It’s a new (school) year, which means it’s time for a new PLP trip!

Last year on the PLP trip, we visited Oregon. Now, while the new Grade 8s are experiencing that, I’m writing this blog post about our most recent PLP trip, to Alberta. We traveled to Alberta as part of our PLP Grade 9 curriculum. Along the way, we saw beautiful lakes, mountains, and Alberta Badlands. We also saw a giant inflatable dung beetle and fell in some cornstarch. It was a weird week. 

The week started in one of the weirdest places it could have- a historic ghost town surrounded by mountains. We were tasked with creating a old fashioned silent film in Three Valley Gap, a hotel that also runs a recreation of a ghost town. I worked with Fraser, Niklas, and Emerson to create this masterpiece, which was the first of three videos we created on the trip.

 

The next day, we set off again. The highlight of Day 2 was visiting Lake Louise, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

We also saw many railroad-related things. Like a lot. We visited passes through the mountains and saw some cool tunnels, even if no trains went through them while we were there.

 

 

On the next morning after we’d checked into the hostel, we drove 2 and a half hours to visit a glacier! It was actually two things- the glacier skywalk, and the glacier visit itself. The problem with the glacier skywalk is that you can’t actually see and ice from the skywalk- but it is way up there, just jutting out over a canyon. You are allowed (and encouraged! It’s strong!) to bounce it, but every time we did, someone got annoyed with us. 

 

 

The next part of the glacier tour was the actual ice part, and it lived up to its name. I can only describe it as being really really cold! But, it wasn’t all cold, because we did get to ride in the awesome glacier crawler things. However, when our teachers told us about them, they really described them as, you know, giant living crabs. When we were in the glacier crawler thing, we went down a hill that was described as ‘one of the steepest hills you are legally allowed to drive down.’ That definitely was true. I took this picture while holding my IPad completely upright. As you can see, you can see what’s ahead of us through the roof. 

After we were done with the glacier, we drove back to Lake Louise for 2 and a half hours, and stayed in the hostel a second night.

Then, the next morning, we woke up at 6:30 Mountain Time (5:30 Pacific Time) to visit Moraine Lake, which was beautiful, busy, and cold. We enjoyed climbing on the giant pile of rocks. 

After freezing our fingers off at Moraine Lake, we headed to Banff, and got the opportunity to roam around the town.

Then, we did one of the best things you can do when you have time and a nearby lake— we went on a cruise! On this cruise we learned about the wildlife of Banff and we got to lie down outside, near the surf.

This video is an accurate representation of how close we got to the lake. 

What was the highlight of the next day (Day 5)? Creating our own functional society that was very peaceful until it came to their sports, which people died playing. We made this society at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.

The next day, we got back on the bus bright and early to go see some dinosaurs. The Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta is home to many, many dinosaur skeletons and exhibits. We did several cool activities there, like making fossil casts out of plaster. This part was just making plaster and pouring it into moulds, but it made us feel like scientists. Another activity we did was creating our second video of the trip- the artifact video! Each of us chose a specific artifact and created a video about it in Clips, which is a new app we’ve been given. We also had to interview a museum worker about our artifact. Here’s my video:

The next morning, we set off to the Calgary Zoo. There’s a lot at the Calgary Zoo, but the showstopper is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see real pandas. And they were so cute!

We ate lunch at the zoo, and then left to see some Beakerhead art displays! Beakerhead is an arts festival in Calgary every fall, and it sets up huge art installations around the city. There was a huge variety of creations, and one of those was the large tub of ‘Oobleck’- half water, half cornstarch. When you slowly move your hand into the ‘Oobleck’, it feels like a liquid. But if you punch, it’s like punching a rock. The people who created it told us to stop punching it because it could break our hands. We even got to run on it, and you could stay on it as long as you wanted as long as you were constantly running in place.

The next morning, we headed out to the Rocky Mountain Buffalo Ranch, which is run by a guy named Leo Downey. Leo knows a lot about buffalo and the outdoors, and he lives in an absolutely beautiful place.

The buffalo he works with are beautiful and big. Each one somehow looks bigger than the rest- except for Chester Jr, who is bigger than the rest. He’s named Chester Jr because his father (surprise!) was also named Chester.

The star of the last day, Day 9, was the Enchanted Forest. The Enchanted Forest is kind of like a big theme park filled with very small navigatable houses and terrifying creatures from nursery rhymes. We filmed our last video of the trip here, in an equally weird place as the first one. My group was composed of Kyle, Luciano, Taylor, Caleb, and I, and we created a video about giant who looks scary when he first walks into town.

We arrived home to our parents smiling, and we knew that we would have a good time telling the stories of what we did on this trip. 

Thank you for reading my (very long) blog post!