1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (130 page)

To keep in the spirit of the city’s historic tradition, make your hotel reservations at the Fairmont Palliser, built in 1914, just two years after the first official Stampede was held. You’ll feel like one of the cattle barons who hung his hat at this oasis of genteel civility, with a classic columns-and-marble lobby, luxurious guest rooms, and a palpable sense of period grandeur. Be sure to enjoy the selection of Alberta beef in the Rimrock Restaurant, with its authentic Canadiana
decor, right down to the hand-tooled leather wall panels.

W
HERE
: Stampede Park. Tel 800-661-1767 or 403-269-9822;
www.calgarystampede.com
.
Cost:
rodeo tickets from US$24/C$27; chuck-wagon races and evening show tickets from US$29/C$33.
When:
10 days in mid-July.
F
AIRMONT
P
ALLISER
: Tel 800-441-1414 or 403-262-1234;
www.fairmont.com/palliser
.
Cost:
from US$150/C$169 (off-peak), from US$337/C$379 (peak); dinner at Rimrock Restaurant US$30/C$35.

With prize money totaling $20,000, the first Calgary Stampede in 1912 was the richest rodeo competition in North America and remains so today.

Riding Canada’s Steel Spine

Alberta

Arail trip through the Canadian Rockies figures on every train enthusiast’s short list of once-in-a-lifetime experiences, providing some of the most awe-inspiring scenery imaginable. Traveling by train through the
Rockies is easy on your eyes, but also easy on your nerves—free of the frustrating RV traffic that frequently clogs park roadways in the summer months. Instead, enjoy long stretches of exquisite wilderness that seem almost completely unpopulated—Alberta, a Texas-size province, has the population of Philadelphia.

When the railroad builders first crossed Canada in 1885 (“an act of insane recklessness,” the papers wrote), they did more than just bring in settlers: They also opened up western Canada to tourism by creating lavish hotels in the wilderness and romanticizing the Rockies. “If we can’t export the scenery,” declared William Van Horne, the first president of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, “we’ll import the tourists.”

More than a century later, the Canadian Rockies are still Canada’s top tourism draw, and there are several great rail options for exploring this massive and inspiring country. VIA Rail, Canada’s national passenger rail network, offers a year-round northerly passage through the Canadian Rockies as part of
The Canadian
’s three-day, 2,769-mile trip between Toronto and Vancouver. It passes through Jasper National Park (see p. 1034), over the Continental Divide, and by the Canadian Rockies’ highest peak, Mount Robson, which juts up to 12,972 feet. An excellent option is to change trains at Jasper to
The Skeena,
which travels west to Prince Rupert and the Pacific Coast ferries along the Inside Passage. In winter, VIA Rail’s Snow Train packages offer passengers special transportation in vintage stainless steel railcars, accommodations, and ski packages to Jasper from all points along
The Canadian
’s route.

The seasonal
Rocky Mountaineer,
the largest privately owned passenger rail service in North America, is deservedly popular for its
two-day (and longer) train journeys to or from Vancouver and Jasper, Banff, or Calgary. All travel is during daylight hours, so you won’t miss a single scenic wonder. You’ll also spend the night in comfortable hotels in Kamloops, not in a jostling railcar. Glass-domed observation cars provide horizon-to-horizon views of ancient glaciers, snowcapped peaks, roaring waterfalls, and tranquil mountain lakes. Introduced in 2006, the
Rocky Mountaineer
also offers service between Whistler (see p. 1062) and Jasper via Prince George, as well as between Vancouver and Whistler from its classy new Vancouver station. These new lines open up many new options for loop rail journeys during warm-weather months in the Rockies and the Northwest.

Capture the beauty of Canada traveling by train through the rugged Canadian Rockies.

V
IA
R
AIL
: Tel 888-842-7245 or 416-366-8411;
www.viarail.ca
.
Cost:
3-day Toronto–Vancouver sleeper from US$745/C$842 (off-peak), from US$1,183/C$1,336 (peak) per person, double occupancy.
When:
year-round; Snow Train packages Nov–Apr.
R
OCKY
M
OUNTAINEER
V
ACATIONS
: Tel 800-665-7245 or 604-606-7245;
www.rockymountaineer.com
.
Cost:
all-inclusive 2-day tour from US$429/C$483 per person, double occupancy.
When:
mid-Apr–mid-Oct and select departures in Dec.
B
EST TIMES
: Jan–Mar for skiing; Sept and Oct for weather and smaller crowds.

