A Trip to the Great North

Following our summer habit of the last 2-3 decades, my wife & I recently vacationed Up North. We used to frequently visit our middle daughter in Ithaca NY, my older brother in Portland ME, old college friends in the Boston area & Connecticut, & our oldest daughter in Brooklyn.

This year, we 1st visited our Canadian FL snowbird friends in Windsor, Ontario. We drove there Saturday 8/22, had dinner, on Sunday visited the Aquarium & Botanical Garden on Belle Isle back in Detroit, before a fabulous dinner at Take Five in Windsor.

We went over the new Gordie Howe bridge 2x! What a beautiful piece of architecture! The pic is from my Canadian friend Owen.

Monday morning 8/24 we picked up our middle daughter in Ann Arbor & drove to the northeast shore of Lake Michigan, Frankfort MI. A very nice little tourist town. Wow, Lake Michigan water temperature was 37 degrees Farenheit - brrr!.

Wednesday morning, 8/26, we dropped our daughter back in Ann Arbor, parked our car in Detroit airport, & flew to Calgary, AB, Canada. Canada's 5th largest city, at 1.481 million just after Ottowa at 1.488 million. We rented a car.

We did local Calgary sights: Calgary Tower, Music Museum (Studio Bell). We lunched at King Eddie's, affiliated with the music museum. Sadly, we didn't ride the public transit, everyplace we visited was in walking distance.

We drove to the world's greatest dinosaur museum: the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drummheller, ~100 km NE of Calgary.

It was my 1st time in a Badlands: land along a river which has eroded itself to 100-400' below the surrounding prairie. Amazing!.

Saturday 7/29, we drove west ~150 km to Banff, at the center of Banff National Park, in the Canadian Rockies. We stayed there til Thursday, 9/3. The mountains were so beautiful! So much variety! Sharp points, repeating sawblade edges, houses & temples at the top of peaks! Snow & no snow!

We took the Banff gondola to get a birds-eye view of Banff. The small Tunnel Mountain that sits down near town is so small compared to the surrounding peaks.

The botanical garden (Cascades of Time) in Banff was very pretty.

Lots of good meals, poutine 2x.

1 day drove west across the Continental Divide on Canadian Highway 1 into Yoho National Park in British Columbia, to visit Takakkaw Falls - 4x as high as Niagara! Beautiful!

On our way back, we turned north on the Icefields Parkway, Rt 93. Around 150 km to the Columbia Icefields & the Glacier Discovery Centre. 6 glaciers coming in from the west terminating just before the Centre.

Hmmm, I uploaded this short video to YouTube, hoping I could then embed it in the blog, as I do for music videos. No. Apparently not an option. If anyone can point me at instructions on how to make this work, hep me, please!

https://youtube.com/shorts/-aki_dC_TdY?si=grAwECMHmEdPs5tw

Also stopped at Mistaya River Gorge. Incredible tunnels (?) worn through the rock by the glacial water.

Thursday, 9/3, we drove back to Calgary, stopping & spending the morning at the tourist town Canmore on the way. I had my 1st breakfast poutine: hash browns, 2 eggs, bacon, sausage, bison, cheese curds fried, hollandaise sauce. Yum!

We flew back to Detroit Friday 9/4. The 330 mile drive back to Lexington took just over 5 hours, we made good time, got home right around 10 pm.

Wow, since we've been home, I sleep so much better in my own bed!

A very pleasant vacation, & yesterday I miraculously weighed in at under 200#! Air travel was fairly painless. Only drama was when I almost left my passport in the room safe in Banff. But, we only got yards away from the room before I clicked on it.