After not going for a family "roadtrip" for a while, my family (as usual) spontaneously decided we'd go to the rocky mountains of Alberta and particularly Canmore, Banff, and other adjacent towns. Here's my log for that!

I put road trip in quotes, because we already live pretty close to the rockies, however nowhere near the whole tourism capital of it all. It's mostly just a backdrop in my life, across those golden fields. It's a relatively close drive (for north american standards,) so not quite a "road trip."

We left at 1PM. Watching the fields turn into overpronounced hills and valleys into the tall spikes of the rockies is unmatched, it's probably my favourite thing about traveling by car. On the way, the only notable thing other than the rockies slowly gaining more definition, was a haybale dressed up as a minion and genuinely jarred me enough that I felt like I hallucinated it.

We got into another town right outside of the rockies, where I saw a sign for Timmies and apparently telepathically told my mom I wanted it because we pulled in. If you're interested on what my order is, dear reader, it's a blueberry bagel toasted with strawberry cream cheese, a medium hot chocolate and a sour cream glazed donut.

After we picked our jaws up off the ground from the up close rockies, we went past the Hamlet of Exshaw, where there were insane brutalist structures infront of a mountain backdrop. I ended up having to take some last minute photos which sucked because I really enjoyed how it looked.

Some after the fact research shows that this is the largest cement plant in Canada, called the Lafarge Exshaw. Apparently half of the town was demolished to accomodate it.

By the time we got to Canmore, we were a couple hours off from our hotel check in, so we decided to walk around and check out a couple things. We stopped by Canmore museum first, which was a part of town hall, and being completely honest... it was a pathetic museum. It was a single room, one section that was mining centric, most of it dedicated to old children's items, and a few photos on the walls. The most entertaining thing was a blackboard wall, and the gift shop. I feel like Canmore, a city in the rockies with 5x the population of my podunk town, should have a museum that has 5x the care... but it was a lot of nothing.

After the museum, we visited 3 different tourist shops - one being the official Canmore gift shop, another being one of those horribly cramped and overpriced shops that was *honestly* more anime and Sanrio than things *actually* relating to Canmore. And another one, which was pretty much a white woman convention, *all* of which having the most overpriced pins i've ever seen.

I'll save the complaining for a blog post or something. But pins should not be 15 dollars. My tip to you, traveller, is don't go into souvenier shops if you enjoy collecting them. A lot of the time, it's stuff made for cheap and jacked up 5x the price. Instead, go to the local thrift store!

The majority of the time, thrift stores also have souvenirs, albeit from a couple years or decades ago, often centered around local events, but I find that so much more enticing than the modern clean minimalist crap that they give away in stores nowadays. Thrift stores are also commonly just.. nicer than souvenir stores. They're more local, so they don't have loud tourists whom are unaware of what spacial awareness is, and the workers are kinder.

Canmore's thrift store was pretty nice; it had a lot of stuff and I'd honestly kill to live there just to swing by once in a while. We didn't spend too long there which is a shame, because of how much there was. It turned out the pins were in the other section of the store, but I grabbed a Calgary Flames blanket that was labelled "with sleeves," which was so intriguing.

In the other section of the store, I of course found the pins, and grabbed all I liked:

While I was paying, the woman pointed out how it was funny that I had a Calgary Flames blanket with my Calgary hat. Then she noticed the pins on it, and my Flames scarf, and my shirt, and devolved into giggles of glee from the specimen than I am.

After that, it was time for check-in, so we swung by our room. It was extremely nice, very fairly priced and had welcome notes in it from the owners. We got used to the room, sat around for a bit, and decided to go grab dinner, at an eatery called The Local.

I haven't done many travel logs at this point, but start getting used to the fact that I will only order burgers. It's honestly a bit at this point that I will only ever order a burger at any restaurant that sells it. The Local's burger was okay, but it was heavily overshadowed by the most intriguing listing on the cocktail menu:

Peanut butter is not something that is associated with alcohol. Chocolate sometimes, but peanut butter? Part of the intrigue was also because I only knew 3 entire words in this listing, I'm a rum guy. I only know rum and coke, and just rum. I've literally never had a cocktail in my entire life before this point.

So we ordered it. The chocolate part, turned out to just be a chunk of chocolate tossed in there, with a comically large ice cube and just. 2oz of straight liquor. And because it was 17 dollars, I had to drink it. And because my family eats like they're insane, I had to drink it in 40 minutes. In my notepad that I write down small notes for these logs in, I wrote "fucking dying" in near illegible handwriting.

Smooth operator at first tasted like a hint of peanut butter and 3 different alcohols. It stings at first, but it goes down pretty good and doesn't have that same painful aftertaste a lot of other alcohols do. I also tried the chocolate, which oddly tasted more like peanut butter than the drink.

After this, instead of going to the hotel, we went to the grocery store! So I basically followed my younger brother around, cursed out the rice cake aisle, and got a 15 pack of ice cream sandwiches (which I would later regret) before crashing in my bed and falling asleep at 6PM.

In the morning, I felt fine thankfully, and we waited around for my brother to wake up, even cooking breakfast in the meantime. At some point I commented to my mom that we should see how many pillows we can stack on him before he wakes up, which resulted in this:

And even AFTER the pillows fell, mom had to shake him awake.

By 11AM we'd made it over to Banff National Park, having to stop at a toll. For a lot of Parks Canada areas, particularly the national parks, you're required to pay a daily admission to enter, the money going to preserving the area and paying for services. Banff was 14 Canadian Dollars, which for a day of beauty, isn't bad at all. You get a little paper that you stick in your windshield and that's that for the day.

I honestly think that the National Parks - at least Alberta's, are best to visit in the winter. The traffic isn't bad, roads aren't closed off from tourists, there's really only locals and a couple tourists... heading over sometime in February/March when the weather is only -5 or so is probably the best experience you'll get. Everything's more white and teal than green, but that doesn't mean it isn't still beautiful.

The first thing we did (after I pointed and yelled about Cascade Mountain) was head to Buffalo Nations Museum, a repurposed trading site for preserving the indigenous culture around Banff and the rockies. The museum is named Buffalo Nations after all of the local Nations that relied on the buffalo for their main source of food and materials - particularly the Blackfoot Confederacy (Kainai, Piikani and Siksika), the Īyãhé Nakoda, and the Tsuut’ina Nation. You may recognize these names from my front page as well, if you're not from the area. It's important to give thanks and pay respect to the people who's land this truly belongs to.