Day Three - Golden to Airdrie

Monday May 26th 2008
Golden through Yoho through Banff to Calgary to Airdrie AB
185 miles – estimated 4 hour drive

The next morning I called the dealer in Calgary and made an appointment for the car in the afternoon. We headed out, driving up, over and through the Yoho and Banff national parks.




These are gorgeous parks with some of the most amazing peaks. Every foot of the drive was astounding. I loved that they fenced in the forest so that the deer/elk wouldn’t stray on
to the freeway. They also have made these wonderful overpasses for wildlife right over the freeway.

Hour after hour we drove a precursor of things to come. What I hadn’t counted on was the difference in speed limits. In the U.S. it seems to run 65-75 mph on the interstates. Sometimes it would drop to 45 when there was a lot of twisting over the mountains. In Canada the regular limit is around 50 mph and occasionally it would get to 70. But overall it was slower than south of the border.



Eventually we were onto the plains of Alberta and then into Calgary. Surprisingly, the Calgary dealer was ready and waiting for us. It was going to cost 100 dollars for the evaluation, but what choice did we have. We still had over 3000 miles to go and it wouldn’t be good to have a worse breakdown and not know it because the light was already on. In a surprisingly short time, like 10 minutes, they had diagnosed the problem. As Doug suspected, it was an air intake sensor. We could probably still drive, but again, if something else went wrong we wouldn’t know it. So we bit the bullet and said to go ahead and fix it. We expected to be there forever, but no. They had the car finished in 45 minutes. So by 2:00 in the afternoon we were on our way again.

I had called and canceled our original hotel reservations near Banff and made new ones in a Best Western in Airdrie (between Calgary and Edmonton).

For more photos of this leg of the journey see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsemenza/sets/72157605305716337/

Canceled: Best Western Siding 29 Lodge
453 Marten Street, Box 1387s
Banff, Alberta: T1L 1B3, Canada

Best Western Regency Inn
121 Edmonton Trl
Airdrie , Alberta T4B 1S2,Canada

Receipts:
Best Western – Golden BC
Yoho Trading Post (gas) – Field BC
Friends of Yoho (magne) – Field BC
McDonalds – Mountain Road ___ AB
Heniger Toyota – Calgary AB
Ricky’s All Day Grill – Airdrie AB
Extra Foods (milk, yogurt, coffee, oj) – Airdrie AB

Wildlife & Birds:

Big horn sheep
Because Canada uses salt on its roads many ungulates, such as Big horn sheep, will come down to lick the sides of the road.

Black bear
This was my first Black bear sighting. I noticed a big round black rock in the distance. It didn’t look like it belonged in the scenery so I pulled out my binoculars and sure enough, it wasn’t a rock. WHOOO HOOO! Bear!!!


We also saw Elk and Red-tailed hawks