Fascinating Repository of Prehistoric Life

Drumheller, Alberta

The Royal Tyrrell Museum, with the world’s most extensive collection of dinosaur fossils and exhibits on prehistoric life, stands amid eastern Alberta’s Red Deer River badlands, a haunting landscape of dun-colored
buttes and prairies that were once at the swampy, prehistoric crossroads of Cretaceous Era life. Some 65 to 70 million years ago, eastern Alberta lay at the verge of vast inland seas where countless creatures swam the shallow waters or stalked the coastal plains and marshes, following life’s eat-and-be-eaten cycle. Over millions of years, plant and animal remains were deposited in sediments and preserved as coal and fossils. Fast-forward several millennia, when 19th-century geologists began to explore Alberta’s prairies for coal deposits. They found much more than just coal: They also discovered some of the world’s best dinosaur fossil beds.

The modern, high-tech Royal Tyrrell Museum is far more than a dusty collection of skeletons. It brings dinosaurs back to life through innovative exhibits and hands-on displays that will fascinate anyone interested in natural history. The museum’s main gallery, a vast 47,000-square-foot showcase, displays dozens of reassembled dinosaurs, some emerging from the rock in which they were found, many others posed in lifelike dioramas depicting the natural environment of their time along
with marine and flying reptiles. Interspersed with the fossils are computerized exhibits that explain natural selection, climate change, and extinction—the entire story of life on Earth is retold in the museum. You can also watch technicians at work in a laboratory preparing fossils and visit the Cretaceous Garden, featuring 600 species of living plants similar to those that existed in the Red Deer valley 72 million years ago.

Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Dinosaur Hall features nearly 40 mounted dinosaur skeletons.

The North Dinosaur Trail, an hour’s loop drive that radiates from Drumheller, lets you explore Alberta’s badlands by car. Or for real hands-on involvement, the museum also offers many outdoor field programs exploring the fossil-rich landscape, including guided hikes, participation in digs, fossil casting, and summer day camps that let kids—and the parents who happily tag along—be paleontologists for the day or week.

W
HERE
: 90 miles/145 km northeast of Calgary. Tel 403-823-7707;
www.tyrrellmuseum.com
.
W
HERE TO STAY
: Jurassic Inn, tel 888-823-3466 or 403-823-7700;
www.bestwestern.com
.
Cost:
from US$115/C$129.
B
EST TIMES
: May–Sept for outdoor field programs.

Offbeat Theatre and Performance on the Prairies

Edmonton, Alberta

Every August, Edmonton gets turned on its ear when it hosts North America’s largest fringe theater festival, one of the most colorful and entertaining happenings anywhere. The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival
takes over Old Strathcona, a historic Edmonton neighborhood near the University of Alberta, and offers a dizzying selection of theatrics and performance amid a nonstop street party atmosphere. Originating in 1982, the festival has continued to grow larger and more popular, attracting theater companies and performing artists from around the world who play to an audience of more than 600,000. Only Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival in Scotland is bigger.

Old Strathcona is Edmonton’s hippest area, where students, artists, and alternative-lifestyle types come to hang out, but the Fringe Festival transforms even this bastion of youthful energy. The festival has 12 indoor theater stages and 2 outdoor stages, offering more than 1,000 individual performances during the 11-day run. It’s nonstop theater: On any given day, there are 100 performances, and when one show ends, another begins on the same stage. Projects that the festival can’t accommodate are encouraged to BYOV—Bring Your Own Venue—that is, create their own theater spaces (and any street corner will do). In addition to the hubbub of actors and theater, the Fringe Festival also hosts food and crafts booths, beer tents, and innumerable buskers and street performers.

Not every production is life-changing, but hunting out the gems is part of the fun.
Performances include drama, comedy, musicals, puppetry, fire artistry, poetry—you’ll find everything from an audience-participation
Macbeth
to a one-man
Lord of the Rings
to a musical version of
Reefer Madness.

F
RINGE
F
ESTIVAL
: Tel 780-448-9000;
www.fringetheatreadventures.ca
.
Cost:
tickets from US$9/C$10 (although many performances are free).
When:
11 days in mid-Aug.
W
HERE TO
S
TAY
: Fairmont Hotel Macdonald, tel 800-441-1414 or 780-424-5181;
www.fairmont.com/macdonald
.
Cost:
from US$221/C$249 (off-peak), from US$266/C$299 (peak).

Go Western on a 19th-Century Homestead

Exshaw, Alberta

If your mind wanders to more southern locales like Wyoming or Montana when the word “guest ranch” comes up in conversation, think again—and think Alberta. This sweeping expanse of land, every bit as gorgeous as its
neighboring Rockies just west of here, has been ranch country for well over a century. Of the numerous dude ranches offering Old West hospitality and lifestyle, Brewster’s Kananaskis Guest Ranch is one of the oldest and best.