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Calgary

CTV Walking Wednesday Segment: Calgary Downtown Art Walk, River Walk, Beltline and 17 Avenue

June 17, 2015
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We explored to Downtown Art Walk on my CTV Walking Wednesday segment today.

Check it out here: http://ow.ly/Osnlq 

Engage in this public-art treasure hunt through the downtown core. Public art is always a surprise, a distraction from the business towers above you and the cars, people, and sidewalks surrounding you. Modern-day urban planners design streetscapes for the benefit of pedestrians, integrating the unexpected into the everyday built environment. The unpredictable is what makes walking in the city so enjoyable. Slow your pace and appreciate walking for walking’s sake, to simply experience the urban cityscape, alleyways, and hidden corners and surprises. Become a flâneur, which, according to the early nineteenth-century French, was a leisurely urban explorer who observed and contemplated as he or she sauntered.

 

 

Peace Bridge and Calgary

For those who would like to pick up the pace and travel farther, follow the southerly route option provided that follows the people-populated streets of the Beltline, a community that is being rejuvenated with a pedestrian focus. Walk through the Memorial Park public space, grab a food truck lunch along Twelfth Avenue, and, on a blue-sky day, sit in the sunshine at one of the many outdoor tables just outside Memorial Park Library. Stroll farther south to Seventeenth Avenue, the popular walking, shopping, and dining street, or walk west along the Thirteenth Avenue greenway followed by a visit to Barb Scott Park and an intriguing public sculpture called “Chinook Arc.” It comes alive with colour at night.

 

 

Riverwalk murals

 

The alternate loop takes you east to RiverWalk, which runs along the Bow River and hosts temporary and permanent art installations and murals. Designed to accommodate walkers and cyclists, there are two pathways, so you can relax and enjoy your chosen activity. Bring your lunch and get comfy on one of the many benches or lounge chairs. Sit back and watch the river, and the walkers and cyclists, flow by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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CTV Morning Walk Wednesday – Nose Hill Park

June 10, 2015
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Nose HIll big view small

This week I featured a Nose Hill Park route from my book, Calgary’s Best Walks, on my Walk Wednesday segment on CTV morning. Nose Hill is Canada’s second largest urban park. The largest is Fish Creek Park, also in Calgary. It is also the highest point in the city so the views from the hill are phenomenal. Watch my segment and then grab my book to take a walk and explore the natural oasis in the heart of the city.

CTV MORNING NOSE HILL SEGMENT

It was an excellent start to a Saturday morning when I opened the Calgary Herald newspaper, wait, I didn’t have to open it since I WAS ON THE FRONT PAGE! Sorry to yell, but it was a great start indeed.

Click on the photos below to read the stories on the Calgary Herald website. See you out there, walking the city!

 

BLOG NOTE: I post more often on the www.calgarysbestwalks.ca blog

 

Snapshot of Calgary herald Article

 

 

Calgary Herald Article walk suggestions

My book, Calgary’s Best Walks, is released on March 9, 2015! Here’s a teaser video to get your pumped up about walking in Calgary. Check the books website for more information on the book, and a full list of book launch events!

 

WIN a copy of Calgary’s Best Walks Guidebook!

February 2, 2015
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What is your favourite place to walk in Calgary? Why do you walk? Write to me and send you photos!

There are so many reasons to take a walk in Calgary, in any city. Urban walking can be about art or wilderness, sidewalk shopping or training on stairs. Perhaps your favourite walk leads you to a diner with a great breakfast or maybe you get away, into nature and enjoy fewer distractions.

I want to hear from everyone and anyone about their favourite Calgary walks. I want to see your photos. I hope to learn about hidden pathways and stairways that only the locals know about.

I will give away 10 copies of my upcoming guidebook, Calgary’s Best Walks and the winning stories and photos will be posted on my blog for everyone to read about.

 

Art Brotherhood of mankind

 

How to Enter

Tweet your stories or photos to @lorifitfrog with the#calgarysbestwalks and #yycwalk

Or write a longer story on the Calgary’s Best Walks Facebook page at www.facebook.com/calgarysbestwalksBe sure to Like the page while you are there!

