Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

One thing I failed to include in my Aug 1st entry was a special addition for my Aunt Cynthia and, perhaps more importantly, her husband Ken. When we were at Heritage Park they had a display of old gas pumps from the early 20th century. I couldn’t help but think of them as we walked through a barn filled with at least 30 or 40 different examples of early 1900s gas pumps. Unfortunately (fortunately?) my camera batteries were almost dead so I was only able to take a few of photos. So I have slipped one of them in here so Cynthia and Ken can have a look. Don’t worry guys, when I am in California I’ll show you the rest of them!


As promised, here are our proposed plans for today:
o Take a ride to the top of Sulfur Mountain on the gondola
o Take a dip in the Banff Hot Springs
o Do a little tour of the Banff Springs Hotel
o Squeeze in a bike ride somewhere around Banff

Everything started off well. It was a sunny day, we had easy directions to Sulfur Mountain, there was a bearable line-up to get on the gondola and the next thing I know I am overlooking Banff from over 8,000 feet! Talk about absolutely stunning. The mountains look so amazing from ground level but they seem more awe-inspiring looking out from the peak of one of them. Of course I took approximately 329,000 photos, but I can only share a few of them with you here. I bumped into a guy with a dog at the top. We got talking to him while the kids patted the dog and found out that he hiked all the way up the mountain! It is a 5 km (3 mile) hike and he said it took him about 90 minutes! I started wondering if I could do that and then I started thinking about the money we could have saved by skipping the gondola ride. I then started thinking about the cost of the helicopter ambulance we would need after that. I then decided to start thinking about something else.
From the top of the gondola you can continue on to Sanson Peak on foot. The peak was named after Norman B. Sanson who would climbed Sulfur Mountain to monitor the weather as well as retrieve weather data being captured there. The old weather observatory is still there although it is no longer being used. During the 50s and 60s they used this site for a Cosmic Ray station … I love that name! In case you were wondering, Cosmic Rays are electrically charges subatomic particles that are produced by sources of energy in the galaxy such as supernovae, flares from the sun and other similar stars. Who ever said the Aylmer Express MoHo Extravaganza blog was not educational? Ok, back to Mr. Sanson. He signed up with the Canadian government to run a weather observatory on top of Sulfur Mountain in 1903. Fast forward 43 years and you find that he is still at it. Bad job market? And perhaps even more amazing, during that time he climbed the mountain over 1,000 times! He saved a *bundle* on gondola fares I’ll tell ya. When Sanson finally passed away in 1949 he requested that his epitaph read, appropriately enough, “Gone Higher”.

After another “view-tacular” gondola trip back down, and the first item checked off out list, we headed off to the hot springs to soak in the natural hot mineral water that comes out of the base of Sulfur Mountain. There are many theories as to how and why this hot mineral water is created but they generally believe that water seeps down into the earth to the earth’s crust where it gets heated and pressurized and dissolves high concentrations of minerals. This heated water then gets pushed back up to the surface via the Sulfur Mountain Thrust Fault where it is directed into a pool where lucky people like us can relax in its 40C (102F) warmth. They say that these natural hot springs have amazing healing qualities for all types of maladies. The one thing it definitely cured for me was the slight chill I felt in the cool breeze before I entered the pool, however, my memory is still as bad as ever. After our dip, we checked off the second item on our agenda and then it was off to the Banff Spring Hotel to check out how the rich and famous spend their time. This hotel with spa and golf course and conference centre has got to be one of the most grandiloquent structures in one of the most picturesque parts of Canada. You know what I found out after checking out this stunningly charming and elegant icon … I think I’d like to become either rich or famous. It is almost incomprehensible that this place was able to be built back in the late 1800s. Not only was that before the advent of the automobile but it was also before the advent of a town of any size anywhere near there. When they developed this facility they had a motto which they used to drive the development of this area, “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the people.” That closed off the third item on our list and, although I was still interested in going for a bike ride, it had started to rain so we decided to call it a day. That left item #4 unchecked. Three out of four ain’t bad, eh?

Today’s word:

grandiloquent \gran-DIL-uh-kwuhnt\, adjective:
Lofty in style; pompous; bombastic.