Canada Adventure Part 2

Day 5 of our Canada trip and I have to admit that I really like it here. I thought about the fact that we will be back in Washington on Monday and that upset me. Its beautiful here and completely stress free. Today we are still in Banff, but tomorrow we will leave this great hotel and head off to Lake Louise and Jasper. I'm not exactly sure if the next few days will be fun or not, but I wasn't sure about this trip in general, and so far Mr. V has proven to be right about Canada. He told me I'd love it here and I do.

I've learned a few things over the past few days:

1. Canadians really say "eh" ALL the time. Honestly? I figured that they said it occasionally, but every joke I hear about Canada usually involved the fact that Canadians say "eh" all the time. I never thought that they would say it constantly though. Examples: "Are you ready to order your food eh?" "Its beautiful here eh?" "Take care of that leg eh?"

2. Its cold here. Colder than it is in Oak Harbor. However, its a dry cold, not a wet cold and its actually much more bearable than I thought it would be. I haven't lost any body parts to frostbite yet although that may change when we go hiking tomorrow.

3. People were crazy and gross years ago. There are several hot springs here. The original hot springs are what the town of Banff originated around. We went to see these yesterday and they're interesting, but disgusting. They smell like sulfur (i.e. rotten eggs) and have bacteria, algae, snails, and other unknown things growing in them. Yet people came here from all over the world to swim in them. You can still swim in the hot springs today, but thankfully, the original area is now just a tourist attraction to go look at, and at some point, someone realized it would be much nicer to filter the sulfur smell out of the water, leave the good minerals in it, add some chlorine, take the nasty rocks out and turn it into a nice looking pool. They now bring the water from the original hot springs into a new area, which is very clean and VERY relaxing. I never thought I'd be swimming outside in freezing temperatures but I did today and it felt amazing. I can totally understand why people enjoyed the heat of the springs years ago. I'm just happy that I got to swim in clean water instead of the nasty water from 80 years ago.

4. The town of Banff is a small, small town. Its a town that is inside a National Park, so you can probably imagine how tiny it is. The only people who live here are employees that work somewhere in the park. Yet...Banff has more in it than Oak Harbor. That was a slightly disturbing realization. Granted, there is no Walmart and the closest "real" town is 3 hours away (Calgary), but when you count up the tiny downtown stores, Banff is about 10 times the size of Oak Harbor. There is even a movie theatre here that plays 5 movies at a time, and its an old historical looking theatre, which is more than can be said for the movie theatre in Oak Harbor.

I'll update again in a day or 2 with pictures!