Up for an early start to get to Canmore for the 25 minute helicopter flight to and around Banff. There was 6 of us in the chopper and the weather was sort of fine. Jo was as solid as a rock in the chopper, even though we encounted a little bit of turbulence. It was an awesome ride and gave a different view of the magnificent mountains. In the end after landing I had a bit of a queasy stomach, but it was well worth it.
Then it was off to Calgary, the home of the 1988 winter Olympics. I slept most of the way until Andrea elbowed me in the head : ) We decided to spend some time at the Olympic site. They had a special countdown to Sydney running, only 111 days to go. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be.
It had the Luge and Bobsled tracks and the skijumps. We took the guided tour around the site, which included a trip to the top of the 90 meter ski jump. The people that throw themselves off these jump are bananas. This was the place where the infamous Eddy the Eagle made a name for himself. They actually had the 70 meter jump set up for summer training and we were lucky enough to see some of these athletes/madmen training going off the jump.
Then we reluctantly went down to downtown Calgary. We had 2 and a half hours to kill so we did a bit of window shopping and I drooled over some new rollerblades. The comment of the trip was made by Di as we were driving across some bumpy roads, shocked us all it did : ) Decided to eat out and ate at Toni Romas. Yum Steak and rib combo. By the time we got back to camp (just next to the Olympic site) it was 10 past nine. A quick unload and setting up in near dark. It was then a mad rush to the laundry as everyone needed to do some washing. It was quite a site seeing nine peoples heads rotating watching the driers going around.
Back to Canadian Parks West Page or on to Day 15.