maps or guides of Alberta
 

Now we've booked our flights to Calgary for next June, we need to plan our itinerary in more detail. Can anyone suggest a good road map or motoring atlas at a reasonably detailed scale that I would be able to get hold of in the UK? Also any good walking guides for the area.

Thanks in advance.

Hello Maria,

You can send away for a free map and travel guides from Travel Alberta at:

http://www1.travelalberta.com/cfforms/freestuff/

As for commercially available reference materials, I don't know what maps would be available to you in the UK. When I'm planning a trip somewhere, I go to a map store in downtown Calgary and buy whatever is available for my destination (often a Michelin Atlas).

You don't need nearly as detailed a scale for an Alberta map as you do for a European one. In this part of the world you have to travel a long way before anything happens. :)

I don't know about walking guides for Alberta in general, but there are two excellent books that describe walks and hikes in the Canadian Rockies. They are:

* "The Canadian Rockies Trail Guide : A Hiker's Manual to the National Parks" by Brian Patton and Bart Robinson. This is considered to be the definitive book on the topic. It's available in Banff, but is notoriously difficult to find elsewhere. For example, I have not found it at the book store in Calgary Airport during the handful of times that I've looked during 2004.

* "Walks and Easy Hikes in the Canadian Rockies" by Graeme Pole. I really like this author's material, and his books seem to be readily available. I see them everywhere around here, including the book store in Calgary Airport. Also, I notice they're available at Amazon.com. I've just checked www.amazon.co.uk , and they're available there too.

Pole's book on walks and easy hikes covers a wide spectrum, from paths that are wheelchair accessible up to hikes that require a full day.

He has another book, "Classic Hikes in the Canadian Rockies," that covers hikes that require more than one day.

A website where you can get distances, driving times, driving directions and a route map between any two towns is Map Quest at:

http://www.mapquest.com/

Travel Alberta's website has a good page called "Scenic Road Trips." As a starting point, I like their "Two City - Two Park Circle Tour."

There are interesting bits that can be added to that if time permits. For example, the itinerary mentioned above does not include the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, and yet it would be easy to take a detour on the drive from Edmonton to Calgary to include it. The dinosaur skeletons are awesome.

We planned our Alberta trip this past summer using Frommer's Guide to Banff & Jasper National Parks, as well as Frommer's Canada Guidebook. Both were very helpful.

The map from Travel Alberta is a very good freebie. The good people at Travel Alberta will send you a very comprehensive guide book to the whole province.

I have a couple of them from prior visits, and I look one of them over before I go and usually find something I haven't seen before and then I wonder how I missed it. Usually it is because I was busy going elsewhere. (Alberta is very rich in "elsewheres" and it is also a very big province!! Lots of places to see! Just try driving from Lethbridge to north of Peace River, and you will begin to get an idea of just how much area is there to be seen!)

The book by Patton and Robinson can be found at: http://www.maptown.com/albertabcbooks.html

and at http://www.canrockbooks.com/

I got my copies at Mountain Lights Bookstore, Lake Louise Alberta, 403 522 3734 My guess is that the good people there will happily send one to you for about $22 C plus shipping.

I have several copies of the book in various editions. After making sure my girl friend is ready to go, I then check and make sure I have my Patton and Robinson book in my overnight bag.

I also make sure I have more than one copy of the Alberta map!

I find that Alberta is a very easy province to visit. People are friendly and easy to approach for directions if you do get lost. Even the backroads are easy to drive. We enjoy taking alternative routes just to see what is out there. I know two years ago we were driving north to Calgary from Montana and we went wandering around north of Lethbridge, east of Claresholm and south of Calgary.

We saw mostly wide open spaces, cows and farm equipment! But it was fun.

My favorite story about people in Alberta derives from a stop in Mountain View for car repairs. The little place is close to the entrance to Waterton National Park. The garage where we were having the repairs done was also the site of the post office. It was a wet day and the farmers were in town to buy supplies, do post office business, and visit. We were sitting there waiting on our car when the chef from the Prince of Wales Hotel came in. The manager of the hotel had decided to have Christmas in August. The chef came in and some of the men began to tease him about the goings on at the hotel. The chef opined that it was a "XXX stupid American idea." The post mistress cautioned him, "Be careful what you say. Not everyone here is Canadian."

The chef got a little defensive and turned around, surveyed the room, and demanded to know, "Who here is not Canadian?" My wife spoke up in her best put on Georgia drawl with all the trimmings and double dipthongs and double vowel sounds, and said, "Ahm from Jaw ja." Translation: I am from Georgia.
Everybody in the room started laughing.
Then she added, "I thought it was stupid myself."

I presume the chef knew which Georgia she meant! At the Met I heard a very, very good, highly dramatic mezzo soprano named Mzia Nioradze.
She, too, is from Georgia. But her Georgia is missing an Atlanta!

If you call Canada House in London, you may find that there are travel guides available right there.

BAK.