Banff ...... Close encounters of an Elk kind

Sunday morning ... so it was off to Banff and our first sight of the Canadian Rockies. Banff is about 130km west of Calgary. The mountains are visible from Calgary and so appeared to get larger the closer we got.

After a lazy brunch in Cannmore, just to the east of Bannf, we headed straight for the Banff Gondola, and enjoyed a leisurely 5 minute ride up to the summit at 7,496 ft. The paths leading up to the summit were considered still to be too tricky to attempt on foot.

The gondola was just the first part of our days adventure. The next step was to head out a few Kms and take a short walk at Muleshoe lake. The car journey to Muleshoe was punctuated by a small family group of Mountain Sheep who decided that the road was the best place to stand.

At Muleshoe there was a small but excited crowd of people all pointing to an Elk in the distance. After taking a quick look we headed off on our walk up the hill to a vantage point, where we would get the view of Muleshoe lake. Muleshoe being the Canadian name for an Oxbow lake. Our short but steep walk was great fun and we got close to a some chipmunks on the way up.

On the way down Eron, Flinn and Neil were just crossing the road when they stopped, just in front of them about 10m away was a young Bull Elk, with velvet on it's antlers. The advice given is to give Elk quite a wide berth, so they moved quietly and slowly away from it. Sue managed to get close enough to it to take some good photos without disturbing it.

After all that excitement we needed to unwind a bit, so it was off the Banff Hot Springs for a relaxing dip. Sitting in an outdoor pool heated to 39 degrees, surrounded by Mountains was the perfect antidote to our days labours and excitement!

After dinner it was time to head back to Calgary, tired but satisfied and ready to face the next week of, work, Hockey and most exciting of all a new SCHOOL!!!

Another interesting week.. A WIn a Loss and a new School

Week 3 has been another busy one for us all.

Tuesday evening saw Sue's debut for her adopted Canadian Hockey Team in the Women's league (they call it Field Hockey here!) - Phoenix Black. The outdoor season here runs from May to September and the league runs on a Tuesday evening with games being played between 7pm and 10:30. The debut was a great success and Phoenix Black came out worthy winners 2 - 0. Sue thoroughly enjoyed herself and was made to feel very welcome.

Wednesday evening saw Sue's debut in the Men's outdoor league, for Saracens made up mainly of ex-pats from a diverse range of countries. Saracen's run two mens teams, but a number of Women play in these teams too (Co-ed is the term here). Sue played for the second team - who are the more mature of the two teams. They gave the Saracens first team a good run for their money and narrowly lost 3-2. Once again we were all made to feel very welcome and this bodes well for our time with Canadian Hockey.

Thursday saw us off to register Eron and Flinn with the Calgary Board of Education, and after a short meeting and filling of forms we were allocated places at 'The Ethel M Johnson' elementary school, and told to report Friday morning. We decided that we'd like to take a look at the school before the Boys started, so we called in.

We met the Deputy Principal - Dan Jones who spent a lot of time getting to know Eron and Flinn. School hours are very different to what the Boys are used to. The day starts at 8am and concludes at 3pm on Friday it's noon!! As you can probably imagine Eron and Flinn are delighted at this prospect! The other plus being that they have no school uniform to wear. Eron is joining grade 4 and Flinn grade 1. Dan also suggested that the Boys start school the following week, so Tuesday May 18th will be the big day

After another action packed week and with the prospect of school looming, we decided to head out west on Sunday...

Alberta Badlands and the Hoodoos

Drumheller is situated in the Alberta Badlands.

Now the technical bit.......A badlands is a type of arid terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been eroded by wind and water. Canyons, ravines, gullies, hoodoos and other such geological forms are common in badlands. They are often difficult to navigate by foot, and were called 'Badlands' because of this (e.g. being Badlands to travel in)

All around Drumheller the scenery is spectacular, and after leaving the town we drove down to the Hoodoos, see picture.

The Hoodoos are formed by wind and water erosion of sedimentary rocks. Looking like petrified mushrooms, they have a protective rock cap which shelters the main pillar, and stops the Hoodoo from disintergrating at the same speed as the surrounding sandstone.

Royal Tyrrell Museum

Words that sum up our visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, fantastic, fabulous , amazing!!! It's a superb place full of brilliant exhibits and great centre of learning. No doubt we'll be making a number of return visits over the next few months. It would make a great school trip - and Sue has volunteered to organise it!!

As you can imagine Flinn was absolutely in his element!!!. Everyone else enjoyed themselves too, but Flinn was in paradise.

We have loads more photos to share, we're just creating a Flickr site and once it's ready we'll let you know...

Road to Drumheller..

One the the ways we managed to 'encourage' Flinn to get on the plane was that fact that Alberta is home to some of the finest dinosaur discoveries made to date. So a visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller (http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/) was an obvious must do early in our stay.

Drumheller is about 150 Km east of Calgary, situated in the Alberta Badlands (more of those later) and the drive would give us our first experience of the Canadian Prairies. Wow! we didn't realise how straight and empty the roads would be.

Some of the towns we passed were very isolated and living there in Winter must be a challenge!

House Hunting.........

Well by the end of week two we've found a house to live in for the rest of our stay here. It's situated right on the southern outskirts of Calgary in a suburb called Silverado. It's a fairly new suburb (about two years old) but still connected to downtown Calgary by an efficient and cheap train system, so Neil's commute will still be reasonably short.

Everything we need is close by, shops sporting facilities, and we will be about an hour from the Rockies

Having a permanent address means that Eron and Flinn can finally go to school. We are meeting with the Board of Education soon and hopefully they will both in school by the beginning of next week! Not sure that they are too pleased by this, but they can now start to make some more friends and get back to the pastimes such as Gymnastics and Karate. We're hoping to put them into an Ice Skating program in the summer so that they can start to learn Ice Hockey in September.

Park Life

In the first week of exploring Calgary we found a fantastic Park, Price's Island Park to be precise. This has become a favourite haunt for us all, but Eron and Flinn in particular love being there and it has become part of the daily routine.

One of the of the surprising aspects of the park, is the variety of wildlife we've seen and all in the shadow of the downtown skyscrapers. We've spotted, Beaver (and it's rather impressive lodge), Black Squirrels, Snowshoe Hares and the rather plentiful Canada Goose.

As well as the wildlife there is plenty of space and a great play park for young and old alike to let off some steam.

We're also very close to the Telus World of Science which we visited on May 2nd to view the fantastic Bodyworlds exhibition.

(http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html). This is an amazing display about the workings of the Human body using plasticised parts and whole bodies donated from people all around the World.

Finally......

After a few hitches; Volcanic Ash, computer incompetence etc and too many excuses to name here we are ready with our first blog.

We arrived finally of 29th April, after 5 days of delays due to the ash cloud. Fortunately Ann and Chris put us up for 5 days in the UK, while we waited for a change in the weather. Since we've been here, dealing with Canadian bureaucracy has been remarkably easy, work permit agreed in about 40 minutes, Cats inspected in about 2 minutes, Social Insurance Numbers 20 minutes, Customs clearance of Cargo about 30 minutes.

Initial impressions of Calgary are very favourable, everyone is very friendly and it is easy to navigate around. Driving on the wrong side of the road is not causing too many problems

Weather wise we've had quite a bit of snow, and the temperature can vary considerably during the day.

We're currently situated in an apartment in downtown Calgary, and will be here until June 1st. This makes life easy for Neil who has a 20 minute walk to work, or if the weather is poor a 5 minute train ride and a short walk.

Eron and Flinn are missing their friends but are looking forward to the adventure of exploring a new country and making new friends.