Thursday, December 01, 2005
For the Thanksgiving weekend we headed up to Calgary to visit friends we worked with down in Ecuador, Jeff and Nancy and their new addition Gabriela. The drive up was a breeze. We stopped in Sparwood, BC and checked out their claim to fame, the "Largest Truck in the World." It was big. Rolling into Calgary, temperatures seemed like they were in the mid sixties, compared to the murky gray of the Flathead inversion. A couple other friends that we met down in Ecuador came over for dinner the first night we were there. The next day we headed out to Banff to go for a hike. There was very minimal snow and we walked up to the top of a hill next to Mt. Norquay that overlooked the whole valley. The clouds began to roll in and we headed back down and into Calgary. We headed home the next day and on our way out of town stopped by IKEA. That place is mindnumbingly huge. Completely powered by wind too. Impressive. We opted to take a the East side down assuming since both routes are relatively the same distance in the winter that they would be equally fast. Mistake. About the time we hit For McCleod it started dumping and didn't let up until we got to Kalispell. The drive was super sketchy and there was tons of snow on the road once we crossed the border. It is so remote that between the US border and Essex, near West Glacier we saw a total of about 4 cars in 2 1/2 hours of driving. It ended up taking about 2.5 hours longer East of the Divide. We rolled into a snowy Kalispell and the snow hasn't let up since.
