The Alberta field study 2018.
What a time.
If you don’t already know from my last blog post, our class took an amazing field study through the Rocky Mountains and all the way to Calgary. In my last post, I mostly reflected on identity throughout the trip. This post will be going more into detail about the trip and the cool stops we did.
There was some incredibly scenic places, along with tons of learning experiences along the way.
Our amazing trip started out at Seycove at 7:15 in the morning. We were all braced for a crazy trip with lots of good times. It’s safe to say we weren’t let down.
One of the first awesome stops on our trip was the Ghost Town. The Ghost Town is in a hotel resort called the 3 Valley Gap. In the ghost town there were lots of different shops and stores that were very old fashioned. It was interesting because there were places like the “saloon” and also a dentist’s office with all sorts of surgical tools. (That part was kinda creepy to be honest).
There was also a train station which the original owner of the hotel creating and invested a lot of time and money into collecting old trains. The trains were on display and we were able to walk through them.
The entire 3 valley gap experience was, in a word, unique. There was a lot of things different to it than other modern hotels. For example, the swimming pool was titanic-themed! This stop was really fun.
One of my favourite stops was one of our first stops, at lake Louise. Lake Louise is one of the most scenic mountain lakes in the world and people come from everywhere to visit, see the lake or even get married. We got to spend about an hour just touring the lake, taking pictures and just soaking in the view.
We stayed two nights in the small town of Lake Louise, which is just inside Alberta. During our stay there, we stopped to view many stunning mountain lakes which I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
The views were unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Along with sparkling baby blue waters there was tall Rocky Mountains bordering them, creating incredible views.
That photo there is one of my favourite photos in my camera roll. I really like it because of the way the mountains slope in, making it almost look photoshopped.
After Lake Louise, we drove to Calgary. In Calgary there were tons of unique stops which were all (mostly) super interesting and fun.
One of the stops we did in Calgary was at the famous Calgary Zoo.
Our class got to take a long tour around the zoo, making sure to see almost every animal! It was a really neat collection of animals from all over the world. In the span of about 3 and a half hours, I saw animals from Asia, Africa, Australia, North America.. you get the idea. There was some really wild dangerous looking animals such as grizzly bears but also cute little marmots. It was a great time. However, one of my favourite animals I saw there was the pandas. All they do is sleep all day and only wake up to eat food. It’s a lifestyle that I admire. ( the pandas are one of the zoo’s main attractions, bringing in lots of tourists just to see them)
Another really cool stop along the trip was at Drumheller, which is about an hour and a half outside of Calgary. Drumheller is well known as the “dinosaur capital of the world”. We got the opportunity to go to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which is a museum that details the history of dinosaurs, but also dinosaurs in Alberta.
I learned a lot of eye-opening things at the museum. For example, did you know that Alberta was once partially covered in water?
At the museum, we also took a walking tour of the badlands which are just outside the museum. During this tour, we learned about the different types of rock that was in the ground.
Drumheller is also home to the “world’s biggest dinosaur”. This was a man made dinosaur that towered over the town of drumheller. People are even able to climb up into the dinosaurs mouth!
Drumheller was cool, but there was one reason we came on this Calgary trip in the first place. And that reason: Beakerhead.
Beakerhead is a festival of sorts which brings together art, science and engineering. There were different parts of Beakerhead, which are called “beacons”. PLP went on a task to hit as many beakers as we could, and we saw some truly amazing things. Beakerhead managed so much more than my expectations of what I thought it would be.
One cool beacon was a recreation of the house from Up, with all the balloons. My friends and I got this gem of a photo next to it:
Another really cool Beacon was a miniature “burning man”. During this event, they burned a wooden structure. Lots of people were there! The event included a DJ and other neat things.
Another cool Beacon was “Zorbathon”, which was basically bubble soccer with a ball. This was really fun because all of my class mates just ran at each other with the goal of knocking each other over in mind for a half an hour straight. You know don’t fear until you’ve seen Caleb barrelling at you at full speed in a bubble. Trust me, you get absolutely sent.
All the time we spent at Beakerhead culminated with the finale: Beakernight. Beakernight basically combined everything we had just been to and this led to things like Tesla coils, crane rides, and riding atop school buses. This was such a cool experience and it was hard to pick a favourite moment from the night. One thing that is going to be especially memorable was when Jackson, Luciano and Kyle and I took our pictures together and got it put on a lanyard.
After this, our trip was pretty quiet coming in except for a gut wrenching game of Anomia with Jason and Jackson during our last night. In the end however, I think we were all pretty happy to return home to beautiful British Columbia. It was such a cool trip with amazing people and we made lots of fun memories.
I made a quick edit detailing some highlights from the trip, check it out down below.
I hope you enjoyed my brief highlight reel of the trip.
Until next time,
Nik
