Driving to a new opportunity

Recently PLP 9 went to Calgary. This is my loose retelling of our accounts of this trip.

We left Seycove on a warm sunny day, and traveled into the Rockies we stoped at the Last Spike and got to witness a CPR train pulling through.

 

 

 

 

We got back on the bus and went to three valley gap. There we got the lucky opertuinity to visit the Three Valley Gap Ghost Town. It was insanely cool. We had to make a video, and a story at this destination. The ghost town was really cool and since we all loved it so much, the teachers thought they would be doing us a favour to keep us close to it. We slept right next to the ghost town, luckly we didn’t see any ghosts!

The next morning we got up ( really really early ) and headed for Rogers Pass. My non fiction video topic was on Rogers Pass and so I though I could shed some light on this place.

 

 

 

 

The next stop was one of my favourite stops. We went to the Northern Lights Wildlife Center.

There we got to see wolves up close and even got the lucky expirience of petting a wolf! We learned about how the wolve are being treated in the wild and how to stop the harassment. We had a wonderful meal and hit the road again.

We stoped next at a museum in the heart of Banff. It was filled with animals. They had animals all the way from bees to bears! I really liked the museum and they even had a kiddy area that was filled with touchable items! Some of my favourite photos from the museum are below.

After the museum we were headed directly to Calgary. I was so excited I could barley contain it! We stoped at Big T’s Barbecue and we had the meal of kings. It was so good that for once we actually had left overs!

We pulled into our hotel late that night, but that didn’t shelter us from the fact that is was a nice hotel. We got our rooms assigned and we used the one working elevator, ( that was a problem, they only had one working elevator and sometimes we would wait for around 15 minutes to get on!) to head up to our floor. I was amazing when I read out our floor number. 10. That was pretty much the top! I walked in and was breath taken by the view. Calgary is beautiful at night.

In the morning we went to Drumheller. I had no idea what to expect and when our 2 hour drive there was over, I was amazed. It was really pretty. I was expecting more of a “museum” look to it, but the vast open badlands were really interesting.

I am not the biggest fan of Dino’s but this museum even got me a little excited! There were pieces of history everywhere. The albertasourous, the T-Rex, you name it they had it! We got a copious amount of time to navigate our way through the museum, and after that we took a tour through The Badlands. I’m sorry to say that over half my photos taken on this trip, were at the badlands. I don’t know if it was the lighting, or the scenery, but I have so many photos! I would love to share them all but I don’t think there is enough space in the post, so I’ll share my favourites!

 

After our “hike” in the badlands we headed back to the museum for a surprise. Ms. Willemes, Mr. Hughes and Ms. Maxwell, surprised us with a short film project. Yay. Our task was to make a film about something in the museum. Ill link mine down below.

We finished the videos and called it a day, we hit the road and headed back to our lovely hotel in Calgary. We were so close to our hotel in Calgary and everyone was needing some rest after a long day at the museum, when we made another stop. It was like the teachers were dangling the comfort of a bed right out in front of us! But the stop was a real cool one because we got to climb the worlds tallest dinosaur! The view was spectacular from up there!
The next day we had a huge plan. We were going to Beaker Head. It had been so nice on our trip so far, in terms of weather, that when the torrential rain started to show up, we were shocked. We had to walk around the whole city that day and it was freezing!

 

At beaker head we learned about mechanical engineering, and creativity. One thing that touched me was, at Beaker Head we got the lucky opportunity to see the the flaming serpent. The flaming serpent is created by a group of women who were told that they couldn’t become welders and engineers, but took that as a challenge and created a group of women with the same interests. These women created a wonderful sculpture and everyone in PLP was amazed.

 

The next day we headed to the space station, ( which is actually the Calgary tower )  where we were promised we were going into space and heading out of earths atmosphere. I was so confused! For a little while I really thought we were heading to space, because I thought, “why would they joke around with a group of 14 year olds…” but nope! To be frank I was kind of disappointed with how this beaker head stop turned out. I had really wanted to learn about Calgary, and see it from way up, but all the windows were covered in sheets so we couldn’t see out, and we remained in “space.” But hey, I did learn a lot about Trappist 1E!

It was colder when we got out of the bus at the Banff hot springs. We headed up the slope to meet up with our tour guide, who took us parading through time. One of the stops we made was at the first discovered hot spring. Here I was supposedly tossed down thirty feet into the warm water, where I said and I will not forget, “feels like a million bucks.” ( the tour guide gave me a card to read off of and that was one of the lines!) I had tons of fun there, but the tour guide was treating us like children again! Oh well. The next stop would lighten my spirits.

