K-Country! (That's not the name of a radio station)

Today we were supposed to get up early in the morning to go for a big hike in Kananaskis Country (which the locals call K-Country) with Reid, but we slept in a bit. Instead, we ambled over to Safeway to pick up lunch, then drove downtown to pick up a GPS antenna for the car (yeah, we're geeks). Next Reid tried to give us directions out of downtown Calgary, but he ended up giving us an extended tour instead! Eventually, however, we ended up on the road to Calgary, U-Haul trailer in tow.

We drove through K-Country with the U-Haul and got some funny looks from other drivers. We chose a short hike to the Kananaskis Lakes Fire look-out because we were supposed to be back in Calgary early for a party. We hiked Reid-style: quite fast, carrying not much, and taking few breaks. After all the backpacking we've done this summer, it felt nice to move that fast and not have a load on my back.

We made it back to Calgary rather late and were late heading to the birthday party for Reid's friend Kevin. Kevin and his wife Belinda live in one of Calgary's crazy self-contained over-planned suburbs. You have to see it to believe it. Everything looks the same in those things. Their house was really nice, but their neighbourhood was a bit like the twilight zone to an urbanite like me.

The party was really fun even though we didn't know anyone. They had rented a blackjack table and even though I don't gamble, I did surprisingly well with the fake money. On the way home, we tried to leave Kevin's suburb and got hilariously lost. We could see where we wanted to go, we just couldn't make our way though the maze of cul-de-sacs and loop roads. Even using the compass on the GPS didn't help us!