 

 

Winners will be announced on March 9, my guidebook release date! 

Chester Lake Snowshoe, the best Christmas present of all!

December 4, 2014
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Snowshoe Chester Lake TrailsGive the gift of the Rocky Mountains this Christmas! I snowshoed Chester Lake in The Kananaskis Rockies, yesterday and it was absolute perfection. And abundance of glittering powdery snow, and mountain peaks all around. MERRY CHRISTMAS I say!

For details on snowshoe trails in the Kananaskis, check the Alberta Parks website.  You can also join us, on our many snowshoe outings in December through March.

BE PREPARED, BE SAFE and HAVE FUN!

 

1. AVALANCHE AWARENESS- Be aware that the snowshoe trails in the park are created to keep you away from avalanche terrain. If you do not know what an avalanche slope looks like, DO NOT go into the mountains on snowshoes. You can easily walk into avalanche terrain without knowing it. Check the Avalanche Canada website.

2. Have the Gemtrek, Kananaskis map and the Snowshoe trail map. There are many, many, many alternative snowshoe trails created by people enjoying the powder. This can be confusing if you are not paying attention and navigating. There is signage for snowshoe trails created by the parks, so keep watching for those signs.

3. Take lots of clothing and lots of food. Read through our checklist on what to bring on snowshoe and ski days. And here is a list of where to rent snowshoes.

 

The Joy of a Good Walk this Holiday Season

November 29, 2014
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Snowshoeing Rawson Lake, Kananaskis Rockies, Alberta

 

With the Christmas season is upon us, things start to get a bit hectic. The malls fill up with shoppers (including you), family come from afar to stay in your guest room, you cook and bake for said family, you make lists, and look for parking at Chinook mall, and then you start to wonder WHAT exactly what is so great about the “holiday” season. I am here to tell you that a good walk is all that you need.

 

Turn off your texts and in fact, leave the phone behind and walk away. Keep walking until you feel alive (sane), relaxed and refreshed. And most importably, until you feel happy. It works, I do it everyday.

 

The Huffington Post had a great article this listed some walking quotes. Here is an excerpt.

 

Here are 17 eloquent literary quotes that remind us of the simple, restorative power of a good walk:

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” — John Muir

“Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
‘Ride,’ Pleasure said;
‘Walk,’ Joy replied.” — W.H. Davies

“To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.” — Michel de CerteauEve snowshoeing in the Kananaskis

“If I couldn’t walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish.” — Charles Dickens

“Only thoughts won by walking are valuable.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one… who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.” — C.S. Lewis

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.” — Henry David Thoreau

“After a day’s walk everything has twice its usual value.” — George Macauley Trevelyan

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.” — Ernest Hemingway

“I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.” — John Clare

“We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air.” — Seneca

“I always feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk; they miss so much — so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.” —Kate Chopin

“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.” — Rebecca Solnit

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” — Søren Kierkegaard

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake.” — Wallace Stevens

“Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.” — Jules Renard

“[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.” — Elizabeth von Arnim

 

 

Merry Christmas!

 

 
 

 
 

 

I hope you will join us on the snowy trails this winter! The snowshoeing and cross-country skiing is fantastic right now in the Alberta and British Columbia Rocky Mountains. The urban hikes in Calgary are great year-round. Come on out for a fresh walk and cup of coffee at unique local coffee shops in Calgary.

Check our calendar of events, the winter programs begin on January 7th. Come once or get a membership for the winter session.

Join us for a fresh, outdoor, active New Year!

Hope to see you on the trails in 2014,

– Lori

Helen Lake Trail, Banff National Park


I have been researching trails to hike after the June flooding and thought I would share my findings. The most up-to-date information on where to hike after the flood can be found at this link . It is a wonderful resource of all the post-flood trail conditions in Kananaskis and Banff National Park. Thanks to Rachel for putting this together!

Douglas Fir Trail, Edworthy Park, Calgary

And for those of you who want to hit the urban trails, most routes from my guidebook, Calgary’s Best Hikes and Walks, are doable. The major changes to the pathway system that affect urban hikes are the three missing pedestrian bridges over the Elbow River in the southwest. The bridge at Sandy Beach Park is the most inconvenient change since it is a critical link. It is easy to navigate around the other two missing bridges by using the road bridges.

