Arrival Day to Calgary, Checking in to Canmore condo

The trip is finally here and we are flying from Newark Airport to Calgary to start our 10 day trip in Banff, Lake Louise, and Jasper. I planned this entire trip for a year so I am going to do each day so you can see our itinerary. While we live about 1.5 hours from Newark, we flew out of Newark because Air Canada had a direct flight. With two little boys, I try to avoid layovers as much as possible. Reason? Well, when I want my children to move fast, they move at the pace of a slug on a cold day. When I want them to slow down, they have cheetah like speed as they barrel into people. Because of that, I didn’t want to have to worry about making a flight or being delayed or being stressed…I just wanted to sit down on a flight and arrive at our destination. If you want to see more about what we packed, please look at the “what we packed for Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper” post. Packing for this trip was stressful because of weather and when I searched Pinterest for a packing list, I found a lot for adults, but not for kids. My post has the packing list for kids now!! I also updated to include what we actually needed and what we didn’t. I also put links to things I purchased on Amazon if you would like to take a look. Some links are commission links!

So, let’s first talk about the airport. My husband and I signed up for TSA Pre-check and we are glad that we did. It makes going through security super easy and we looked forward to using it at Newark Airport. We drove up at 3:15am for our 7:05am flight. We got to the airport in 1 hour and 15 minutes. I dropped everyone at Air Canada and took the minivan to park in P4. I had pre-paid so assumed it would be super easy. Maybe it was because it was early, but I had the HARDEST time finding P4. I went around the airport like 4 times before I pulled over and found a woman to help me. If you drop and then find P4, follow the signs for daily parking and drive past the 7 Eleven. I paid for preferred parking and boy am I glad I did! Besides getting lost, the AirTrain took a while to get me from the parking station back to Terminal A where the family was waiting for me so we could check-in. I hopped onto the AirTrain and it took about 5-8 minutes to get me back to Terminal A. Once there, I scurried out, down the escalator and was in Terminal A. We went to the Air Canada kiosk and got the message that we would need to stand in line because of an error. My son and husband have the same name, so we were told to put my son’s name III in the future to ensure we don’t have the delays. We checked 3 bags and Air Canada allows for one carry on and one personal item per person. We overpacked, BIG TIME, which I talk about in our packing post! Air Canada was super nice, got us all going as quickly as possible. At this point it was almost 5am and I knew we still had to get through security, eat breakfast and use the bathrooms. No problem when they start boarding at 6:30am, but sometimes my guys have to take an hour long poop so…I was feeling stressed. We went to security and there was NO LINE for the pre-check. I was literally grinning as we made our way through. Scan first kid, CHECK. Scan second kid, NOPE…he was flagged and made to stand at the side. I walked through, CHECK. My husband walked through, FLAGGED. Okay, no biggie, it’ll be a minute or two, right?! Nope, my child tested positive for explosives. UGH!! We ended up standing there for a good 20 minutes while they tested each piece of electronic. If you travel with kids, that is a lot. He had his Nintendo Switch, iPad and his DS3. Each had to be swabbed and then we had to wait while they called in another supervisor to help. If you know my oldest, he is a nervous child and I could tell he was at the point of panic. I tried to smile, joke and reassure him, but I didn’t walk up to him because my husband was there and I didn’t want him to feel any more nervous. They finally cleared him and said it was likely a false positive. He hugged me after we made it to the walkway past the regular security area and I could tell he was tense and upset, but trying to laugh it off and make the best of it. I was fighting down my panic at how long all of this had taken.

We finally made it to our gate, used the bathroom, grabbed breakfast and they started calling for everyone to board. It was the closest we have cut it on a flight and it was stressful for me…although I do believe I played it off well!

Our flight was smooth, we landed in Calgary and headed to our rental car. Here is where my first piece of advice comes in: RENT YOUR CAR EARLY!!! I rented about 1 year in advance and booked through Costco Travel for 579.54CAD. When I checked the months leading up to our trip, the price had jumped to 900.00CAD. I was happy to have booked it in advance! When we arrived at the Enterprise desk, the minivan was ready to go and we just walked outside, went over the insurance options with the girl who showed us the minivan, hopped in and off we went. A few things to mention: we have rental car insurance with our credit card. We opted to not get the insurance through the rental car company. PLEASE do research. When we were returning, there was a woman beside us who had SEVERE hail damage and the car was marked up with white circles…like 15 white circles of dings and dents. She opted to not get insurance. She was hysterical as they circled up her car. This is the ONLY rental car place I’ve ever seen that goes over every car with a fine tooth comb. They had several cars, minivans and SUV’s sitting with white circles and notes on the windows that said, “DENTS, BROKEN WINDSHIELD, NO INSURANCE, GO THROUGH CREDIT CARD COMPANY, ETC”. Make sure you have coverage of some sort, either through your credit card, your personal insurance or buy it. They sell windshield insurance and in hindsight, I should have looked into it. It must be a thing because I saw quite a few tents set up in parking lots advertising that they fix windshields. Luckily, we did not have any damage, got checked and off we went.

We made the drive from Calgary to Canmore in about an hour. We decided to stay in Canmore because it was cheaper and we didn’t want to be in the town of Banff. It is busy, parking is a nightmare and we wanted a condo so we could cook breakfast each morning to save some money. We originally had a condo booked in the town of Canmore, but the hubby wanted to be in a more remote location so we booked Deadman’s Flat. We really liked our location and it was an easy walk to the Bow River. We stayed in a VRBO condo at Copperstone. I also needed a place with air conditioning because I have a hard time sleeping at night if I am overheated. Here is a link to the condo we booked with VRBO. It is great for two couples and kids. There is pull out couch. Kitchen was great for breakfast. I wouldn’t cook any elaborate meals here, but it worked for what we needed. Link for condo!

We were all a bit pooped, so we shopped for our groceries and then decided to walk down to the Bow River. It was a great start because we knew the next morning we would have a jam packed day. Read what we did on our first day in Banff!