In an Instameet

The Official meetup

We were invited to the Hotel Arts to enjoy some coffee and desserts prior to heading out for a walk around Calgary. I was fortunate to be asked to lead the walk along with the ever so cool Jeff Bartlett. I knew a few people already, and met many more, all of whom are world class travel Instagram superstars! User names such as @hecktictravels @photojbartlett @punkodelish @laurenepbath @wisslaren @davidguenther and @namkcaps to name a few, all in all totaling millions of followers, I was humbled to say the least.

Almost missed the Sunset

We ended up, up on McHugh Bluff overlooking the city, but had to leave before the best part of the sunset. I took this photo through the window of the bus as we crossed Center Street Bridge on the way back to Hotel Arts for some more networking.

A failed attempt at Aurora

All day long, the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis was in the back of my mind. It didn't take too much convincing of the eager group of international travel photographers, before we had a plan to head out into the country for a look see. We met up at the hotel at 11pm and made our way out of the city. We didn't end up seeing Northern Lights, but were treated to a gorgeous night sky nonetheless. At -39c this night was the coldest most of new friends had ever experienced. So there's that! We had unexpected guests as a nearby landowner reported our whereabouts and we had 3 RCMP vehicles there, lights ablaze! So we did see some Northern Lights after all, just the blue and red variety. It was a little interesting as there were ID's produced for Alberta, Ontario, Australia, and Sweden among the 7 of us! The officers enjoyed seeing our photos and we were soon underway.