Getting Stares in Calgary

The city skyline drew closer as our Wander Wagon rolled toward Calgary, Alberta. We had been soaking up the woods since we left on this trip and now we were heading into our first city, and Calgary was huge.

But, we weren’t heading to explore the downtown area that day. It was already late afternoon by the time we had arrived, and we still had some errands and work to do. First, we desperately needed groceries as our fridge was pretty much empty. We headed to The Real Canadian Superstore, and had an interesting experience shopping for groceries. It’s funny how the simple, everyday things you don’t think twice about suddenly become an experience when you are visiting another country. We couldn’t even figure out how to get one of the carts for our groceries, and I’m sure we looked like fools trying to pull them apart from each other before we realized that you had to deposit a coin in first to unlock one. But, it’s part of the experience and we just laughed at ourselves and were happy to have food stocked in our fridge and cupboard again.

After groceries, we holed ourselves up in a nearby coffee shop to get some work done. The baristas were incredibly kind and even let Paris sit inside with us, which was great since it was so hot out that day.

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Once we had gotten all of our work done, we still needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Our first plan was to park at a nearby casino, but when we arrived we found out that you had to pay to park overnight- not exactly what we were looking for. So, we called the Flying J next door and got the green light to park there for the night.

It wasn’t the most comfortable place to park, but it was reasonably quiet and don’t forget free, and really we were just grateful to have a safe place to sleep for the night. But, we still needed to work out another plan for the rest of the time we had in the Calgary area. We didn’t feel comfortable searching for a place to stealth park in the city, so we did some research and Corbin found an awesome site- Boondockers Welcome. Similar to Couchsurfing or Airbnb, this site was for RVers or the like who were looking for a free place to park. Excited about the potential of a free place to stay for the rest of our time in Calgary with like-minded individuals, Corbin sent out a couple messages to nearby Boondockers to ask if they had available spaces that fit our requirements, and we waited to see if we would get a reply.

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But, for the night our home was at Flying J, and we looked forward to finally getting to explore the downtown area of Calgary. As intimidating as they were, the skyscrapers called to us, and we had a mission to find some real Canadian poutine to chow down on. So, we dreamed of eating poutine and fell asleep to the sounds of trucks idling nearby.