Monday, September 14, 2015

Cochrane - August 30 - September 2


August 30
Fortunately, it wasn’t a long drive from Banff to Cochrane so we had plenty to time to head to Costco and then to Best Buy in search of a new computer for Bernie.  He had received lots of tips from John on what kind to buy, all the necessary bells and whistles, so it wasn’t too hard of a decision.  We found what he wanted at Best Buy and arranged for them to load all of the necessary programs.  We were lucky in that they weren’t super busy and we can pick it up tomorrow.  Back to the motor home for dinner and some more watching of “Breaking Bad”.  I had started watching this show when we were up with John and I never got to see the end, so now I’m have a marathon watching from Season One through the Final Season.  Quite a show. 


August 31
Laundry was first thing on the list for today.  We hadn’t done it for a while so 2 hours later we were done and ready for more exploring of Cochrane.  Since we have great internet service here at the campground, I of course, checked out the needlework stores in the area.  We found one that is on the way to Best Buy so off we went to do some shopping for me.  The shop was located in a beautiful home which the owner has converted the entire first floor into a shop.  I was like a kid in a candy store.  I’ve never seen so much inventory in one place – even at seminar.  An hour and a half later, Bernie came looking for me – and so my shopping came to a stop.  Sure wish we had something like this at home!!!!!



Computer in hand – Bernie is super happy and I can’t wait to look over my needlework purchases, but first we headed to MacKay’s the local ice cream shop.  We had seen the line outside the store yesterday and decided we didn’t want to wait for 40-50 people to get their scopes – so we decided that a Monday afternoon might we better.  This time only about 10 people in line ahead of us.  The store was opened in 1948 and on one day they served 4500 scoops.  Glad we weren’t there then.  Amazing ice cream and I loved their sign.  We just might want to come back again tomorrow.




September 1 
Today was visiting the town of Cochrane, grocery shopping, and learning curve day for Bernie.  Of course, I didn’t have anything to do – so I sat and stitched in between “come look and see what this computer will do”
September 2


Canada Olympic Park and Calgary - here we come, but not until after I visited the local needlework store located right in the town of Cochrane.   Another fabulous shop, but this time all I bought was thread.  The other shop didn’t have all of the thread I needed – plus I just wanted to get inside another store.  Boy are the people of Cochrane and Calgary lucky to have two amazing shops within a 10 – 15 minute drive. 

The Canada Olympic Park was amazing.  This is where the Winter Olympics were held.  We had never seen a ski jumping facility and they have two.  From the higher one you can do a zip line to the bottom.  Needless to say we didn’t do that.  Also they have the huge track open for one person luge rides that you steer yourself that also have brakes, but we didn’t do that either.  The thing I liked the best was that they still have all of the flags flying from the countries that participated that year.  Very impressive.





Calgary is a beautiful city – huge like Chicago with lots of beautiful high rise buildings.  We just drove around in downtown as parking is very scarce and very expensive and we didn’t see anything that we needed to get out of the car to do.  The thing we noticed the most is how clean the city is – no trash on the sidewalks and definitely no graffiti.  Sure would love to know their secret.  LA to take a few lessons from the Canadians. 




We couldn’t resist – back to MacKay’s for one more Ice cream.  After our treat we decided that we’d better go for a nice long walk after dinner.  Since the campground is located on a river we went down there and walked enjoying the beautiful river and mostly the gorgeous homes across the river. 
On our way back a couple we had talked to briefly in the campground invited us in for coffee and we ended up spending about 2 ½ hours with them.  They are life-long Canadians who farmed for 40 years and now live in Medicine Hat which is about 3 hours of Cochrane.  Very interesting people and we really hit it off.  We exchanged info with them and plan to see them again when they come south for the winter. 




No comments:

Post a Comment