What, no bears? - Canadian Rockies Road Trip Aug/Sept 2019 - Day 17

[pinkrose]

Index is here

Day 17 – Tuesday 10 September 2019

Time to leave

So we had finally reached our last day in Canada.

We were up at 8am. The bill for our room had been pushed under the door during the night. DH went into a mild panic when he discovered we appeared to have been charged the room rate as well as for car parking and the resort fee and was suddenly in a rush to get out of the room and sort it out with reception. So it was a mad scramble then to wash and dress and put the last items into our suitcases. DH called and asked them to send someone to collect our luggage from the room and, while he waited for them to arrive, I headed off to reception.

I had noticed last night when doing OLCI that all of our hotels and the car hire were now showing again on my booking so went to one of the hotel’s computers, logged into the booking on BA’s website and printed off the voucher for the hotel. Then I went to reception to query the bill armed with the voucher. After a brief call to their reservations team the problem was easily resolved and the receptionist reprinted our bill so that it only had the car parking and resort fee on it.

By now our luggage was at the front of the hotel and DH had brought the car from the car park so I met him at the hotel entrance and we drove into Canmore for another All Canadian breakfast at A & W’s. DH then realised we had left one of our refillable water bottles in the mini fridge in the room at the Fairmont. There wasn’t enough time now to go all the way back into Banff to retrieve it so, as it was not an expensive one, we decided to leave it behind.

We called in a Taffy shop to buy some taffy with the last remaining coins that we had. We put $20 CAD of petrol in the car just to be safe and then set off on Highway 1 towards Calgary at 10.15am. It was raining again and the cloud was very low obscuring most of the mountains.

Just before we reached the airport we took a detour off the road back towards Crossiron Mills again. We had noticed the day before that the petrol at the Shell station there was 94.9 cents a litre and had decided we would fill up there before heading into the airport. The price had increased since yesterday and was now $1.04 CAD a litre but was still the cheapest we had seen all holiday. We put $30.54 CAD in to fill the car then drove into the airport to the Avis returns drop off point. There were no issues with the drop off and we loaded our luggage onto a cart and headed into the terminal.

The parking garage for Avis is opposite the terminal building but when you enter the terminal you are at concourse A. We were now travelling to the US rather than internationally so had to walk almost the whole length of the terminal building to concourse E for US departures. We went to American Airlines baggage drop to collect my boarding pass and, as the staff member handed it over, she said I had been selected by the airline for extra security screening. I looked down at the boarding pass and there were the dreaded SSSS in the left hand corner.

We walked into Security and I was told that I had to remove all of the electrical items from my hand luggage and put them in a separate tray so I now had two trays for screening. I then went to join the queue for the body scanner and, glancing downwards, realised DH and everyone else had removed their shoes. There were no signs anywhere telling you to do this. According to DH one of the security staff had been telling everyone to remove their shoes at the same time that I was talking to another member of staff about what electricals I had in my hand luggage and I had been so distracted by them telling me to remove every electrical item that I had missed this.

So I was sent back to the start to put my shoes in another tray and then had to re-join the back of the queue for the body scanner. Once I had been through the body scanner I then had to go to one of the security staff who now had my three trays. She made me remove my IPod and tablet from their cases and then turn all of my electricals on to prove they worked. I managed to break the plastic lugs that hold the IPod in place in my haste to remove it. My hand luggage was then swabbed before I was allowed to repack everything into it. What amazed me was the fact that no-one seemed at all bothered about any liquids I was carrying.

After security we found we were in US immigration. We scanned our passports at the automated passport control kiosk and then presented them to a US immigration officer who stamped them before allowing us through to departures. So we had travelled to Canada without getting our passports stamped but, despite only briefly stopping in the US, still had them stamped by US immigration.

We had around an hour before boarding began so decided to eat lunch at The Kitchen by Wolfing Puck. We had asked the maître d how long it would take to get our food and had been assured it would only be around a 15 – 20 minute wait so we ordered straight away but 30 minutes later we were still waiting and had to call our waitress over to check on our order. She then told us all of the food is cooked fresh so there was no way it would be ready in time. She said they could only produce a salad in 15 minutes! Our food was still going to take a while so we cancelled the order and went to Burger King for something quick. Whilst in the queue at Burger King I realised I had left my handbag behind so went running back to The Kitchen. Fortunately the maître d had it but I then felt so sick I couldn’t eat the Chicken Sandwich that DH had bought me.

