{"id":3303,"date":"2016-12-25T15:04:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-25T23:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=3303"},"modified":"2019-08-12T12:38:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T20:38:41","slug":"banff-vacation-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=3303","title":{"rendered":"Banff Vacation Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the first day of our winter holiday holiday we flew to Calgary. It&#8217;s always strange visiting the cold again. In a few more years I&#8217;ll have spent half my life in California, and I still like to think I&#8217;ve got some of that midwestern ice in my blood. Then I visit a place with ice and I turn into a shivering mess.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We broke through the clouds after dark in Alberta, approaching a landscape that looked built into another layer of white fluffy cloud. A blanket of white with a cluster of orange stars loomed, more snow falling. I wondered if this was the right idea. Could I relax driving around on ice?\u00a0Maybe it wasn&#8217;t about relaxing, maybe this trip was about the kind of adventure you don&#8217;t find in Hawaii (and definitely don&#8217;t find at the office from 7 to 5).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>After leaving the airport in a Chevy Trax we discovered that just finding a place to eat dinner was going to be an adventure. Almost everything was closed. Eventually, a flashing &#8220;open&#8221; light in a fast-pizza shop beckoned us.<\/p>\n<p>We ordered a supreme (they called it something else) and fried shrimp at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pizza73.com\/Pizza73\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pizza 73<\/a>. Surprisingly good. Lucky Canadians.<\/p>\n<p>With full bellies, we drove through the dark flat land east of the Canadian Rockies until vague outlines of mountains tried to reflect starlight in the distance.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A half hour later we&#8217;d drive up to the lip of\u00a0Mount Norquay inside Banff National Park and check into\u00a0the cozy <a href=\"http:\/\/thejuniper.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Juniper Hotel<\/a> overlooking the city.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To get even cozier we headed to the bar for drinks and desert, discovering how smooth <a href=\"http:\/\/vodka.underthelabel.com\/l\/118\/Banff-Ice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">vodka brewed from glacier water<\/a> can be.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the first day of our winter holiday holiday we flew to Calgary. It&#8217;s always strange visiting the cold again. In a few more years I&#8217;ll have spent half my life in California, and I still like to think I&#8217;ve got some of that midwestern ice in my blood. Then I visit a place with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":4101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3303"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4285,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303\/revisions\/4285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}