Whitehorse to Calgary to Halifax
We’ve started our 41-day Adventure to Newfoundland. This is now Day 4 – we arrived in Halifax yesterday afternoon.
The journey began early on May 27th, with a 06:20 Air North flight from Whitehorse to Calgary, where we’d spend 2 days visiting family.
The weather forecast had indicated it would be good flying conditions, but I only got a couple of photos before climbing into clouds.
I slept most of the way to Calgary, popping an eye open once in a while to confirm there was nothing to see. I took a few photos as we descended to land – this little piece of agricultural is a sad statement about what’s happening to farms that have been producing crops for generations.
Cathy had booked us a room at the Calgary Airport Marriott In-Terminal Hotel, with an airport view, and Room 311 was precisely what we wanted. Cathy pretends she did it to make me happy but she spends at least as much time in the window as I do when we get rooms like this 🙂
We began our Calgary visit with lunch with a person I’ve known about for most of my life but had never met. His name is also Murray Lundberg, and he grew up a few miles from my home in Surrey, BC. He’s 5 years older than me, and we would occasionally get phone calls intended for the other Murray. A few weeks ago, I received an email from him – he and his wife were coming to Whitehorse on a tour following an Alaska cruise, and he wondered if we could meet. We were going to be in Newfoundland, but I’ve know for years that he lived in Calgary, so suggested we meet there. That meeting was made possible because our flight was moved from noon to 06:20, leaving the middle of the day free. To keep a long and fascinating story short, lunch was both wonderful and intriguing. We have so much in common we could be brothers. He and Eileen just got married 5 months ago, and had plenty to add to the conversation as well. I hope we’ll be getting together with them again in the near future somehow.
That evening, Cathy and I, with both my kids and their partners, were hosted by one of my granddaughters, Kylie, for a barbecue on the rooftop patio. The view was amazing and the food was delicious. This was an event that will come to mind regularly when I thinking about my daily reasons to feel Gratitude.
When the Husky Tower was built in 1967-1968, it was the tallest structure in Calgary and the tallest in Canada outside Toronto. At 190.8 metres/ 626 feet, it towered over any other building, but from most angles it’s well hidden now. It was renamed Calgary Tower in 1971.
The next morning, Day 2 of the trip, May 30th, I was up very early and walked almost 4,000 steps exploring the hotel and airport. There are some very nice Alberta-themed prints along the wall between our room and the elevators.
I started outside, where what might have been a great sunrise was mostly hidden by clouds, but bit of searching got me a good view of the hotel.
There were a few years when I really disliked the Calgary airport, which used to be a small and easy-to-navigate facility but was growing at an incredible rate. But those construction years certainly paid off – YYC is a particularly beautiful and user-friendly airport now.
Heritage Park has a large promotional display with two vehicles.
There is a lot of art to be seen, and this life-size bronze is notably superb.
Back at our room, I added many images to my collection of airport photos and aircraft portraits.
Time for breakfast, and the hotel’s Yakima restaurant provided a lovel;y, calm place for that. This was the view from our table to the lobby. To the right, there was excellent people-watching as folks went by in various stages of hurry and with widely-varying quantities of luggage.
The Yakima 3-egg omelette, with Trafford Farm mushrooms, Alberta smoked applewood cheddar cheese, and ham. Yum. Perfect 🙂
The only thing I really wanted to do in Calgary was to go back to The Hangar Flight Museum, formerly known as the Aero Space Museum of Calgary – it had been several years since my last visit.
This unfortunately didn’t work out very well. There was some sort of aviation trade show being held there, and to someone with a brain injury it was chaotic and extremely noisy. It was all but impossible to get photos of the aircraft. This is an Anson, the main aircraft by Dad worked on during WWII.
I thought things might be better on the upper level, but no, I had to cut my visit very short and get out.
The museum’s other building was quiet – ahhh! We lucked into a docent with great stories about the massive Lancaster bomber and its most famous pilot, Calgary-born Ronnie Jenkins. As impressive as the Lancaster is, my favourite plane here is the Barkley-Grow, a little-known but historically significant northern bush plane.
That evening, six of us went to the Canadian Brewhouse for dinner. It was another extremely noisy venue, but I was able to salvage it by going outside for a few minutes a couple of times. This chicken burger, though huge, was an appropriate choice for the clinical trial I’m on, when paired with the salad. It was also delicious!
And that ended our Calgary visit – short but excellent. Yesterday, Day 3 of the trip, May 31st, was largely taken up flying from Calgary to Halifax. It was raining when we got up at 04:30 for our 07:00 flight, and the next two days were calling for enough rain to potentially cause flooding.
06:55 – good-bye, Calgary!
We had a 50-minute stop at Ottawa where we had to change planes. The terminaL was very busy!
At 4:24 local time, I arrived in Halifax for the first time – Cathy had been here on cruise a few years ago.
This was not the sort of welcome you see on tourism promotions! 🙂 We took a taxi, despite the $72 cost, because the $10 bus ride would have required a walk of about 5 blocks, which isn’t an option for Cathy.
Cathy chose the Courtyard by Marriott Halifax Downtown largely because of the location, and as always it fits our needs perfectly. This was our first look out the window from Room 721 (the highest floor of rooms).
For our first Halifax dinner, we walked about 3 blocks to The Brown Hound Pub. When told there was a half-hour wait we went back outside but could find nothing on Google that suited our moods, so went back in. It was the right decision – this steak and Guiness pie was simply incredible, and Cathy’s burger was also extremely good.
And now here we are on Day 4, June 1st, ready to start the real Adventure!
This blog post was a challenge, but I made it. It’s a new laptop with some quirks, but the biggest challenge was my photo-editing software. I went to open it a couple of days ago and was refused access. It eventually turned out that in the past few days the company got bought out and a new version of the software was launched. While that might not be a big deal, it was/is, because it’s completely different that what I’d been using, and I still haven’t found some really basic functions (cropping and straightening). But I found resizing and light/contrast, so I’m functional.
Off we go… 🙂
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