Goonies never say die!

Our Canada visit finished with a couple of days in Calgary for the Calgary Stampede.

The stampede is a big rodeo, kind of a cross between Melbourne Show and Oktoberfest with cowboy hats. There are show rides and games, music and bars, an acrobatics circus, evening stage shows and of course there's the rodeo but we didn't actually see much of that.

Everyone dresses the bit too, so we donned our flannel, got ourselves some hats and ended up in Nashville North, a giant tent with bars and a big stage, to drink rum and dance to country music.

Haley came to meet Robina and I after she'd finished work and rocked up with Sarah, an Aussie girl we met randomly met a few weeks before. Sarah was travelling around Canada, had been on the road by herself for months and is still travelling now! We met Sarah on our road trip when we were in a little Mexican restaurant for dinner, she was sitting near us, overhead the familiar accents and the rest is history :)

The next night we went to the last night finale show, we saw chuckwagon racing, tight-rope walkers, guys playing drums while being flown above the crowd on lines, fireworks and lots of singing and dancing by Canadian children dressed in bright colours.

The next day I said goodbye and flew to San Jose (Robina was heading to Hawaii the next day) where I was spending three days attending an IoT conference for work.

IoT means Internet of Things, it's all about integrating and smartening up things like controlling home security from your phone, your fridge telling you when you're out of milk or jackets for cyclists with led lighting on the back that hooks up to your google maps so the jacket can flash arrows on your back telling cars behind you which way you're about to turn. Healthcare is also a really big area for IoT too.

It's an area that I don't know much about but sounds exciting, I thought the conference would be fun so was disappointed when a lot of the conference turned out to be boring as shit.

The worst bit was one of the main speakers. He was talked up as being an amazing public speaker and a real guru around IoT and future application and innovation.  He began his talk with a couple of bad jokes about his mother in law, followed it with another shit joke about his wife then showed a youtube video of the starting credits for the 70's show The Six Million Dollar Man. So disappointing.

After San Jose I flew to Portland where I stayed a few days with EJ, another excellent person who I had met travelling (this time Iceland a few years ago) who was willing to put me up for a few days and show me around.

The first night EJ took me to his local - Joe's Cellar, a dingy bar just down the road from his place with no windows, or as EJ likes to call them 'judgement panels' - totally a 'Danger' bar.

So we're having a quiet beer when this guy stops at our table, then asks if he can sit down with us. Being polite we were like yeah sure, so the guy sits himself down and then starts telling us about how much he loves religion, asks if we're religious and then tells us how he saw Jesus. Yep, that's right, he saw Jesus. We asked where and what Jesus was doing. He said he saw him running past out of the corner of his eye. Yep, Jesus is back, running around Portland in people's peripheral vision. We finished our beers and made our excuses.

Funnily enough, last time I met EJ we also had a fellow of dubious mental stability want to make friends, we're obviously just too friendly looking for our own good.

Portland is lovely, it's the first US city I've found that feels liveable. I went shopping along quiet tree-lined streets, wandered through markets and parks on the river and checked out the breweries, bars and bookshops.

EJ gave me a tour of the area around Portland, we visited waterfalls and went to Astoria where we saw the house and the beach from the Goonies and watched EJ's puppy Myles go crazy on the beach.

Myles is a year old great dane, which means this cute playful, excitable puppy is actually an energetic, jumpy, drooling giant who just wants to play all the time! Taking him for walks, people stop in the street to comment on whether he's a big dog or a small horse and at the beach he went crazy running around chasing other dogs and the entire beach stopped to watch.

Next episode we're headed into the wilderness of the famed Yellowstone National Park.

One with the Nature

Driving through Canada's Rockies was pretty easy, the mountains are split by large open valleys because they were bulldozed apart by glaciers not carved by rivers, or so they told us on our lake Minnewanke tour.

So for those of you like me who are prone to motion-sickness the roads are good as they wind gently along the wide valley floors - that was until the mountain range between Whistler and Jasper.

First we stopped at Lake Joffrey, it was a light hike up to the valley where you suddenly step out of the trees onto the banks of a lake of the most intense and vivid blue.  The colour is ridiculous  #nofiltersrequired.

Leaving the lake was easier said than done, we had parked on the roadside in the gravel and when Haley hit the pedal the wheels started spinning. Going forward the wheels just spun and behind there was a steep drop-off so we weren't going anywhere.

