After four days of hanging with the Saskatchewan relatives, we hit the road to Calgary once again, this time to spend a couple days sightseeing. One of the main things we wanted to do was take the kids to a football game, so when I saw that the Riders would be in town, I snapped up some tickets. I can’t honestly say I’m a huge football fan, but I was born into Rider Nation — I get it. My kids, on the other hand, are huge football fans but do not care to cheer for a team that a) they have no real connection to and b) almost never wins. They thoroughly enjoyed mocking me, though. Good times.

We had more good times today when we toured the zoo. I was slightly hesitant about doing that, since the kids have actually been there before, but that was six years ago and it turns out they remember almost nothing about that trip, so this was all new to them. We skipped the whole Canadian wildlife section in favor of focusing on animals like penguins, lions, tigers, hippos, camels, etc, not to mention the animatronic dinosaurs in the Prehistoric Park area. I was pleased to see that the boys actually stopped to read the signs at the exhibits this time (they actually learned something!) So that was three hours well spent.

Then it was off to the Canada Sports Hall of Fame, where we saw statues, videos and artifacts of Canada’s most well-known athletes. They even had some interactive exhibits where the kids could shadow box with Lennox Lewis, try out their football/baseball/hockey skills against a simulator, and publish their own sports magazine. Very cool.

Home tomorrow…