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For those of you that know us well you will know that we find making decisions very difficult. This is all based on one simple fact. Neither of us wants to do anything that the other might not, even at the detriment of doing what we might want to do so we go round in circles saying to each other "I'll do what you want to do" back and forward, back and forward. Now when we needed to make a decision this morning about either driving the six hour drive to Calgary or taking the three hour coach we were in the same predicament....the decision went back and forth and back and forth again.

In the end the drive won and as we had got up quite earlyish we were on the road complete with a hot Starbucks coffee by 0915.

Now we had only travelled the Icefields Parkway the other day so we were not expecting to see anything other than the continued beauty that Canada constantly throws at you but we did. It was another bear! This time he was not up a tree either but standing around on the grass at the side of the road eating the long grass and as is usual again the motorway hard shoulder was littered with people and badly parked cars.

This one extra siting made the drive more than worth while as we also knew that on leaving the national parks today we would be saying goodbye to any chances of seeing any more wildlife as it is cities all the way now until we are back in the UK.

To be honest driving in the national park roads is actually not that hard work at all. There is so much to see as you travel along and because of all the flooding the roads were so quiet. Today we took it in turns to drive with us both doing two hour shifts at the wheel then Jonathan taking control to get us into the city.

As we left the National Park and continued on our journey on highway 11 we left the mountain views behind us. These were replaced by flat farming fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. Some were for cattle but the majority were for some very low green crop that we could not work out what it was. These fields would be broken up by the very occasional red barn built in a real vintage style and then we had oil wells.

Small oil wells starting popping up here in there in the middle of fields, just like the ones you used to see in the opening credits to Dallas the TV series. Clearly the farmers around here have another lucrative side line.

As we changed motorways for the last time we were met with a constant stream of army vehicles on the opposite side of the road obviously all piling out of Calgary following the flood disaster. It was good news to see them coming out as it must mean that things are getting better down there and that is good news for us. We would know within the hour how much good news?

As Calgary took over the skyline, all tall glass shiny sky reaching towers punching into the sky like rebels fists we knew that our journey was now taking a different road. The journey into the city was actually without any event at all and although you could tell that the water levels had been quite high by the muddy verges this was really the only tell tale sign of the floods. It was not until we had dropped the hire car off and walked the two miles back to the hotel that we say any signs of flooding and that was as we crossed the river in a very isolated area but again the good news that this was not interfering with the operation of the city or getting in the way of normal life resuming.

Our first couple of hours walking around the downtown are of Calgary where all a bit weird. Weird because there seemed to be no shops...no centre as such just a mass of shiny office buildings and the streets were pretty deserted to. Now the later coud just be the aftermath of the flooding but no centre....????

Eventually we did find an indoor mall and bought a few breakfast items and some milk etc but even then we thought surely this cant be it. Calgary is the one big city in the middle of Canada and we just expected it to explode with life and vitality, at the moment it felt like a city very much in hibernation.

We eventually found a smallish pedestrianised area that was full of after work suit and city type bars and restaurants but again it just did not feel proportionate to the cities scale and its amount of office buildings.

We stopped off back a the hotel and armed with the map headed off in a different direction, crossing the train tracks to uptown as it is called. We found a great street full of younger, cooler bars selling great gastro style food and fancy salads and burgers so went in for dinner. We had a great meal and were actually quite well behaved tonight as we both ordered salad with grilled chicken. It was just the desserts that were the problem. Honestly I swear that I am going to put a stone on after this trip!

Back at the hotel and we started to do a bit more research on Calgary to fill our agenda up for tomorrow, what we still don't know is how much the flooding will effect that as some of the downtown and uptown areas are still without power and some areas are still evacuated zones. These areas are still having their basements and underground car parks pumped out of water and we have passed a few units doing so today along with a lot of Calgarians wearing very muddy dirty clothing having obviously worked at clearing out their own damaged homes all day.

To finish we have two new words for you, the first is PARKADE.....this strange word a cross between arcade and parking is what we would call a multi story car park in the uk and seems to be used all over the parts of Canada that we have visited so far.

Our second new word is GROCERIA, used to describe what we would call a corner shop.....parkade wins this award for word of the week.

Speak to you tomorrow.

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