Haley was all, 'Oh god, we're stuck! My cars going to fall off the cliff!'
'Nah, we'll be right,' I said wandering off to collect some sticks and rocks to put under the tires. I squeezed my small collection of twigs under the wheel, but they just spun out. I looked for more sticks and stones, but the gravel was pretty bare.

As Haley continued to freak out, I scratched my head wondering where I'd be able to find bigger sticks and Robina was probably off taking a selfie when a rusty old 4wd pulled up.
'Need some help?' said the driver.
'You don't have a couple of big sticks do you?' I asked. (Jokes, I didn't ask for the sticks)

The guy, a random kiwi in Canada, grabbed a tow rope from his rust-bucket and had us out in five minutes.
'Great,' said Haley. 'I was worried we wouldn't get to the winery in time!'

We drove through a tiny country town called Lillooet, pulled up at the winery just before closing and I rolled out of the car for my second vomit. (Told you the roads got worse!)

In the winery Haley asked for Armand and the guy at the counter pointed out an old dude pouring wine and chatting to a couple of ladies. He came over and asked if we were there to taste some wine, Haley told him we were looking for him.
'I'm Haley and I play cricket with Ali in Melbourne,' she said.
'WHAT?!?' he shouted, eyes wide. 'Oh my god! Oh wow, really?!?'
Robina had gone to the loo and said she could here him shouting from all the way out the back.

Armand's son Brent is married to Ali who Haley plays cricket with. Armand was super excited to meet some random Aussie who knew his son and poured us all some wine.
'Where have you come from? What are you doing here? Where are you going? Where are you staying? How long are you in Canada?'
Armand had a lot of questions and when he discovered we had no idea where we were heading that day he invited us home to meet his wife Ida and told us we could stay in their RV.

We ended up in Lillooet two nights, Ida was an absolutely lovely, funny lady and she makes an excellent chilli and Armand was super excited to have visitors and insisted on taking us on a 'hike'.

Armand drove up into the hills, at the end of a bumpy dirt trail he jumped out, we took photos of the wildflowers and ate salmon berries before Armand just walked off into the bush.

'Hmmm, haven't been this way in a while,' he says crashing through the undergrowth, but after ten minutes we appeared at the side of a lake. A wide blue lake like Joffrey Lake the day before but without the million people on the track. We had the entire lake to ourselves. Armand led us around the lake, balancing on fallen logs to cross the water and rock-hopping through scrub and swampy patches.

'We'll go to the waterfalls,' said Armand pointing way, way up at a tiny trickle of water streaming from the top of the mountain, right up near the snowline.

We didn't realise that by 'hike' Armand meant eight hours scrabbling over landslides and scaling mountains up to the snowline.

Armand was hilarious and to top it off made an excellent video of our hike, make sure you watch it, it's fantastic!

Hallelujah it's raining Pokemen

In Vancouver we spent a day with Haley's friend Emily and her adorable baby Maeve. We wandered around the harbour and through Stanley Park before grabbing some tacos and beer and sitting on the grassy banks of the harbour to eat.

The next morning we caught the ferry to Vancouver Island, for some reason I thought Vancouver Island was a small island, like maybe Rottnest or Phillip Island, but it's massive, apparently the same size as England.

I messaged Ericka who lives in Victoria, the main town on Vancouver Island, asking if she'd be free to catch up for a drink or dinner. Ericka, who I met on a tour in South America in 2011, then invited us to stay with her, when we arrived she opened her fridge to show us the selection of local beers she had bought for us to try then suggested a fantastic seafood restaurant because we said we wanted seafood even though she's allergic and could only eat one thing on the menu!

We spent a couple of nights at Ericka's, having drinks and playing Cards Against Humanity with her friends and boyfriend and drove around the island checking out some trail walks and beaches, almost getting the car stuck in some of the most gigantic potholes I've ever seen.

One evening we got back to Ericka's but she was out so to kill some time we downloaded Pokemon Go and set off in the rain, chasing Pokemons through the quiet Victorian streets. Robina and Haley who were the right age for Pokemon the first time round became a little obsessed, I just liked wandering about the glittering, rain soaked streets at night.

Thanks again Ericka for having us and being such an awesome and generous person!

On our return to Vancouver we stopped to pick up Mullet, a friend of Haley's who was in town and decided he'd come to Whistler with us.

