Mum's Monday: Our Canadian Trip Through the Rockies

Back in 2009 I booked a surprise birthday trip for my husband, a dream trip on a train across the Canadian Rockies. I was planning to go Easter in 2010 to sync up with school holidays but the trip wasn’t available on the dates we wanted. (if we had gone Easter 2010, we may have been caught up in the Iceland volcanic eruption). I ended up booking the trip for the end of August 2009.

Back at home we used to get a magazine through the door from a company have a subscription with, I used to look through it just to see if there was anything that interested me, and one day there was. It said basically that the film New Moon had been filmed in locations around Vancouver and one of the stars of the film visited a Bar in the city and a bit in it said, “If you are in Vancouver this summer come and have a drink”. This made me sit up because normally when I have read something like this it is either a place I have never heard of or some obscure place I would have no intention of visiting, so there was just one thing to do, look up the Bar and so our trip began like this…

We first flew from Gatwick to Manchester then on to Calgary Alberta Canada. Calgary has the famous Calgary tower, so having only one night there and wanting to do some sightseeing and needing an evening meal, I took the risk booking the table at the tower; if we had any delays with our travel from England to America, we would’ve missed our reservation. It was a lovely meal, although we were tired. Calgary is also famous for its 1988 winter Olympics where the Jamaican Bob Sleigh team and Eddie the Eagle Edwards took part. Now made famous by the films Cool Runnings (1993) (John Candy) and Eddie the Eagle (2015) (Taron Egerton).

After spending the night in Calgary, we caught a coach that would take us to Banff amid the Canadian National park. Some places can be described as beautiful, and some as quaint. I would describe Banff as “Boldly beautiful”. It sits amongst towering mountains that are spectacular to see. After spending the night in our hotel which was again big in bold décor but beautiful, we got a taxi to the train station the catch the Rocky Mountaineer train.

We travelled through the mountains making our way to or next overnight stop, sadly, before we got to a place called Kamloops, we see some Forest Fires. The planes were flying overhead having collected water from a nearby lake we passed and then we see it being dropped on the fires in the hope of putting them out. One of the sad things we witnessed was someone hosing down their home that was right beside the railway track we were on with the fires up in the mountains behind. I even thought that as we see all this nearing the end of the day, once we arrived at our hotel, we would see a red glow in the sky, but we were a bit further away than I first thought and didn’t see anything.

After our non-eventful night in Kamloops, it was back on the coach and back on the train on our continuing journey to our final stop for three nights in Vancouver. All we see this time was the amazing scenery. Once in Vancouver, my first impression was it looked a bit like London (the capital of the United Kingdom) but as we were in the region of British Columbia it wasn’t necessarily a surprise after all. During our visit to Vancouver we went to Granville Island, we see and heard the steam clock, we see where they were getting ready for the 2010 winter Olympics, and we went to Stanley Park where some Raccoons gave me a shock as they just came running out of the undergrowth towards.

Now I have the book and film called New Moon, the second of the Twilight trilogy starring Robert Pattinson. I was originally going to do a blog review of the film or book of said New Moon but as I hadn’t seen all the films or read all the books, to do just one of the three wouldn’t be right.  During our Canadian trip through the Rockies, I made sure to visit the bar and have a drink, at the Bar where one of the stars of New Moon also visited. Before catching our flight home after an extraordinary trip.

So, there you have it, the one and only time where an article has come to life for me. I suppose there is just one thing left to say because I realise for some people what I have described in the article can happen all the time and it is nothing out of the ordinary for them, so if you happen to be in Vancouver this summer, Granville Island, the steam clock and Stanley Park, amongst other things, are all well worth a visit, look them up and see for yourself.