I didn't initially plan to travel Alberta this summer; in fact, I was busy planning a trip to BC and then Seattle. However life had a different plan. Due to a family illness, we felt it best to stick close to home. The question then became - well, what does one do in Alberta? Rocky Mountains...we go four or five times a year already, camping...we've done Waterton National Park and driven Crowsnest Pass...Drumheller...visit once when the boys were little and no one seemed that interested in going again. Hum, did that actually leave anything?
I've often thought about all of the "big things" in Alberta, but it wasn't until this year that I realized visiting them would become our summer. It was a great way to stick close to home, camp and get away from the electronics. Armed with a map of Alberta and a small internet list, I was ready to start our Alberta journey.
Little did I know at the time, that the little journey would grow very quickly. You need to know that not only do I have an A-personality, but I am also obsessive. One map of Alberta quickly became four (one to highlight the areas we were planning to visit, one to outline possible routes with travel time, one to put on our bulletin board at home so we could tack the places we've been and of course a spare one). The initial list also grew from one small Internet list to three Internet lists and two paper lists. With so much paper it was time to get to work - not on travelling, but on creating my excel spreadsheet - city, attraction, location, notes, other. I also started to colour code everything - green for places we've stopped at, red of the attractions are no longer there or we were unable to find them and yellow for attractions we've seen in previous years.
As of today, I am on my fifth draft of the list and we have visited around 40 small towns. I can't even tell you how many miles or how much we've paid for in gas, but I can tell you that it has all been worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment