Having crossed the Rocky Mountains, we arrived on the flat prairie where our first stop was Calgary. There we visited several shopping malls as well as the Calgary Olympic Park. Then we proceeded south to the town of Fort Mcleod, where we saw the famous Canadian "red" police and the "Head-smashed-in Buffalo jump" museum, about native Indian culture. On crossing the border back to the US, we were harassed by a mentally unstable border guard who, for no reason at all, threatened to deport us.

August 1, Thursday

The day started at 0830. I had a shower before breakfast, which was our own muffins heated in the microwave owen. It tasted really good! Despite staying for two nights, we hadn't really done much in Golden, so before leaving we walked around a little here, visiting some shops. Then we drove on the same road as yesterday towards Banff.

We made one stop at the Takkakaw Falls, which we had missed yesterday. It was quite beautiful, but I have to say that we have more spectacular waterfalls in Norway. However, there were a few (angry!) ground squirrels (?) in the area that were quite fun to watch!

After passing Lake Louise and being almost halfway to Banff, we stopped at a rest stop and had a picnic. On arriving in Banff, we at first had problems finding a place to park, but eventually we found a free spot. Not surprisingly there were lots of tourists in the town, and lots of souvenir shops as well. Again all the shops seemed to be run by Chinese! We walked around in Banff for a while, but unfortunately the weather was actually rather cold, being made worse by a cold wind.

We weren't quite sure what to do next. With the cold weather, it wasn't that pleasant to walk around in Banff. I wanted to go hiking again, but felt it was too late to do this today. Since accommodation was very expensive (and probably full) in Banff, it was decided that we should leave the National Park and find somewhere to stay in a town outside, returning tomorrow morning to go hiking. However, after checking out the motels in the nearest town, we abandoned this idea since they were either full or too expensive. Instead we decided to drive all the way to Calgary today.

In Calgary, we eventually ended up at the Traveller's Inn Motel at 72$ + tax for a family unit with two separate rooms. After relaxing for a short while we decided that it had been a long time since we had done some serious shopping, so we scanned the Calgary map for malls and found the Sunridge Mall conveniently located. We arrived there at 1900 and spent the time until 2020 browsing in some shops (personally I was in the book store most of the time). Then we had dinner at the food court in the mall, me and Tina having two fajitas each, though unfortunately not particularly good ones.

After arriving back at the motel, we decided to walk up to the nearby KFC to have ice cream for dessert. On our way back, Tor decided to buy a can of beer and went into the local liqour store. It seems that because of strict legislation, beer is not sold in regular supermarkets in Canada! It's even worse than in Norway, where only wine (and not beer) has to be purchased at special shops! Anyway, there were no other customers inside, and the young guy who worked there was busy talking on the phone. The store only seemed to have sixpacks so Tor asked if he could buy just a single can. "No man, this is Canada, man!" was the response. "Is it really impossible?", Tor asked. "Well maybe I can find something, man. What kind of beer you want, man?". "Well, what have you got?". "Yeah, man, I got like everything, man!" He showed Tor what he had available and then Tor picked out a can. After paying, the guy gave him a free cap as well!

August 2, Friday

We got up at 0900 after having slept very well. Unfortunately, it turned out that none of our parents had done that, and our father in fact had been having migraine pains. For breakfast we walked up to a restaurant called Smitty's. I had Southern Skillet, which was okay but far too much for breakfast, in my opinion.

First on the agenda was a visit to Calgary Olympic Park, which was only a short drive away. Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics in 1988, an olympic in which Norway only achieved 2 silver medals and no gold medals, a very poor record by recent standards. Nonetheless, I was very excited to see the stadium. The ski-jump was visible from far away. It cost 10$ to get into the arena etc, so only me and Tor went in, since the others were not really interested. For 15$ we could have had a guided tour, but we expected this to focus on other things than the sports we were interested in.

First, we visited the Olympic Hall of Fame. The most interesting part was an almost complete list of medaille winners from all winter olympics. They also showed a short introduction movie, but it turned out to be of little interest, mainly concentrating on showing pictures of people doing bobsleigh accompanied by music. After the museum, we took a ski lift up to the base of the ski jump and then took the elevator up to the top, to see the view. Apparently this was the highest point in Calgary and we had a nice view of the downtown skyline. We also had a nice view of the arena, and the bottom of the ski jump which looked very far below.

After coming down, we walked around the arena. I couldn't really recognise everything from the olympic, but it was a long time since I saw it on TV in 1998. At the moment, a large part of the arena seemed to be used for mountain biking. It was also possible to ride the bobsleigh circuit, but it cost an extra 45$ so we passed.

Our next stop was at the Deerfoot(?) Outlet Mall on the other part of the city. After walking around there for an hour (which I spent almost entirely browsing the book store), we convened around 1430 to have lunch. In the food court we decided on Chicken Teriyaki, which unfortunately turned out (in my opinion) to be not very good. To get rid of the taste, we all bought ice cream for dessert, trying a speciality called Twin Peaks Sundae (which included fried bread), but that wasn't very good either.

As we left the mall, it had started to rain torrentially. Tor got quite wet running to the car and picking us up at the entrance. On leaving Calgary we got stuck in a traffic jam for a while, but eventually we were able to head south. It was still raining enormously, and visibility was very low. Except for a short coffee break, we arrived in Fort McLeod(?) around 1820. Several of the motels were full, but eventually we obtained an excellent family cabin at the Red Coat Inn. It only cost 110$ (99$+tax), but we had kitchen with facilities, livingroom, bathroom and two bedrooms.

After buying some groceries for breakfast, we watched some TV. I wanted to eat at a restaurant, while the others wanted to make their own food here, so this was just what we did. I walked down the street, until I came across Johnny's Restaurant. I had Tortellini, and while waiting for the food, I managed to write all my postcards. Back at the room, we relaxed and updated the diary.

August 3, Saturday

We woke up at 0800 after a good night's sleep. After packing into the car, we walked up to the post office where I was able to send my postcards. Then we walked to the Fort Museum? (6$) and had a look around. It gave us the history of the Canadian "red" police, which was set up to establish law in the Northwest. The original fort looked very nice, just like a fort is supposed to look, i.e. wooden buildings etc. At 1000 there was a music and horse riding show, where they rode around in the old red jackets.

Our next stop was the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, only around 18 kilometers away from the town. This was a place where native Indians had driven herds of buffalos to their death off a cliff. It cost 7.5$ to get in, and first we saw the cliff itself. To my surprise, it didn't look very tall (about 10 meters) but allegedly it had been higher before. Anyway, it didn't look very pleasant to fall down there, and the few buffalos that survived were killed immediately by Indians waiting below. The museum itself was very good and gave lots of information about the ancient culture and how they (sometimes) made use of nearly all parts of the dead bison.

Time was now around 1330 so we drove into Fort McLeod again to get some lunch, ending up at Luigi's Pizza and Pasta for our last meal inside Canada. Tina and me had Baked Lasagne, which was allright. Next we drove towards the U.S. border, first to Lethbridge and then southwards. The scenery was now completely flat grassland. Around 1630 we arrived and had to wait in line for about 20 minutes before it was our turn.

After the negative experience at the Canadian border, we hoped that entrance into the US would go smoother. It eventually went faster, but certainly not smoother. Again, the problem with border control is that these jobs seem to a large degree to attract the wrong kind of people. In certain third world countries, working at the border control is an easy way to get rich by demanding bribes for letting people through. In the U.S. and Canada this kind of corruption is (to the best of my knowledge) not a problem, but instead borders are controlled by people who believe their uniforms give them the right to behave in any way they want. With the job itself probably being very boring and trivial, their only source of amusement is to harrass and abuse the people who come through. Now, this doesn't apply to all officers (our entrance into Minnesota went smooth, and the same happened in Miami some years ago), but still the evidence seems to suggest that a large number of border control officers should not be allowed to have such a job. Today we were unfortunate to run into such a guy. He was a black, middle-aged man with his name given on a badge he was wearing. Let's just call him Mr. H.

It started out well enough, though. Although he seemed rather sour from the beginning, he took our passports and scrutinized them closely, comparing the passport photos with our current looks. Then he wanted to have the car registration, which Tor handed over to him. All well so far. But, then he also wanted to see the rental contract. However, this was located in a briefcase in the trunk of the car. This seemed to annoy Mr. H, who instructed Tor to retrieve it. After about 10 seconds he had found it and handed it over to Mr. H. However, the guy was still not pleased. According to him, the rental contract should always be kept in the front of the car. Tor said he would put it in front of the car from now on, but for some reason Mr. H just grew more and more angry.

He started shouting that Tor should close the trunk (which was still open). Tor hesitated a little, unable to comprehend why the guy was suddenly so angry, and wondering whether he should first put the rental contract in front or close the trunk. Now, Mr. H almost went berserk, shouting at full voice: "CLOSE THE TRUNK! CLOSE THE TRUNK!". Realising that he was dealing with a mentally unstable person, Tor immediately went back and closed the trunk. On returning, Mr. H was fuming with anger: "HAVE YOU GOT A PROBLEM?" he shouted, "HAVE YOU GOT SOME KIND OF PROBLEM!". Tor was perplexed, it was no fun receiving abuse for no reason, and he was unsure how to deal with a person that was obviously mentally insane. "No problem. No problem" he replied. However, this was not enough for Mr. H, who now went: "YOU REALIZE I CAN TAKE YOUR PASSPORTS AND SEND YOU BACK TO CANADA! YOU'RE HOLDING UP TRAFFIC. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH SOMETHING?" Mobilising all his self control, Tor managed to constrain himself from pointing out that it was actually Mr. H who was holding up traffic and who seemed to be having a problem, a rather serious mental disability problem. He just kept ensuring the guy that there was no problem, which seemed to do the trick as he received the passports back and got into the car.

As he got in, Kirsten asked in Norwegian what all that had been about, to which Tor replied in Norwegian that Mr. H wanted the rental contract to be kept in front. To everybody's complete surprise, Mr. H overheard this piece conversation and was not pleased. "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!!?? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!!" he shouted at full voice. We were all shell shocked, what was he going on about now? "GIVE ME BACK YOUR PASSPORTS! I'M GONNA SEND YOU BACK TO CANADA" Still shocked, none of us knew whether to laugh or cry. The guy didn't only have a mental disability problem, he was a raving psychotic lunatic. Tor handed over our passports, trying to ensure him that he hadn't said anything inappropriate. Mr. H didn't believe him. "I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU JUST SAID! I'M GONNA TAKE YOUR PASSPORTS AND SEND YOU BACK TO CANADA". Now, all of us got in on the conversation, trying to convey the message that Tor hadn't said anything inappropriate. I don't think the message got through to Mr H, but eventually he handed over our passports and told us to get away from there. Tor was quick to oblige.

We drove away from the border as quickly as possible, before Mr. H changed his mind again. Basically, we drove until around 1800 when we stopped in a small town called Conrad. Immediately, we noticed Conrad Motel which advertised with prices from 29$. On inquiring we obtained two rooms both with two beds for a total of 40$, the cheapest so far. It was not the nicest motel either, but it seemed clean enough. After settling in, we drove through the town, which didn't take long time. Despite being Saturday afternoon, it was very quiet. We bought some brownies at a supermarket and went back to the motel. All of us were still feeling a bit shocked from the border experience, not quite being able to believe that we had come across such a lunatic as Mr. H.

Around 2000 we went out for dinner. Not having many choices, we ended up at KFC. I had a Zinger meal which was okay, but the others were less impressed with their food. We returned to our rooms and to read, watch TV and update our diary. (For some reason, Steve Irwin always seemed to be on either Animal Planet or Discovery Channel, and today was no exception.)