We drove the Sea to Sky road to Whistler and there at the welcome sign was a bear! A real live bear just hanging out on the side of the road, his name was Tom and he snuffled about in the grass, paying no attention to the 20 cars stopped to take his picture.

After taking plenty of photos of Tom we continued into Whistler, a cute european-styled ski town, and stopped at the info centre to ask about accommodation.  Apparently we'd got the wrong weekend and the place was packed, hotels were out of our budget and all the campsites in and around town were booked out so we had nowhere to stay.

We considered the accommodation issue, then put it in the too hard basket and went to the pub to meet up with Amy, a girl Haley and I used to play footy with. We were telling her about our potential overnighter in the car when Haley's friend Nippun appeared out of nowhere like a fairy godmother and told us she had a spare room where they were staying - pfft, who said drinking never solves anything!

So we had another round to celebrate our new found home and soon moved on to another bar which Amy and Rich called The Danger Bar. Danger wasn't it's real name, Danger was it's middle name, bestowed upon it by Amy and her friends thanks to some inexplicable and unexpectedly big nights.

The next morning we had a big, hangover-curing breakfast with Amy then got back on the road again.

Forest formal and #nudefornature

Robina and I flew into Calgary where Haley showed us around her new home town before we set off on a two week road trip through the south-west of Canada.

Calgary is a cute little town, quiet, green, clean and happy to report does a decent breakfast.

We loaded up the car with essentials like an esky (although apparently it's racist to say that in Canada so you have to call it a 'cooler'), tent, formalwear, matching Canada undies and bear spray - yes bear spray is a real thing and no it's not like fly spray, it's pepper spray.

Our first stop was Banff, where Haley complained about the terrible traffic and the people everywhere.
'Are you serious?' I said looking at streets lightly peppered with people and cars cruising along, a total world away from the non-stop crowds and craziness of places like LA, Vegas and even the parks like Zion and Yosemite.

We did some sightseeing around Banff, went up in the Gondola and out to Lake Minnewanke where everyone there was like 'Oh you're Australians, it's not pronounced the way you think.'.

We got back to Banff in time for the Canada Parade which was cute, much like the Mardi Gras at home in Maffra with lot's of kids, local groups dressed up, fire trucks and clowns passing by.

After the parade we followed the crowd to the park where there was live music, we got some beaver tails (super sweet pastries covered is super sweet toppings) and waited for it to get dark for the fireworks...and waited...and waited. It was after 11.30 when the fireworks went off and it still wasn't even dark. The fireworks burst out into a deep blue twilight there still a glow on the horizon where the sun had set hours before.

It's great to see Haley liking her new town and she's met some excellent people like Sam and Barb who as well as being lovely when Haley says 'So I've got an excellent idea...' they don't bat an eyelid before getting on board.

Sam and Barb joined us for the weekend in Radium, we went to the hot springs and hung out at our accommodation having drinks on the deck that overlooked the valley and mountains.

We did a small hike into the 'enchanted forest', it was so green and pretty and perfect for what we had planned.

We climbed off the track and up onto the hillside, I unpacked my tripod and got the girls to move into position in front of the camera. We then stripped off and did a quick costume change into our formalwear, I set the timer on the camera and had to bolt across the hill and plonk myself in front of the other girls before the camera started shooting.

A couple of hikers passed us by, 'Oh look, forest nymphs,' one said.  Another family walked past, a little girl stared wide-eyed at us before taking a quick photo and running off excited, saying 'Daddy, I got a picture'

The photos turned out great, Forest Formal was definitely a winner.

For Haley's next great idea we found a perfect spot, just downhill from the road so you couldn't be seen from the road but an awesome view out over the valley and hills.  We set up the camera and were about to get undressed when we heard a car and then two heads pop over the railing.
'This your phone?' they said.
'No' we said, and then waited for them to leave.
A minute later their heads popped back over the rail.
'Are you sure this isn't your phone,' said the guy, waving it around. 'It's got a pink cover.'
'No!' we all said, they stood there for another minute before finally leaving.

So there we were arms out to the great outdoors wearing nothing but matching Canada knickers. According to Haley once you hit 30 it's ok to get your kit off because it's liberating not silly, I figure it's only going to go downhill from here so what the hell.

We took some photos again with me running back and forth from the camera, then Haley wanted some solo photos, she was posing away when suddenly she screamed and threw her arms around herself and ducked down.
'There's a bike trail down there!' she said, two guys had rode out of the forest and got a little more than they bargained for on their weekend ride.