First off I'm going to apologise for not posting anything for the last week, our damned hotel charged a ridiculous amount for wifi plus I was pretty busy, New York is a crazy place!
Moving on, the next morning a few of us remained from the tour so we all had a very quick breakfast together as most needed to jet to other parts of the world. I was having massive sads today, probably slightly hungover but mostly from the tour ending, I was going to miss everyone, we all bonded so well, all good things must come to an end, I guess. I know a lot of other people that have done group tours know what I mean!
Cara and I found Chris as we were checking out, not ready to head off we went and hung out in Calgary for a while, mostly cracking ourselves up from the many hilarious and silly things we did.
We eventually said our sad goodbyes and made our way to pick up our hire car. I promise Cara was already chewing away at her nails in anxiety for my driving on the other side of the road again. I'm was a pro by the end of this trip haha! We scored an upgrade, a BMW, by far the nicest car I have ever driven... It took me ages just to work out what some of the buttons and dials were!
We set off and once we were out of Calgary it was smooth on the highway. Honestly the drive down there was boring for the most part, flat and farm lands that reminded me so much of driving up towards Port Wakefield back home. A few hours later, the scenery changed drastically as we got close to Waterton National Park, becoming mountains and curving roads.
It was pretty much dinner by the time we checked in to the hotel, so we ate and called it a night. It was a pretty damned remote location, right up against the American border. The Internet was satellite only and our TV had 4 channels, which only worked depending on the weather, haha!
This visit down here was to hopefully see some more bears (which I'll save you disappointment now, it didn't happen) but mostly for some downtime after the tour.
We decided to go for a walk around the town and hike along a bush trail to a look out overlooking the lakes and township. The colours of the autumn leaves from all the trees are amazing, so many bright and vibrant yellows, oranges, browns, reds. You don't get sick of the scenery that's for sure.
I'll also add, Waterton is a tiny town in a national park with some hotels, quaint I'll call it. Few places to eat and a general store, it's nice though, people are friendly, elk cruising around the streets. We stopped at the store on the way back for supplies, the owner filled us in that the whole town practically shuts down come the end of September/October, apart from a few hotels. It was so bizzare and a little eerie, I've never been anywhere that everyone just closes up and leaves for half of the year! He was preparing to close up for the season so he sold us a bunch of stuff discounted, bargain!
The rest of the day we spent relaxing watching Narcos (highly recommend watching!) and doing a whole lot of nothing!
Our brekky in the mornings, (because we were being cheap asses) consisted of cereal from the store, ended up being drank through coffee mugs because we discovered there were no bowls or spoons. Just like later that day when we had some cheese and crackers, having no knives we ended up using my credit card (after I had cleaned it of course!!!) to slice the cheese. Only the best over here for us.
Anywho, we went for a trot around the lake surrounding part of Waterton then set off for a drive through some of the parks roads, really the whole day was relaxed just doing nothing besides exploring and eating at the bar that night.
Up at the unholy time of 6:30 am we had to set off back towards Calgary to return the car. We stopped at A&W for brekky, a fast food joint. My god, I felt absolutely disgusting after that meal, never again am I eating there. Trying not to hurl, I managed to get us back to Calgary, car returned and checked into our airport hotel. We hitched a bus into the city centre, went for a wander about and someone had to visit Sephora, again. Sigh. After some dinner we made our way back to the hotel, skyped some family and called it a day.
I'm going to start sharing a personal favourite shot for each post I write, something I've spent a bit of time on editing and I'll share a bit of a description with the shot etc. They may not be relating to the subject of that blog post but it'll be fun! So you can see it in it's best quality I'll share a link to the photo on my 500px page.
A few blogs coming all at once folks, keep your eyes peeled!
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