Dream Road Trip - Dead Mans Flats & Kelowna

Once the time in our accommodation in Canmore came to an end it was time for us to move on to a new motel. Having loved our time in the Banff area and with a few days up our sleeve we decided to look for another motel in Banff or Canmore. To our dismay, all the motels were booked out except for one in a tiny town called Dead Mans Flat. So with great reluctance we drove to Dead Mans Flats which would soon become our least favourite town in Canada.

Once we had checked into our room at the Big Horn Motel we quickly realised that the wi-fi in the motel was at basically dial up speed (if it connected at all). If this was the extent of our issues I'm sure we could have made the best of it. However as we were sleeping on our first night, our hire car was broken into and some of our bags were stolen. So the next morning we finally got to meet some mounties (not under the greatest circumstances) and had to fill out police reports in the hope that they could catch the offenders. Unfortunately we still haven't heard back from them so I don't think we will ever get the bags back. Once we had calmed down and the shock had subsided we did joke that at least we wouldn't have to worry about being charged for excess baggage on our trip home.

Thankfully we had pre-booked ourselves a trip to a wolfdog sanctuary for the next day so we had something to look forward to. The next morning we drove about 45 minutes to the Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary which is located about half way between Canmore and Calgary. When we arrived we were told we could look around the sanctuary and then in 20 minutes time we could come back to the front desk and our tour would commence.

As the name suggests, a wolfdog is what you get when you breed wolves with dogs however there are high and low grade wolfdogs. The low grade ones are more dog than wolf and will therefore come up and play and let you pat them as well as sit and take treats. The high grade wolfdogs are more wolf than dog and as such are petrified of humans and generally want nothing to do with us.

As part of our tour we were allowed access to two enclosures with our guide. The first enclosure we went into contained three high grade wolfdogs. When we entered we walked in a straight line to a set of chairs and sat down whilst the guide tried to attract them closer with treats. As these were high grade wolfdogs they would get to within 10 feet of the group and then move away as they were afraid of us.

The second enclosure however contained two low grade wolfdogs named Loki and Rocky who were much friendlier and were looking forward to pats and treats. As they were super keen for the treats that they knew we were hiding, we had to ensure that we held our arms up to ensure that they sat down before we fed them the treats. After the trauma of having our car broken into, spending time with the wolfdogs was the perfect pick me up.

Once we had arrived back from the Wolfdog Sanctuary it was time to move on to our next stop in Kelowna, with a few Tim Hortons pit stops in between for some doughnuts and coffee. Jess was extremely excited to be moving to Kelowna as it is a part of the Okanagan wine region, which is one of the biggest wine regions in Canada. As such it would have been quite rude not to go on a wine tour so this is what we did (although I had to be the tour guide whilst Jess drank all day).

As it is such a large wine region, there are a number of different wine trails you can do. We chose to do the Lake Country's Scenic Sip as it included 7 different wineries which were all located just north of Kelowna. Each winery was meant to have a tasting fee to try their wines but karma must have been on our side as only one or two actually ended up charging. Unfortunately for Jess though, none of the wineries export their wine outside of British Columbia so there was no chance of getting any to Australia. I guess we will just have to go back again some time and buy some bottles for the rest of our travel across Canada.