Ah, Banff.

How can you POSSIBLY go wrong. The weather is AMAZING, the company is FANTASTIC, and my vacation is in FULL SWING.

I started on Friday driving to the teeny tiny way out there community of Provost Alberta. This town is on the northeastern Alberta border by Saskatchewan. Sadly I took a wrong turn at a junction, costing me 45 minutes of detour. Oy with the vey. I did get the terrific opportunity to explore such areas as Stettler and oh... um, Coronation, and uh... oh geez, such great times passing thru Hanna. Oh my, what views. But it was a good trip to a friend who otherwise would have no way to see ME, and I was glad to get to him. I heartily encourage my other friends to do the same. It's necessary to put our time aside to do things like this. I really feel that.

Totally stunned to see Airdrie, Canmore and Banff. I had no idea the entire COMMUNITY of Airdrie apparently has been built in the last 20 minutes. To see it, you'd think so. Every single building the paint is still drying on it. The siding is still going up on houses, bulldozers still clearing new lots out for new construction. It's amazing. All that and about 30 mintues to the Calgary airport. It's not Airdrie, it's a sub community of Calgary altogether. I saw the Airdrie Costco depot and a new Costco being built right at the freeway exist with a gas station. Dunno which one this is, because I didn't know one was going in there...? (Did I?) I knew about Balzac, and I knew about Okotoks, but an Airdrie Costco?! Did I miss a memo?!

Canmore is way, way more picturesque than I anticipated. All these years "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" has always berated the town with its character MIKE FROM CANMORE. I always figured it was a hick town with nothing going on in its favor. I am mistaken. Rudely mistaken. Canmore is BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely. And very close to Banff which is a small version/ trying to become a Whistler village I believe. In a community of 8000 residents, about 1 miillion people there are tourists. I have seen licence plates from Texas, Utah, California, Klondike, Florida, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, Montana- you name it, they're here. And so am I, and I feel so glad to be in this space. My eyes are so thirsty for mountains, lakes, trees, inclines and valleys. I look forward to my next leg of the journey, back to BC tomorrow. Will blog from there, more photos to come!