with the U.S. portion in the second week.
We certainly misjudged the weather. The advance temperatures showed daily highs in the 18 to 24 range but it had snowed in Calgary the week before we arrived! It seems that the weather changes a lot more in that part of the country than in Ontario. So we traveled with winter jackets and no shorts—a good decision. The day we arrived in Calgary it was 25 and sunny, but within 2 days a cold front had moved in and we didn't see warm weather again for the rest of the week. It improved in the second week but not enough.
Drumheller - Our first day trip was to drive to the town of Drumheller which is famous for dinosaurs. The first thing we saw on the road was Horsehoe Canyon, an area of the Alberta badlands that shows some really interesting layering of the land. It was cool and rainy so we did not want to test our footing to go down into the valley for better photos. Of course the main reason for going to Drumheller is to see the dinosaurs and we were not disappointed. According to Wikipedia, the town is named for Colonel Samuel Drumheller, who bought the land in 1910 and started coal mining operations there in 1911. It is the location for the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology which hosts Canada's largest collection of dinosaur fossils. Most of the pictures below were taken inside the Museum.
Canmore - After Drumheller we drove to Canmore where we stayed 5 days. It seemed like a good spot to use as a home base for day trips to Banff and Lake Louise because of its location and more reasonable prices. We booked it when we thought we were going to play some golf, and Canmore has several golf courses. There really wasn't anything too scenic in town, but one day we took a walk along Policeman's Creek, and these pictures are from that walk.
Banff - We drove along Highway 1 from Canmore to Banff a few times and were very impressed with the mountains on either side of the road. The pictures we took were in and around Banff itself.
Lake Louise - We read that Lake Louise is the most photographed spot in Canada and we can see why. Again, the weather was cool and not very sunny so it was hard to really appreciate it. But the water colour and the mountains and glacier in the distance are very unusual. We also read on Trip Advisor that Moraine Lake was considered by many to be better than Lake Louise. We could see its potential but the sun never came out when we were there.
Whitefish - After our week in the Banff area, we drove south to see Montana. The trip down through the Rockie mountains was interesting, and unexpectedly, we passed through the eastern part of British Columbia. We chose Whitefish as a stop because it was fairly close to the border, and because it had a golf course that was reasonably well rated. We found Whitefish to be a pretty little town and were glad we chose it.
Glacier National Park - Driving across Glacier was the high point of our trip. We were at the end of the season, but were still able to drive on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. A few days later and we wouldn't have seen it.
Waterton Lakes National Park - After driving across Glacier National Park, we headed north, back into Canada. What we didn't realize was that the border crossing was so small that it closed at about 5:30 pm!! Fortunately we didn't have a problem, but if we had arrived when it was closed we would have had to sleep in the car or try to find someone who would take us in. We spent the final two days playing golf and wandering around the town of Waterton. It was surrounded by beautiful mountains but we had seen so many crossing Glacier that it was hard to get excited about more mountains.
