Recently I went with my class went on a fun and interesting trip to Calgary for a city-wide science art and engineering fair of sorts it was called beaker head. That was only one of the stops on this busy trip. Our itinerary was full. Here are a few daily highlights. I would love to link that awesome itinerary here but I have tried 3 times and it causes my page to freeze. Trust me. It was cool.
Day 1. We stopped at Craigellachie. This is the place that I chose for making my short film. One of our tasks was to tell the story of a place with a 3 minute video. This is where the last spike of the trans Canada railway was placed. Many hardships and delays were overcome in the building of the railway that linked Canada from East to West for the first time.
Four second stop was Three Valley Gap Ghost Town. This is a collection of buildings brought to the site from ghost towns around the province to create a full ghost town that we could tour.
Day 2. Wolves! There were 6 wolves in the sanctuary. We learned how important they are to the ecosystem and food chain. Unbelievably, we even got to pet them. Later, at the Banff Park Museum I found the taxidermy animals were less exciting after seeing live wild animals.
Day 3. We found ourselves trapped in a room. Actually this was an escape room where a team has to solve puzzles to get out of the room within an hour. Two hours and 17 puzzles later we were still trapped. Good thing we aren’t detectives.
That afternoon we visited the Glenbow museum packed with Canadian history. The best part was we had the whole museum to ourselves.
Day 4. More museums! This time about dinosaurs. It was a long drive to the badlands where we explored dry, barren landscapes. There were a lot of cool dinosaur fossils.
During that day we had to make a 1 minute second video on a dinosaur that we found there.
Day 5. Beaker Head. We toured the city and checked out art installations that were a part of the city. That night we saw Serpent Mother, which was a fire-breathing animatronic snake which made quite the spectacle at night.
Day 6. This was technically the start of the trip back but was also one of the most action-packed days. We went to the Calgary Tower, Cave and Basin national historic site, Lake Miniwaka, and the Banff Hot springs. My favourite part of that was the stellar tour guide of the Cave and Basin who gave us the history in a fun and entertaining manner.
Day 7. This was a day of walking on ice and nature’s beauty. It was spectacular to walk on a glacier at the Columbia Icefield and drink glacier water full of minerals. Then on to the Glacier walk which was a glass bridge 30 meters out from the cliff and 300 feet above the riverbed that was carved by the glacial runoff.
Day 8. This was our final day and a long haul home. 8 hours and 15 minutes of driving. On a school bus. Full of sick kids. We stopped at the Enchanted Forest where we made a 1 minute video of a fictional story including props we found in the forest. I would have liked to have more time to explore but my time was occupied on the project.
Overall I thought this trip was a very good experience. It is different travelling while doing work like, creating videos, compared to when travelling purely as a tourist or for fun. It’s hard to see everything and get the job done.
