We arrived in Canada five months ago, with the intention of settling down and resting our weary travellers legs for a while, finding work and re-boosting the bank accounts.

Conveniently for us, Aidan's good mate from high school, Marty, had been living in Banff, a popular tourist town in the Rocky Mountains, for the past four years. We crashed at his place for a few weeks while Aidan scoured the country online for an Engineering job. Without much luck, we decided to find some temporary work to get by in the meantime. Aidan landed a good job at an outdoors hiking shop aptly named 'Abominable Sports'. Jess started working in one of the many tacky souvenir shops catering for the hoards of summer tourists, 'Unique Canadian Alps'.

Aidan continued to look for something more meaningful for a few more weeks. Meanwhile, we were creating some tight friendships and quickly falling in love with this transient, action-packed little town. Banff lies within one of the worlds first ever National Parks, within the famous Rocky Mountains and it's not hard to see why it attracts more than 4.5 million tourists every year!

Eventually, Aidan gave up on searching for professional work - the idea of working out of an office in a city wasn't really that appealing anyway! So we found our own room in an apartment, bought a couple of mountain bikes from 'Canadian Tyre', some good hiking shoes from Aidan's shop, a couple of cans of 'bear attack deterent' and settled in to enjoy the best of a Canadian Rocky Mountain summer! Soon after, Jess realised she could make alot more money through 'tips' in hospitality, and found a job as a server at two popular restuarants; 'The Old Spaghetti Factory' and 'Chillis'.

We had a great introduction to the 'Wild West' with Canada's biggest outdoor show, the 'Calgary Stampede!' We went for the day with Marty and the gang and checked out all of the prize horses and pumpkins. We sat down with our cowboy hats to watch a full-blown rodeo, complete with bucking broncos, crazy spinning bulls, steer tackling, clowns and chuckwagon races! If that wasn't enough, the night ended with the most magnificient, if not slightly over-the-top, display of fireworks, chinese acrobats, swing dancing, fireworks, hoola-hoop dancing and an aboriginal riding a giant mechanical eagle! - oh and more fireworks!

It turned out to be one of the warmest summers on record (with a top of 25 degrees celcius!) and we definately made the most of it! We took our new bikes and rolled around the surrounding Mountains, spotting beaver, elk, deer, bears, coyote, bald eagles, squirrels, pika, chipmunks and more along the way. When we weren't distracted by all the amazing wildlife, we were mesmerised by the stunning scenery; green velvet swathes of pine trees covering the valleys, sparkling glacier blue lakes and rivers and enormous snow capped rocky peaks in every direction. The crispy fresh mountain air had us blissfully giddy everytime we left the house!

With so much adventure at our doorstep, we found ourselves mentally creating an impossible list of 'must-dos' before the snow brought on its own adventures. With the help of our friends, we were often testing our physical capacity and psychological stamina. We road long up-hill distances and scrambled our way up many steep cliff faces for some of the most amazing scenery and views we have ever experienced. One particular challenge was climbing Cascade Mountain, sitting just under 3000 meters and tempting us daily from our bedroom window. The path, although not un-trodden, was unclear and invovled a lot of loose rock scrambling and steep traversing. And just when Jess's fear of heights was particularly tested over a particularly steep and narrow ledge, a mountain goat joined us to show just how easy it was!

For the last month there has been a distict sense of excitement in the air! Most of the tourists have left, the leaves are changing from greens to yellows and oranges and the weather is cooling. At 'Abominable Sports' most of the hiking boots have been replaced with skis and snowboards, and every pub is starting to play all the latest snowbum films. We couldn't help but get caught up in all the hype, and couldn't have ever left for good without doing a winter season!

We came up with a compromise. We decided it was time to head back to Australia, briefly, for two reasons. One is to catch up with all of our family and friends. The other is to do a couple of months of grain harvest work to really boost our travel funds. When we fly back to Canada in early January, hopefully we'll be all cashed up, fresh for another good year of travel, and just in time for the softest, whitest winter snow and some proper snowboarding!

The last few days have been pretty action-packed. We both finished up work with a few days to spare, and started with our friend Mike XL's 21st birthday. Two kegs of beer were arranged, although unfortunately the tap malfunctioned and we were all left dry. Mike still managed to get cake all over his face though, and we moved the party down to one of the many 'drinking holes', the 'Pump and Tap' where the pumps and taps were working quite well!

Amongst our last minute scavenger hunt for winter gear and a few attempts at packing our belongings, we managed a little road trip up to Jasper and the Columbia Icefields. We rode a vehicle that was something between a bus and a tank onto the Athabasca Glacier, which flows out from the Icefields themselves. We hopped out and stood in what we felt was a minus twenty degree blizzard. We were dissapointed when our guide told us it was probably just above freezing... It's going to be fun when we get back in January and it's minus thirty!

Finally, the night before we left, the pumps and taps were fixed, so Mike's two birthday kegs had to be emptied before they were due back to the brewery! We were happy to help and shouldn't have been surprised when a few quiet drinks for our last night quickly escalated into a 4am session, complete with a singed moustache and crying emotional girls. It turned out to be a great send-off, although packing the next day wasn't alot of fun..

Now, with all our Canadian winter possessions safely stored at our good friend Ely's place, we're on the plane and on our way home, albeit temporarily, to give the folks a big hug, and remind ourselves of where we actually came from!