Spring Driving Tips From Calgary's First Boutique Motel

In Calgary, Mother Nature is Extraodinarily Bipolar, and at no other time do her moods swing like turbo-charged pendulums than in the spring. A great example of this would be the hail storm that occurred last spring that made every car sitting outside look like they had just lost a fight with a cloud of sentient ball-peen hammers. Check it out...

That leads me to my first tip: Tip #1: Don't Be Too Proud To Pull Over

A lot of car accidents happened that day because drivers thought they could navigate through the storm. They could not. Calgary weather is nothing to be trifled with, and if you find yourself stuck in an awful storm take a few minutes out of your day and pull over. As a general rule, the more powerful a storm is, the quicker it'll blow itself out. And, it's not just freak hail storms. We get some freak regular storms as well. Here's some footage from a sudden blizzard hat blanketed the city and knocked out the power in a fair number of areas in the city. Keep in mind that this happened in the end of April, a long time after you would expect it to stop snowing and start raining.

Tip #2: Don't Take Those Winter Tires Off Just Yet

There's a saying here “If you don't like the weather in Alberta, wait five minutes”. This is actually fairly close to the truth, and it means that we can get the full yearly range of weather in any given month, including snow storms in summer. Now, I'm not saying leave your winter tires on all year-round. That would be silly. I'm just saying to keep them on until the end of May, or early June.

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first, and most easily reviewed, Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village, the Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.

3 Scenic Drives In The Mountains Near Calgary

Calgary has a lot to recommend it to travellers, but it isn’t really a great driving city. In fact, personally, I feel that driving through downtown Calgary during rush hour is similar to attempting to solve a Rubik’s cube while being yelled at in four different languages at a Nascar rally. However, there are some great drives to be had nearby. While driving through the prairies has its charms, for me it’s the mountains that will always be the better choice for eye candy. Now, before you read on, keep in mind that these roads can be dangerous in the winter if you, or your car, are unprepared.

Bow Valley Parkway

This is a lovely stretch of road that begins at the Sunshine Turnoff near Banff, and continues all the way up to Lake Louise.  While the speed limit is low (50 Km) it can be a very pleasant drive. The road is surrounded by dense forest, some of which is currently recovering from an extensive forest fire. This makes for a very relaxing drive, but is a little lacking in the “sweeping vistas” department. However, if you're more into spotting wildlife, well, as the above picture suggests there are a ton of Bighorn Sheep in the area.

Smith-Dorrien Highway

The Smith Dorrien is essentially a large gravel road with a speed limit of 80 Kms an hour. The road runs through the Spray Valley and can be approached through Kananaskis Country, or through Canmore. There are some tremendous mountain views to be seen up here, as well as a pretty good chance of seeing a Moose. They love it up there near Mt Engadine Lodge. Which reminds me, they have a pretty good restaurant there too...

Icefields Parkway

In my opinion this is the nicest drive in Alberta. And, yes, I have driven all over most of Alberta so don’t even start. While it can be a bit frustrating if you get stuck behind a slow-mover, the views of the mountains are absolutely grand. The high point of the drive, both in Altitude and in interest, are the Columbia Icefields. That’s not to say that the rest of it isn’t nice, though.  Although, a word of warning. This road is true to its name in that it gets very icy, very fast in the winter. If you’re heading out here anytime from mid-fall to late spring, make sure your vehicle is ready to get a grill fun of winter.  



How to Drive from Calgary to Banff

      Some of the most frequently asked questions we see here at Centro revolve around driving out west to see the Rockies. It makes sense, one of Calgary's mottos is "Gateway to the West" and there's not much west of us but a whole bunch of mountains. There's a lot of activities to do in them too, what with the hiking, fishing, backpacking, camping, canoeing and climbing in the summer, not to mantion that in the winter there's the skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, backcountry skiing, ice climbing... There's a lot of reasons to go see the Rocky Mountains, is what I'm saying.

While the drive out to see them isn't necessarily spectacular (for a better drive go up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper), it's common for first time travellers to ask some questions about it. So, in the spirit of 'a picture is worth a thousand words' I've dug up a time lapse video of the drive out to Banff which, being a video, by my calculations is worth approximately 176, 000 words. The video starts in a gas station just up the road from the Centro Motel and goes the whole way to the town of Banff on the Trans-Canada Highway. Enjoy.