Day 2- Medicine Hat to Banff- Alberta to the end

We started the day with coffee and a trip to the tepee at Medicine Hat. My tour guide raved about it- apparently it was brought over from the Calgary Olympics, and now sits on a 16th century First Nation buffalo camp. It was beautiful out on the prairie, and we saw coyotes and prairie dogs. The tepee shows artwork depicting the history of the First Nation in Canada.



Then we headed out towards Calgary- lots of prairie and boringness- we kept searching the skyline for mountains, and didn't see any until we were almost on Calgary. Calgary was a little disappointing, at least the area we drove through- it looked like it was really nice in the 80's and has just faded. We stopped at the Olympic Park, and took a ski lift up to the top of the hill. That was pretty fun. There were tons of mountain bikers taking their bikes off the lifts and riding down- looked like a dream riding all downhill.



Then we hit the road to Banff- there are these hills outside Calgary and all of a sudden you drive past one and bam, there were the mountains. It was a little drizzly, so the clouds were low, so we mainly saw mountain bottoms, but they were good-looking for bottoms. We got into town and set up our tent and went into town for the night. I'm still not sure what I think of the town- it's like a cross between a fairytale land and a Disneyland theme park- I think I'd need to spend more time there to see past the facade. It was funny how many international travelers were there- I felt like the only one without a foreign accent- even the workers in Banff were all seemingly from
Australia.



Camping was an experience- Katie got the 'A' for lighting a fabulous campfire, while I scored 'needs improvement'. The campground was beautiful- mountain views, and tall pines.
Going to bed at 11:30, the sky was still light- not bright, but a light blue with no visible stars and a light moon. It was really strange, and will take some getting used to.




















Around 1:30 a train went through, and the whistle echoed against the mountains and woke me up. My air mattress had deflated, and I was pretty uncomfortable, so I decided to go sit in the car a little. The cats were not very happy about being in the car at night, I thought they'd like it better than they did. They were all anxious and agitated and running from window to window. So I went and sat in the car for a while and dozed, and then I woke and decided to crack the windows. When I put the key in the car, the anti-theft alarm went off. It was the most mortifying thing to ever happen to me. Here we are in this quiet tent site, with only about 15 tents, in wonderful silence, and my car is BLARING the alarm. Nothing I tried turned it off, I kept pushing buttons; at one point in my panic, I even tried driving away. Not sure what that would have solved except waking even more campers. After 2 AGONIZING minutes, the alarm shut off, while I was sitting in the passenger seat pouring over the manual, trying to figure out how to turn the darn thing off, when it shut off on it's own. I now have learned how to stop said alarm, but was so so embarrased. Katie and I packed up camp super early and slinked off to avoid the death-stares. I guess it can only get better from here!