We walked to the gate and boarded shortly after. By changing our seats we had managed to get main cabin extra seats for no additional cost which meant we had a little more legroom than a usual economy seat. The flight looked as if it was going to leave about 10 minutes early but by the time we had pushed back and taxied to the runway we actually took off on time.

It was a routine flight to Dallas. We were each given a 12oz can of Coke, a bag of pretzels and a pack of Lotus biscuits. The flight arrived 20 minutes early and it proved an easy process to swap from terminal B to terminal D via their skylink (monorail).

By now I was feeling hungry so we headed to McDonald’s for a McDouble and fries as it was unlikely we would get our meal on the plane much before 11pm local time.

We waited at our gate for boarding to start. At around 8.50pm people were starting to form a queue at the gate so I decided to take one final comfort break before joining the queue. However on my return DH said we had been paged to go to the gate. We went up to the desk and were advised that we needed to have our passports scanned which they did and then they allowed us to board.

Everyone had boarded early so we were soon ready to go. Again it was an uneventful flight apart from the fact that it was a little bumpy at times. We were served Kale salad with mango, vegetable lasagne, cheesecake, a bread roll and crackers with a Dairylea style cheese. The stewardess gave me a couple of miniature Bombay Sapphire gins and a can of Sierra mist (the closest thing they had to lemonade). Sorry no photos.

I watched Late Night with Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling and then settled down to try and sleep. Just before landing we were served a breakfast of fruit salad, Greek yoghurt, a mini croissant and orange juice. Again sorry no photos.

We landed at Heathrow at 12.05pm on Wednesday lunchtime around 40 minutes earlier than originally scheduled. We headed for UK immigration and the e-gate would not scan my passport so I was directed to a border force officer. It’s usually DH that has problems with immigration/security but it was clearly my turn this time.

After collecting our bags and heading through Customs we stopped at Caffé Nero for a cup of tea then went out of terminal 3 to find the bus stop back to the long stay car park.

We set off towards the M25 and then, once we were on the M1, stopped at Toddington Services for a late lunch. DH had a sandwich and I had a Pasta Salad from M & S. I was hungry but didn’t feel I wanted to eat so picked at it for a while before abandoning it and going to sleep. I didn’t wake up until we were near junction 21. The M1 was very busy and we reached Nottingham at 5pm so were caught up in rush hour traffic. We got home around 5.45pm and DS met us with a big hug before he cooked tea for us.

We went to bed at 10pm but then I woke at 12.13am and then 2.19am. I was still awake at 3.30am so I went downstairs, had a bowl of cereal and unloaded the dishwasher before going back to bed at 4am. I slept through till 9am and I could have stayed in bed longer but I forced myself to get up to try and get back into UK time.

Final thoughts

I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of writing this trip report over the past five weeks since we returned home. It has given me the opportunity to re-live our trip both through recounting all of the wonderful things we did but also in deciding which of the 1300 or so photos that I took would go in this report. It truly was an amazing holiday and something so different from anything we’ve done before – heck we’ve never even been to the Lake District!
The holiday itself was jam packed with amazing highs, no real lows (I wouldn’t really count the few niggling things that I’ve mentioned in this report as lows) and far exceeded my expectations.

Thank you so much to Gunna and Jocat for your own trip reports which I found so useful and for answering my questions. Thank you too for inspiring me to write my own report.

Finally, I couldn’t finish without thanking DH for putting up with me all these years. You are my rock. Here’s to many more adventures together.

[jocat]

So glad you both had a great holiday to celebrate such a special anniversary. Other people’s trip reports are so helpful when planning somewhere new, so am glad you found mine useful.

Gunna went before I did, although our respective holidays did overlap a little in the middle, and I was looking out for his posts before we left the UK. He’d also been a huge help to me with my planning, and I’m sure in turn your posts will be a huge help to others.

[Unexpectedpenny]

A brilliant trip report, thank you for sharing

[Cutiepie]

I have really enjoyed reading your report as the Rockies are on our ‘to do’ list! Think I might have to wait until the kids are no longer holidaying with us.

It sounds like a fab holiday, thanks for sharing

[vegboatride]

Thanks for writing, I really enjoyed reading your trip report, it’s certainly somewhere we’d love to visit in the future.

[Lola]

We had a fantastic Canada and Alaska trip a couple of years ago. A great visit with incredible highlights, including two bears frolicking by the road

[orlandosgr8]

I have loved reading your trip report, what a truly beautiful part of the world, thank you for taking the time to share your trip x

[pinkrose]

Glad you enjoyed it. It took some effort but I love the fact that I can re-read it myself to remind me of the wonderful time we had.