Lake Minniewanka. I know I said that all of my photos were taken in the badlands, but I’m pretty sure the runner up is lake Minniewanka. The lake was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was so blue, and the mountains slept peacefully on either side. We took a bout tour of the lake and I could not keep my eyes away from the water and ended up spending pretty much the whole tour on the back of the boat! Boy was it ever cold out there!

Every thing good must end, and so the boat pulled up at the dock ( at this point I’m an icicle! ) and we had to say good bye to this absolutely stunning place. I was cold when I got on the bus, but I immediately felt better when I heard the next stop was the hot springs! God the teachers planned that so well! It was dark when we ran to the hot springs and even darker when we got in. It felt so good on my tired cold body, that I almost fell asleep! There were many other people in the springs so had to have a good behaviour, which is pretty hard for most of us, but we managed, and in the end the group beside us was even worse!

 

Our resort that we spent the night in wasn’t as nice as the Marriott, but hey at least we had bad to snuggle into! We stayed at the hostel and probably complained a lot, but looking back on it it was actually alright!

The morning was chipper, and I hadn’t slept much due to the trains that kept rolling past through the night. This trip was based on the CPR, how much closer can we get! I was to excited to even notice the uncomfortable beds, because we were going to the glaciers! Yippie! We got on that bus and drove for what felt like days to get to the glaciers.

I dont know if you’ve ever seen glaciers, but they are remarkable. It looks like someone layer million of mini layers of icing onto a cake! We got off of the bus only to get onto another one, and that bus only took us to another bus! The final bus we got on looked like a monster truck. It had massive wheels, ( which we later realized were $5000 each! ) and the bus its self was huge.

I got a seat in the back and was so crazy excited, until the bus lurched forward. It was going like 2 km/h. It was going to take forever to get to the glaciers at this pace. The bus stopped a little while up as I was looking out the sun roof and the PA came on. “Hi guys just make sure to stay in your seats, and don’t worry, I’ve done this millions of times.” My heart skipped a beat. The bus lurched forward and down it went! I watched as the glaciers that were straight ahead of us, ended up in the sunroof that’s how vertical we were!

 

The glaciers themselves were cool but the highlight of my day was the bus trip! Another bus took us to the skywalk an we walked pretty much along the sky! It was stunning but had to head on, to lake Louise. Here the water was so crystal blue, it was a shocker! We walked around the lake and looked at the crazy scenery, and I could not take it all in! The husky house was calling us so we hopped into the bus and drove over there for a dinner on the go! Dinner was fun and the food was really good, but everyone was half asleep, so the holiday inn was the place to go, and to my surprise it was just across the street! We stayed up really late, because it was Melanie’s birthday that day and we wanted to wish her happy birthday!

In the morning I could not contain my excitement. We were going home! I wolfed down breakfast and jumped onto the bus, where I got to sit at the front of the bus for a change! I had almost fallen asleep, when we stoped. The enchanted forest welcomed us, and chocolate! As we excited the bus we were given a Halloween candy. I was at the end of the line when I got mine so all there was left was aero. The hitch came a moment after biting into the candy. We were making a movie. And our groups were the people with the same candies as us. I searched around and found my group. It was pretty good, and I was thankful that I had chosen aero! Now our project loomed ahead. We ran into the woods and worked for an hour filming and cutting it close to the time limit. When the time came that we were supposed to be done, we say another group walking along, and asked them if they were done yet. They said no and that we had another hour or so before it should be done! My whole group turned to Kai, our time keeper. Turns out Kai did not turn his clock back, and so our group had an extra hour to complete editing! Worked out really well!

 

We stoped for lunch, but that wasn’t to special, and continued on our way home! It was around 8 o’clock when we stoped for dinner at a Chinese buffet. The Chinese buffet was probably one of the most fun dinners on our whole trip, everyone at my table was crying in laughter! But what made my night, was when Kiefer opened his fortune cookie and it told him that “a man with brown hair had something special to tell him!” Just thinking about it makes laugh!
As we got on the bus for the last time and everyone was laughing, I started to think about how much I was going to miss this trip. I decided to put my mind to ease and just doodled and slept till a familiar smell woke me. Home. Vancouver! It was dark, but I could still make out the buildings and store fronts. What really brought it home for me was the song that came on when we were close to the school. The final countdown. And knowing Mr. Hughes, it was cranked all the way up! Everyone sang along, and to be serious, it was pretty emotional! The final verse rang out as we entered the roundabout at the top of Seycove. Holy crap were we a mess! I got off that bus and there is nothing like that feeling, seeing the ones you love after such a long time away.

I said good bye to the only people I had for a week, and drove home. I tried to tell my family every story I had, but there were to many, even writing this I remembered some, but I will never forget how much fun, and how much we learned on that trip to Calgary.

Thanks for reading!

Adlih