I’m not sure how many posts I am going to write about my month in Canada since I am not sure the detail i will go into, I think I will just finish a section and break it into a post when I fell like it can be done.

After Japan, I had my cousins wedding in Ottawa at the beginning of June and a very good friends wedding at the end of June in Toronto, which left me with about 3 weeks to kill between the two weddings.  I wasn’t going to sit on my haunches and do nothing, so I booked a ticket into Calgary and out of Vancouver and went from there.  I considered a large number of possible options for this trip.  Initially, I talked about flying into Vancouver, buying a beater car and then driving it to Ontario, but legal and logistical issues made that a bit more difficult, especially with my California License, I thought about a few other things as well but ended up with the Calgary to Vancouver Plan. I changed up my backpack to my backpacking pack and included a tent, sleeping bag and various camping gear that I haven’t needed up until now, as I have pretty much been staying in Hostels every night.

The first stop was Japan, to Montreal to Ottawa.  I landed in Ottawa and ended up staying with my cousin the first night as my family didn’t arrive until the next day.  I helped her with some wedding stuff and went for a run around her neighborhood.  I managed to find some pretty nice woods and a river to run along.

The next day I got dropped off in downtown, checked into our hotel then wandered around for a bit.  I found a brew pub and had some beers and a snack and then continued onto the parliament buildings and spark street. The beer was decent but not phenomenal but it was a typical commercialized brew pub which typically make completely drinkable beers but nothing super special.

The family arrived and we had a great night before the wedding dinner.

Our parliament buildings look pretty good at night.  I am looking forward to eventually going back through my photos and editing and posting some of the photography ones, I’ve been posting unedited snapshots from google photos up until now.

Bonus selfie with the parents.

Apparently they were in a mood and not ready to go home, so we headed over to Byward market where where was another pretty commercial brewpub with the same result on the beer.

It was called Lowertown brewing and I had the flight.

Eventually it was bedtime, so we headed back to the hotel room and hit the hay.  The next day was wedding day and I will just throw a bunch of photos up for that.  My cousin looked beautiful and the ceremony was simple, short and sweet.  Between the ceremony and the reception we had some time to kill so my parents and I went off to find some hotel beers at the closest liquor store (Ontario only sells their beer at government run shops, you can’t just go to a corner store or grocery).  It wasn’t too far away, but we did end up spending a lot of time procuring the booze and so we didn’t have as much time to actually drink much.

I obviously danced the night away and had a great time!  The next day we had to drive back to my home town which is about 5 hours away.  On the way we stopped at MacKinnon brothers brewing which was located out of the way on a farm but the set up was really cool.  It was on a farm and the brewery was in one of the barns, they had a shed for the taproom and a food truck on site.  You could then wander the estate with your beer and enjoy it in one of many seating areas.  It was pretty awesome and the beer was great!

I had one full day at home before I had to fly to Calgary and so I spent it hanging out with old friends and running around my old stomping grounds.

Then on Tuesday it was off to Calgary for a few days before heading into the mountains.

I was staying with a friend in Calgary who was generous enough to let me stay in the guest room and even had a blowup mattress (although now i am told she has a futon), I arrived late on the first evening and so didn’t get started on my adventures in Calgary until Wednesday.  I guess this is a good spot to break it up and make a new post.