Fantasy Caravan Day 4, Fort Steele, BC to Calgary, Alberta

After a little bit challenging night's sleep (the electricity was not totally reliable, so the air conditioning went off during the night, but the temperature outside had cooled off enough for open windows to be comfortable), on Tuesday, we headed out from Fort Steele, BC to go west and north to Calgary, AB.

Along the highways, there are warnings that there may be wildlife and we should be watchful -- you might see that there are 3 animals illustrated in diamonds (on this one, deer, elk, and moose -- and it just occurred to me as I typed it that all three of those are both singular and plural in the same word!) -- sometimes a 4th diamond is included for bear (bears).

On BC Highway 3, there were signs that, I guess, somehow gave you more information if some animal had been seen in the next section of roadway. I was not sure how the signs got the information to report, but I found this information: https://www.tranbc.ca/2015/10/21/on-the-case-for-safety-wildlife-detection-systems-on-highway-3/#sthash.maVP1Jin.tRf62USn.dpbs  Pretty interesting -- particularly because in the comments, they indicated that fewer animal/vehicle accidents were occurring (in 2019) where the systems were in use.

Unfortunately, this is the only deer (Deere) we've seen (or elk, or moose, or bear). We have seen some dead dear along the roadways, and are glad that we aren't traveling in early evening when car/deer encounters may be more common.

The views were really beautiful, but since we were traveling east, photos didn't come out very good... here we were approaching a tunnel...

One of our fellow Fantasy guests was just in front of us at this point.

This picture of the view came out pretty good!

In the town of Sparwood, BC, we stopped to see...

... the largest tandem axle truck in the world! (It isn't clear whether it may have now been surpassed, but... regardless... it was BIG!)

Makes us look small!

Height: 22'7"

Height with box raised: 56'

Length: 65'11"

Width: 24'10"

Weight: 260 tons

Payload: 350 tons

Top Speed: 30MPH

Weight fully loaded: 600 tons

Some more facts about the truck:

The photos on the other side were rather negatively affected by sun glare.

A ?comfortable? place to recline?

Three of our rigs in the parking area while we were looking at the World's Largest Truck.

In a few miles further, we entered Alberta.

We had planned to stop to get information about "Frank Slide", but missed the turnoff -- it was hard to comprehend how large this landslide had been as the rubble from it extended from far to the right of the highway to far to the left. Information can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Slide

We continued on, through beautiful prairie land (not sure how we didn't get any pictures!), and stopped for fuel south of Calgary. While there, we parked for a little while and walked over to a Tim Hortons to try out the popular Canadian fast food for lunch.

On our way toward Calgary, I was looking up information about our route in our "Milepost" book, and saw that we would be passing near High River, the town that is used to represent the town of Hudson for the long running Canadian drama series, "Heartland" (which Carl and I had watched through about season 14 or 15). Unfortunately, I could not determine for sure that there would be parking for a big rig in town, so we passed up the opportunity to be groupies and go to see some of the places where the series is filmed.

We continued on into Calgary, thankfully coming into town a little after 2pm, which was supposed to miss rush hour -- it seemed like there was a LOT of traffic, so we were glad when we got to our camping location for the next 3 nights, a temporary campground put in place by Fantasy RV Tours in the parking area of McMahon Stadium.

We were gathered in the afternoon for an orientation by the Fantasy representative for Calgary -- we got good information about how to get to the Stampede grounds (we have tickets for the train), and what things to see and do for our next couple of days while in Calgary.

Seeing the Calgary Stampede was one of the things that we have been looking forward to that is included with this tour -- so we're hoping that the heat doesn't wipe us out too much and we are still able to enjoy the events!