My 40th approaches. It’s a milestone birthday for which – because my wife is so very clever - I will be far away from the great majority of my friends. As such, my very lovely wife has been working hard to make it awesome. And so, the Festival began last weekend with a 3 days and 2 night family package at the Fairmont Montebello resort. And by resort, I mean the largest log cabin in the world. No really, it is made of logs.
Once you get inside, the place is even more amazing.
It was built back in the 1930s and has been retrofitted to accommodate more modern requirements, like electricity, plumbing and gift shops. Even though Montebello seems to be the place Canadian-kitch goes to die, it claims 5 stars, and so long as we are talking about ‘Canberra-stars’ I would agree. The room was a touch pokey, but you just have to love the décor. I am especially impressed by the carved wooden bear lamp and the art depicting a pipe-smoking, deer and rifle carrying dude that was no doubt singing robustly between puffs as he strides manfully through the glen.
One curious omission, there was absolutely no evidence of taxidermy to be found. No moose heads or stuffed bears. Not even any antlers. Nada. In any case, Montebello isn’t so much about the room as everything around it. Like…
The enormous indoor heated swimming pool with its awesome roof
There is also curling on tap, a brilliant buffet, ice fishing, health spa & sauna, tobogganing, cross country skiing, snowshoeing and more. It was also amazingly child-friendly. I swear every staffer we met must have had a colouring book and pack of crayons in their back pocket. Jane and I took advantage of the hotel babysitter to enjoy dinner sans children on both nights of our stay. Amusingly, our dinner was accompanied by one of Wayne Gretzky's finest reds. It was nice, but not as nice as the Dan Aykroyd wine we had previously in Ottawa.
If you aren’t the lead dog, the view is still pretty cool.
As part of the package we got to go on a family dogsled ride, which was really cool. The kids *loved* it and got to pat one of the dogs afterward. The driver was a short hairy Qubecer with a cheery, chatty disposition and terrific accent for yelling at dogs. We took a nice run through the hills around the resort. Very scenic.
We finished our stay with a drive through the nearby Omega Nature park, which made admirable efforts to make up for Montebellos utter lack of antlers.
Aside from the two immediately below it was the wrong time of year to see bears, but we saw plenty of other animals.
Aside from the above, we got a good look at some foxes, porcupines, arctic wolves and wild boars. My favorite would have to be the juvenile elk that was very keen to enjoy our carrots (feeding is allowed with bags of carrots on sale in the gift shop). He just about stuck his entire head into the car, prompting rather urgent direction from Jane that the windows be put up, all the way up now, right now. NOW! So of course now our windows have elk slobber on them.
Shortly afterward we found ourselves surrounded by a milling throng of carrot-seeking elk. I edged the car slowly forward until we had cleared most of the herd, at which point Jane lobbed the remaining carrots out the window to cover our escape.
But wait, there is more…
One odd thing about our GPS is that it often sends home via a different route then it used to get us somewhere. In this case, instead of going home via the highway, we took a back road and crossed the river on a rather small car-ferry. The ferry ride was good fun and the kids had never before been on one. The trip only took about 3 minutes, bit provided great excitement over being on a boat, and in the car, at the same time! The ferry was small enough that you still got a sense of motion sitting in the car such that opening the door felt wrong. It did seem a little odd to pay for a ferry when we could see loads of people driving around and ice-fishing on other parts of the river, but then again the ice just didn’t really look all that thick to me. And certainly not to Jane.
And my friends, that was the 1st three days of the Festival of Jason.
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