Days 1 - 3: Missouri to Montana
Days 4 - 6: Glacier N.P. - Montana, USA
Days 7 - 19: Banff N.P.- Alberta, Canada
Jasper N.P. - Alberta, Canada
Yoho N.P. - B.C., Canada
Kootenay N.P. - B.C., Canada
Glacier N. P. - B.C., Canada
Days 20 - 24: Canada to Missouri
INTERACTIVE MAP
Zoom in and click the various markers on the map below to explore some of the stops and attractions that are a part of this journey!
Student-Created CHALLENGES:
My students created challenges for me to complete.
During the course of my trip, I will document my attempts at each challenge through video/photo.
The highlighted ones are the ones I completed. You can find evidence of those below!
Give a video tour of our RV
Brush my teeth with maple syrup
Eat a Beaver-Tail shaped pastry
Sit by a lake at sunset and paint the scene
Pay It Forward: Pay for someone in line behind you
Stand at a wildlife viewing spot and howl like a wolf
Eat Canadian created ketchup-flavored potato chips
With a waterfall in the background, do the ice bucket challenge
Stand by a map and say, "I love Geography" ( j'adore la geographie) in French
Say, "I'm thirsty". Jump into one of the Canadian lakes then say, "That's refreshing!"
Purchase an Indigenous-created artifact to put in our school's monthly museum cabinet
Document Human-Environment Interaction: Photographs of damage to Jasper NP from the 2024 wildfire
Sit in the famous Red Chairs near a landscape and say, "Red Chair, Red Chair, what do you see? I see ___ looking at me."
We found several of these shops all over especially in tourist areas. It is basically a doughnut shaped like a beaver's tail. This store had a wide variety of topping choices. I went with Pistachi-OH!
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
STUDENTS:
Which one would you choose?
Tally the class choices.
Construct a digital graph (bar, line, or circle) using Google Sheets with appropriate title and labels to share out the results.
Scenes like this surrounded me as I drove into and through sections of the park. BILLIONS of trees standing charred and needle-less. Not every part of the park was damaged, but MUCH of it was and still showing the effects.
The positive was that there was much construction happening in the town of Jasper a year after and within natural spaces of the park.
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
Ice Bucket Waterfall.mp4Takakkaw Falls flows in the distance while I stand in the Yoho River.
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
The smell when I opened the bag was strong, and I was really hesitant to give it a go. I only ate ONE, but that was the challenge...try them. My husband tried them, too, and he wasn't a fan either. Glad we didn't buy a full-size bag! ;)
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
This went about as well as you might expect!
(video coming soon)
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
I had to create the tours in sections in order for the videos to be small enough in size to be transferred from my phone to the computer. Click on and view below:
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
Well, we were never at any of the lakes AT sunset when I had my paints in the car with us. Instead of skipping the challenge, I improvised and painted AT sunset while at our campfire at the campground one night.
The mosquitos have been really bad up here as in the two weeks before we came there has been more rain than usual, so a campfire was necessary to even sit outside.
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
We met this couple playing golf. After golf, we sat together and visited in the clubhouse having a drink and snack. We surprised them by paying the bill before it came to the table. They taught us a LOT about Canada especially their home province of Manitoba.
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
wolf challenge.mp4Wolves are generally pretty elusive creatures. We did not see any here in Canada though there were very few areas of wide open valleys to help us get a glimpse.
I figured the best way to complete this howl challenge was to use our school district as inspiration. Listen for the "Francis How - ow - ow - ell".
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
Challenge map in French.mp4I took German language in high school, not French, so my pronunciation is likely off.
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
dunk challenge.mp4It took awhile to find the best spot for this challenge depending on what gear I had on each day, our location, the crowds, and where we were headed next. Luckily, this was our last stop of this day, so getting soaked wasn't a problem.
This is in the Bow River, and the water temperature was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit with air temperatures at 70 degrees Fahrenheit for this time of day. Yes, it was cold!
I ended up dunking three times because my husband had some technical issues with the video my first two dunks.
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
Red Chair.mp4This was the first set of chairs where NO ONE was in line waiting to take pictures! There are sets of red chairs at various lookout points in each of the Canadian Parks.
BONUS: I did a second one.
See if you can do some detective work to figure out which two Canadian National Parks I was in when I did each of these red chair challenges!
CHALLENGE COMPLETED!
INDIGENOUS CULTURE ARTIFACT
The one challenge I did not complete was to purchase an Indigenous artifact for our culture cabinet at school. There were two reasons this challenge was not met. First, many of the stores claimed to have artifacts made in Canada by people of First Nations; however, I was not able to authenticate that for most of the items. Second, of the artifacts I could authenticate, they were very specialized items which were very costly. They were things like large wooden carvings and intricate jewelry or leather products.
NOT COMPLETED!