I’ll continue to provide updates as I work on my new book, Calgary’s Best Urban Hikes, and as I hike the mountain trails!

Enjoy the wonderful weather out there! Lori

 

Calgary’s Best Urban Hikes Series: Inglewood, Harvie Passage, The Bird Sanctuary and The Blackfoot Diner

May 13, 2013
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The Blackfoot Diner milkshake is

“Like sucking cake through a straw”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am having a lot of fun researching my new book, a brand new version of my book Calgary’s Best Hikes and Walks. On Mother’s Day, my family joined me to test a new route for the book in the Inglewood, SE area. We started at 15 St, SE and followed the Bow River Pathway to Pearce Estate Park and the new Harvie Passage Whitewater Park on the Bow River. Harvie Passage water park replaces the deadly weir, the drowning machine as it used to be known.

 

 

 

 

The Harvie Passage website explains the benefits that will come out of the new weir project.

 

Countless benefits will flow from this project – for people, fish, birds and wildlife, and the environment itself. This new park will provide a central connection node for numerous public amenities in the area, including the Calgary Zoo, Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, Pearce Estate Park Interpretive Wetland, Sam Livingston Fish Hatchery, East Village and the future site of the Calgary Science Centre. A reconfiguration of the river-bed will result in an aesthetically attractive passage through the centre of the city, while respecting fisheries and the aquatic ecosystem. Naturalization of the area will improve local habitat, movement corridors and riparian functions, allowing all kinds of wildlife to pass freely up and down the river. Perhaps most importantly, the hydraulic roller known as the “drowning machine” will be eliminated, giving safe and unrestricted access to emergency safety patrols, recreational paddlers and fish.

 

Harvie Passage is across from Pearce Estate Park and the Livingston Fish Hatchery. The park is home to many trails for walkers, abundant bird life that flock to the wetlands, picnic tables, the Fish Hatchery, and the Bow Habitat Station, where kids can learn to fish in stocked bonds. YOu can also get a tour of  the Fish Hatchery.

Continuing east along the Bow River Pathway, we passed wetlands full of the sounds of red-winged blackbirds and we saw an impressive beaver house with significant square footage! We continued past new and beautifully renovated older homes in a hidden neighbourhood along the Bow River; a neighourhood tucked away behind the industrial area off Blackfoot and 17 Ave., SE .

 

 

 

We arrived at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and the start of the train yards. My son loves trains so we did did a photo shoot beside a parked rail car before strolling the pathways of the bird Sanctuary. My son reminded me of the time he and his friends got “kicked out” of the Bird Sanctuary for some enthusiastic owl discoveries that they had at a friends birthday party. Too loud, too much running.  Enthusiastic boys in nature, lets put a stop to that says the naturalist.

 

 

 

 

 

The kids were set on a burger for lunch, and it was lunchtime so we started the search. Within minutes we arrived at the infamous Blackfoot Diner Truck Stop. I had heard of it but had never eaten there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s legit. It’s a truck stop and it was the perfect stop for our Mother’s Day lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

The kids ordered the burgers and a milkshake (and people wonder how we get them to walk so far…) My daughter summed up the milkshake experience in a way that I never had, “it’s like sucking cake through a straw”. And it was! They were chocolatey, creamy and sweet. Yum. The bugers were tasty too, topped with “crappy cheese” (when my daughter was little she thought that Kraft slices were called “crap” slices and hence the name crappy cheese). She likes the cheese slices. They are just another “treat” that she can’t get at home.

 

 

 

 

 

We continued west on 9 Avenue past some industial areas but soon were back into the newly developed part of 9 Avenue. A turn north on 15 St and we were back in the neighbourhood, soaking up the smells of poplar buds and enjoying the sights of flowering fruit trees. Inglewood is the hot spot in Calgary, and not just because it is a micro climate of warmth. Gardens are fuller and pear trees live strong. Inglewood is one of the most interesting neighbourhoods to walk in Calgary. You never know what might be around the next corner and that is what makes for a fantastic urban hike.